The well of National Security Agency (NSA) and Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) scandals has yet to run dry. Now it has come to light that the GCHQ, with assistance from the NSA, has been collecting webcam footage from Yahoo! users:
Britain’s surveillance agency GCHQ, with aid from the US National Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal.
GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicitly state that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still images of Yahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases, regardless of whether individual users were an intelligence target or not.
In one six-month period in 2008 alone, the agency collected webcam imagery – including substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications – from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts globally.
I’m sure the agency’s database is chock-full of penis and boob pics. In fact I’m guessing that that was the primary purpose of Optic Nerve. Agents from both agencies are probably searching the database right now hoping to find some pictures to wank off to.