GCHQ intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users worldwide
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
It ties individuals faces to online accounts and computers and possibly addresses. Especially combined with increasing amounts of CCTV it removes further anonymity.
I was also disturbed by the "dissemination of offensive images is a disciplinary offence" statement which implied that was not the case for other images and that it is only a disciplinary offence rather than a criminal one (misconduct in public office if there isn't anything else).
Isn't that a bit optimistic? As things typically work out today, no official would ever be personally identified and held to account in court if something like this "accidentally" leaked. Meanwhile, the subject of the leak could have their life destroyed any number of ways, even if the image that gets leaked was taken out of context or otherwise not an accurate reflection of the person in question.
We've seen far too many cases recently where innocent people have been severely harmed, on rare occasions even literally killed, by some part of the government, and yet remarkably often no-one is ever held responsible. Until the authority for these kinds of actions must be tied to a named individual, and the identity of that named individual can never be concealed from a court, and that named individual faces meaningful consequences for any abuses that happen on their watch unless they can show that their subordinate did not follow a proper direction (in which case responsibility transfers to the identified subordinate), and any ultimate subordinate involved in such an action who can't identify the responsible individual gets no more legal protection than any other citizen who did the same thing, this problem will continue.
Simply saying "the hacker collective known as Anonymous has released photos of..." and there's literally no way for the general public to dispute it. Anonymous is a pretty convenient cover for government blackmail.
So, that's a plus.
'Hackers Release Photo Of Prime Minister And Mistress'
Done.
Just saying "we have this on you", this being something that can stop a career of a politician, or break his marriage, for example, will paralyse most people. And of course they make psychological assesments about who are most vulnerable and most likely to respond well to blackmail.
Second, you don't have to reveal anything. It's not like the agency himself has to do the blackmail and declare who they are and what they did. They can delegate that to some associate, who might not even know who is giving him commands. Or they can do it with anonymous messages ("We have this picture of you. You don't know who we are, but vote that on this law").
It's very hard to defend against institutional blackmail. The blackmailer just has to make their demands, that need to be followed "if you known what's good for you". Generally, that will work and no further steps are necessary.
If somebody decides to resist the demand in any way, you simply place some of those pictures of underage kid - perhaps from the project mentioned in this article - and place a "tip" with the local police. Of course, they could always "parallel construction" it. Many options there, because you never actually have to show real evidence in court, or even show up. You just have to get the ball rolling, and the child-porn accusation will do the rest for you.
In fact, it's important to make a big show about it, because coming down hard on the occasional person that questions your demands serves as an excellent way to discourage other from trying.
There is no evidence right now that the intelligence services can remotely activate webcams on any device of their choosing. They would likely need to first install malware on most devices to accomplish that.
They can easily do that, that isn't really in doubt, though of course that's not why things have cameras, as you say, cameras are cheap and quite useful, no need for a grand conspiracy.
I'm sure they wouldn't bother to exploit a machine unless they decide to target you specifically, but if they do decide to, given the resources they have available and the imperfect security on almost every OS, network and hardware you might use, they can easily use your phone or computer to record by installing malware. It's really very straightforward, all they need is a zero day in any of the network connected applications you use, baseband of your phone etc.
William Binney (worked on Stellar Wind) and Edward Snowden have gone on record confirming these capabilities are used routinely - in particular I remember Binney confirming mobiles used as mics, even when turned off. For him this is a matter of fact capability, not at all as dangerous as mapping all our activities at once from metadata and content sweeps on a broad scale - I tend to agree.
http://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000001733041/the-pro...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/fbis-searc... The FBI has been able to covertly activate a computer’s camera — without triggering the light that lets users know it is recording — for several years, and has used that technique mainly in terrorism cases or the most serious criminal investigations, said Marcus Thomas, former assistant director of the FBI’s Operational Technology Division in Quantico...
I assume they do the same with Skype, Lync etc. I hate the thought of being photographed by these creepy "intelligence officers" every time I'm on a webcam. Probably it also happens when we don't use the webcam.
"GHCQ has pics of your teenage daughter ..."
Blackmail. Polticial, economic, and spying-related informant-turning blackmail.
The CIA's primary business is getting informants and agents all over the world. Usually via some threat. This is perfect fodder for it.
Using cheating and sex (ie homosexuality in the 50s) against people is one of the most classic examples of recruiting strategies for intelligence agencies.
there will always be something taboo in society to blackmail people with.
And yes, there always will, but I think that homosexuality as a taboo has been exploited, specifically.
Your original statement seemed to suggest that it is still a taboo because those who wish to exploit it want it that way. The cause is not power brokers, it's everyone (or enough of everyone) who makes taboos' shamefulness persist.
I felt that while both can be weapons, there is a concrete, perhaps subtle difference between the two.
As an atheist from an "orthodox Christian" background (as opposed to protestant, baptist or the catholic church), I cannot really understand why people who call themselves Christians even quote the Bible, and seemingly only awful anachronistic parts, as opposed to the New Tastement.
Perhaps they should call themselves "Mosians"?
That wasn't what I was taught in my particular brand of Christianity, but having read the book I can totally see where other denominations pick it up. They aren't hallucinating or imagining hateful things in that book, it's all in there, ready to be reinforced or erased and excused, depending on which particular interpretation you take.
I think that reading the bible and coming to the conclusion that the god described in it hates homosexuality (among any number of other things) and that Jesus did not reverse those prejudices is perfectly reasonable. It's also somewhat reasonable (though far less so I think) to take away the idea that the Christian god is genuinely all loving and that Jesus absolved that god of all of it's sins (wasn't he suppose to do that for humanity instead? But it seems like he is most often invoked to absolve the christian god of his sins...).
(That of course isn't to say that I believe the sort of hateful Christianity seen prominently in certain parts of America (and other parts of the world) is acceptable. While I think their interpretation of the Bible is reasonable, I think it is _unreasonable_ for them to believe the Bible is divinely inspired, or that the god they read from those pages is worthy of being worshiped.)
Matthew 5:17-18
"Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be accomplished."
The "law or the prophets" is, of course, everything written in the Old Testament, where different chapters were attributed to the different prophets already in Jesus' time.
He makes it even stronger:
"Ye have heard that it was said, 'Thou shalt not commit adultery': but I say unto you, that every one that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart" (Matthew 5:27-28)
Verily, read thine Bible, if you believe it's inspired by God. Read it yourself. Don't believe what others interpret.
Or maybe accept that we shouldn't take that book too seriously?
Christians have absolutely no responsibility towards the Mosaic Law and only strictly towards the teachings of Jesus (whom they declare their leader).
Paul says this in a letter to a group of new Christians living in Collosae (modern day Turkey)sometime in the mid 1st century (50-60 C.E.) [0]
[0] http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Colossians+2%3A1...
But back to the topic, tell me, do you approve what GCHQ did?
The Bible can be made to say anything.
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them." Jesus speaking in Matthew 5:17
Jesus affirmed the law and called people further into true righteousness, which can never come from following rules, but requires a transformation of the heart that only God can accomplish. That is what He is talking about in the sermon on the mount (Matthew 5).
I don't see heaven and earth passed away, so the laws of the prophets still hold according to Jesus himself. He said that. Written one sentence after the one you quote claiming the opposite. So you decided not to believe what Jesus said. Fine with me. I believe the Bible is written by humans and that the humans invented all the gods.
But anyway we should discuss what GCHQ did with webcam streams of at least millions of people! What is your opinion on that?
This is obviously off topic from the original post, but hopefully it's a valuable conversation. It's actually a really important point that is reiterated throughout the New Testament explicitly and foreshadowed throughout the entire Old Testament.
This is a short helpful explanation http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/how-christ-fulfilled-and...
Last time I checked, heaven and earth were still here.
Yeah, the GCHQ thing is jacked up but not surprising. The connectedness and anonymity of the digital world and its increasing integration into our lives makes for some pretty scary scenarios.
"But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." (Matthew 5:28)
"If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death." (Leviticus 20:10 NIV)
"As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are around you." (Leviticus 25:44 ESV)
So, um, not a great book to pull random quotes from as a source.
Perhaps it's because it's not really a religious issue (just using that as an excuse).
Biologically people are repelled by homosexuality and attracted to adultery. That affects their state of mind, and they look for a reason for that and catch upon religious arguments.
What people get upset about is a cultural variable that is not consistent across times and places. Plenty of times and places, people have gotten at least as upset about adultery as about homosexuality.
Other times and places, not so much.
I get that it's the "in" thing now to hate on ancient texts to seem smart but ...
Quoting a writing from the ancient Jewish leader Moses is equivalent to studying the history of the peoples in those times and locations. Please, note that basically ALL nations used an enslavement "banking" system that basically boiled down to: You pay off your credit card by working for the creditor for a few years (or for however many years the owner thought was sufficient).
It has absolutely nothing to do with recent American slavery traditions embedded in deep racism and superiority complexes.
The only similarities are the translation of the word: slave.
The economics of ancient cultures was drastically different from how it has been for all post-1600s Bank of England cultures. :P
I don't think that anybody is distressed by the Code of Hammurabi, but that is because there are not people going around sincerely stating that they believe the Code of Hammurabi to be timeless and perfectly just, and Hammurabi himself to be someone to look to for ethical or moral guidance.
It is only when the historical context of ancient documents is purposely ignored or denied that those ancient documents become the targets of modern criticism.
Nurture vs Nature.....
I don't think this is anything but a negatively nurtured situation....
yes, it is part of our species favoring r-selection
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory
(progressives are the ones who favor K-selection)
Now you are just being silly. The USSR sent homosexuals to the gulags. China considered homosexuality to be a mental illness up 'til 2002, it is only when they started to become capitalist that they relaxed! In the UK it is the right-wing Tories that are bringing in gay marriage.
Attitudes towards homosexuality are simply not correlated with left-right politics.
I thought it was a pretty clever idea.
This also applies to people with large amounts of debt - which IIRC is one of the most common reasons people are denied clearance. See here for more info (scroll to "Vulnerability to Coercion"): http://www.dhra.mil/perserec/adr/falsification/falsification...
I think there was a guy that was caught spying recently that had a gambling addiction.
Sexually explicit images are quite useful for blackmailing.
I think you're incorrect on this. The level of intrusion here is much greater. There is a reason why video phones never really replaced voice: they are too revealing. This borders on voyeurism.
Remember the stories of TSA agents joking about what they saw on full body scanners? I don't believe it is credible to think that these types of photos aren't used in a similar fashion here even though it's a different country and agency. And that's actually the least damaging way they could be used.
Bulk, large scale collection
Of Content, moreover the visual and explicit
Of people not suspected of any crime.
Before this, we didn't have hard evidence that the large scale collection was grabbing content of non-suspects in addition to the to/from data.
I'm not sure what rationalization is left to hide under, but I bet that people will still try to say that this isn't so bad.
And it turns out that's not so futuristic. We're already there. The moment it became technically (Edit: and really, economically) feasible to spy on people's bedrooms, our governments leapt at the chance.
I wonder what Alan Moore would have to say about that. We didn't have to experience a crisis of social, governmental, or financial instability. There was no catalyzing meltdown that lead to this modern embrace of a new "soft" totalitarianism. This is just the latest chapter in a steady progression of increasing surveillance that can be traced back at least to the 1960s.
And it's a cinch that something like 51% of the general public will react just as they have all along: "Well, if it's necessary to keep us safe..."
September 11th and the London train bombings? No argument against how disturbing this all is, but don't feel it's accurate to say this increased surveillance wasn't caused by a crisis. It's all being done in the name of preventing terrorism, significant acts of which have occurred in the last decade both on US and UK soil.
So if anything, it's exactly like you stated, a traumatic event(s) has resulted in government(s) taking unreasonable measures and expanding powers to embrace a new "soft" totalitarianism.
In all honesty, we need to ask ourselves what we can practically do within the current framework that can push the government towards what we want. Less surveillance and civilian oversight of the intelligence community.
I don't think so. I did once, but I don't anymore.
Huge, bloodthirsty, spectacular acts of terrorism were older than those attacks, and those attacks didn't threaten the stability of the societies or governments in question in the slightest.
The tendency of English-speaking governments to use sweeping, untargeted surveillance to curb political activism or otherwise mold public opinion and behavior is older than those attacks, too. They spied on MLK and peace activists during Vietnam, not because they were threats to security but because they were threats to the spies' own political convictions, more or less.
What has really changed in the last 15 years or so is that its now economically feasible to spy on everyone, all the time, partially because the spied-on voluntarily fund the most expensive part of the equipment (their own webcams, cellphones, cars, laptops, ISP connections, etc). So governments are doing it. Something like 9/11 provides a handy excuse, maybe, but I've come to think it's naive to accept that as the real reason. I believe we would find ourselves in this position with or without 9/11.
The argument that "these are strange times and require a new class of countermeasures" is exactly the lie they want to sell you.
Special branch wanted an informer on every street. They infiltrated many political groups and meetings.
Some groups were outlawed - we even prevented news organisations from broadcasting the voices of some people leadingnto their video being dubbed by actors.
If you combine this revelation with this one https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipula... then you end up with the exact totalitarianism you speak of. Its the efficacy of the government to target any individual that makes it a totalitarian state even if it doesn't look like that on the outside to most people.
and some people will still insist that 1984 was about USSR...
"I seem to remember" would have saved a lot of people a lot of time.
Apologies, but this is a BB of TLBD
Hoover's FBI did what it want, MI5 famously "burgled their way across London". Oversight came later.
I haven't heard much call for "physically disable microphone" switches, though. If anything things have gotten worse with laptops; at least with desktops it was pretty common to just not have a microphone connected. I suspect 99% of laptops have a decent microphone built in, no indicator light, etc.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/18...
Disabling the camera LED is a fairly standard feature in malware suites. Even a lot of USB webcams control the LED from software. The LED is just a feel-good feature.
however the point about the mic stands.
You still shouldn't really trust it, but the situation is not how you're making it sound.
(Doesn't help with the microphone)
A physically switchable circuit should exist though, yes.
Actually: thinking more about this, you should be able to ha k the sound card to feed noise into the circuit.
'For starters, it turns out that 3-11% of Yahoo! webcam traffic involves "undesirable nudity"'
"I am still trying to get my head around the implications that the British government's equivalent of the NSA probably holds the world's largest collection of pornographic videos, that the stash is probably contaminated with seriously illegal material, and their own personnel can in principle be charged and convicted of a strict liability offence if they try to do their job. "
So, if you have to hide something, show your private parts. Can we conclude this?
"A US card cloner forced would-be gang members to take part in group sex sessions as part of an initiation ceremony designed to weed out undercover cops, according to a detective."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/01/smut_initiation_card...
>> The passionate note surfaced amid the flotsam of a shipwrecked marriage. It was written in broken English by a woman to herself, pouring out her love for a man called Tony. “Oh, shit, oh, shit,” she wrote. “Whatever why I’m so so missing Tony. Because he is so so charming and his clothes are so good. He has such good body and he has really really good legs Butt . . . And he is slim tall and good skin. Pierce blue eyes which I love. Love his eyes. Also I love his power on the stage . . . and what else and what else and what else . . . ”
>> The woman was Wendi Deng Murdoch, the Chinese wife of the Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch. The note, not revealed until now, could have been one of the few pieces of evidence in their surprise divorce last year, had the case come to trial. “Tony” was the former prime minister of Great Britain, Tony Blair.
[0] http://www.vanityfair.com/society/2014/03/wendi-deng-note-to...
Keeping a creepy eye on your junk, just in case you're a terrorist.
Most likely yes.
It has been pointed out that under the UK's tough anti-child-porn laws, there is no way that this is legal.
Edit: more details on that from Mr. CStross: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/02/rule-34-...
"Sidney, get on yahoo we have to discuss the subway bombing. Alright. Is your webcam on? Come on we have to use the webcams- so much communication is nonverbal! I just read this story on time.com about the importance of face to face communication- it was really fascinat-- what? Oh alright back to the bombing. But first turn your webcam on."
Seriously though, is there any channel of communication that the spooks won't illegally snoop on?
"A bunch of useless wankers," I believe the British would say, if they cared enough to say anything.
People are going to seriously regret using Snapchat in later life.
1- http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/15/snapchat-hands-...
The trend seems to be towards people not caring about exposure. You can't blackmail someone who isn't embarrassed.
"Yeah, I ate a bunch of dicks on Saturday night and posted the photos. What? Like you've never done that."
Bottom line: information is power, and even lack of shame cannot protect you from the damage it can do in malicious hands.
(BTW your point is well taken. There was an episode of Sherlock where a (presumably young and attractive) female member of the British royal family engaged a prostitute for some lesbian S&M play - and a the gov went to a great deal of expense to cover it up. My thought was, "why bother?" People's imaginations being what they are, the biggest impact would be a small uptick in UK births in 9-10 months.)
My name's Roger, and I'm a constituent of your riding. I've had the pleasure of meeting Margaret, and I want to thank you both and your team for the great work you do for the riding.
I'm writing because with each passing day, revelations are getting worse and worse about the surveillance capabilities of security agencies. Just today the Guardian revealed that the GCHQ, our British allies, collect webcam recordings en masse, including sexually explicit material shared between two consenting individuals.
We know the Harper administration is stuck as being part and parcel of Five Eyes, and that the CESC has conducted spying for the NSA, using Canada's good name for nefarious purposes.
I write this in the hope that you are aware of this issue, and to inquire as to what you and your party are doing with this regards, and what active efforts you will be making in the future to shed awareness about this creeping invasion on our privacy. As Canadians, we should be protected under Section 8 of the Charter with regards to reasonable expectation of privacy, but I do not want this to constantly shift because security agencies continually push us down the slippery slope Senator Church so eloquently warned Americans about during the Church Committee:
"If this government ever became a tyrant, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.
I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return."
Let me know how I can contribute to any efforts with this regards. I hope you are well, and eagerly await any response you have on this topic.
Is it just the CSEC or both CSEC and CSIS? Why are we not hearing more about the NSA-style violations made in Canada? I can't believe that we aren't participating in all this...
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipula...
"if someone (...) could explain why the line has always been "the metadata" when it is obvious that mass interception of content has always been part of the equation i would be grateful.
i would also be grateful if from now on every article relating to the NSA scandal will mention that fact that there is bulk collection of content.
i would also be grateful if from now on every time a public official is questioned or quoted the fact that content is collected in bulk is at the forefront.
every article should contain the fact that these agencies collect nude webcam images in bulk from people who are not suspected of any crime."
which includes quite a few HN commenters, btw.
No, this is also metadata. They are only taking a screenshot every few minutes, with as aim to get a clear picture of the face of the person operating the computer. Just like an email header contains a From-address in the content that's metadata, a webcam session contains the same metadata in the form of these screenshots of people's faces.
They're not collecting the data, i.e. the moving webcam video + voice. They have no idea what's being said. Just metadata.
NSA: We categorically do not store any content.
subtext: we don't, but GCHQ does and they let us search it.
That's the real insideousness of the whole five eyes thing. If it's illegal in your country, just get another of the eyes to do it. You can truthfully deny that you do it, while still reaping the benefits as if you had done it. Disgusting subversion of controls that are there for good reasons.
Ummm, "comply with human rights legislation" ... what? Are they implying that they was a human rights watchdog involved that confirmed that their approach was "legal"? Or, is the more likely case that they assume that their activities are legal internally -> ergo we're fine to proceed? That phase in itself is a HUGE red flag to me.
Addressing that problem...I'm not sure what can be done to get others more engaged and feeling like they have a voice. I highly doubt any Senators or Congressmen are reading HN News on a regular basis...
'This clearly violates both EU and British law.
It's simple: Parliament and the CPS can no longer ignore GCHQ's abuses and the entirely inadequate 'oversight' regime of the Intelligence and Security Committee.
Brooks et al. go on trial for allegedly hacking celebrities' voicemail messages, but Cabinet ministers walk free after approving secret suspicion-less dragnet recording of millions of webcam chats? This precedent can't stand. It's time we demand prison sentences for everyone who knew about this and did nothing to stop it.
Relevant British law is the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, Part II, Section 32 -- "Authorisation of Intrusive Surveillance":
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/section/32
(2)Neither the Secretary of State nor any senior authorising officer shall grant an authorisation for the carrying out of intrusive surveillance unless he believes—
(a)that the authorisation is necessary on grounds falling within subsection (3); and (b)that the authorised surveillance is proportionate to what is sought to be achieved by carrying it out.
GCHQ's position was that, "...the general principle applied would be that if the accuracy of the algorithm was such that it was useful to the analyst (ie, [if] the number of spurious results was low, then it was likely to be proportionate)".
But the entire point of requiring 'proportionality' is to exclude activities which are useful, but too intrusive for the benefits gained. GCHQ's reasoning that usefulness implies proportionality is clearly false. Time for a few ministers to see the inside of a courtroom.'
--
Without being an expert on the law (and ~99.999% of the people reading this fall into the same bucket) -- I/we can assume that other clauses exist to 'defang'/'neuter' the clauses cited, the ones which were purportedly violated. And this highlights another BIG issue: a law's true intent is oftentimes indecipherable or outright deceitful.
Groundbreaking precedents have been set due to laws which were passed on false pretenses (for ex., look up the genesis story of "eminent domain") - or simply marketed as something misleading (ex. Sen. Feinstein's "FISA Improvements Act"). To me, that is the greatest form corruption in a democracy -- lawmaking with surreptitious intent.
While bills have to be massive in some circumstances (and interlinking by their very nature) -- a standardized list of simple outcomes of said law should be a requirement, and a bill should be "unit tested" the same way programs are. Actually, behaviorally tested is a better phrase. We need a tool for lawyers/lawmakers to help them express the consequences of a bill in a definitive manner. - Are there such initiatives? (please comment) Shouldn't we start one? Has the idea been floated and shot down (at EFF/Demand Progress/etc), and if so why? IMHO it would be worth the investment given the stakes (understanding the consequences of bills and laws -- even spotting excess/hidden "pork"). . I would love to read a bill as a series of behavioral test assertions, wouldn't you! :)
>>> Hopefully the stated concerns don't apply; countless suits are brought against all suspect parties (esp. high profile targets); and those responsible are served justice to the maximum extent of the law. As the hum of document shredders begins on 10 Downing Street - know that THIS is the opportunity to "make an example out of" the type of people who are responsible for the system as it exists today. It's our turn for a power play.
[0] http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1z33wx/uk_spy_age...
It is quite fun to see the press/populace turn on our politicians (here in Germany) with them slowly realizing that they put their unconditional trust into the wrong people.
Here is the GCHQ bit of RIPA, which makes reference to part of the bit you quoted.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/section/42
GCHQs mission is to monitor all communications. Thus, to them anything will be proportionate. The over iew and scrutiny failed and failed hard - i have no idea why anyone thought it was acceptable to gather webcam data. (Maybe as a training exercise where the data is then deleted or a proof of concept?)
"Section 8 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000) permits GCHQ to perform indiscriminate trawls of external data"
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/gchq-insists-op...
You know, maybe they're not that concerned with decency when setting up a police state.
In fact, maybe they figured they could use some facial recognition data on their subjects? I bet the NSA doesn't have any on US citizens though. I mean, how could they possibly monitor Americans when it's against the rules?!
As for GCHQ oversight: it'd need to be a conspiracy spanning government (all parties); judiciary; etc. i'm not saying it couldn't happen, but the alternative (GCHQ lied; the oversight committees were incompetent) is easier to believe.
http://www.gchq.gov.uk/how_we_work/running_the_business/over...
http://isc.independent.gov.uk/
http://isc.intelligencecommissioners.com/default.asp
http://www.iocco-uk.info/docs/2012%20Annual%20Report%20of%20...
Right, and there was no reason to think I thought you were.
> As for GCHQ oversight: it'd need to be a conspiracy spanning government (all parties); judiciary; etc
Yeah, it seems unimaginable that one side of the same coin could be in cahoots with the other! If they tell us GCHQ is being carefully overseen so that it won't do anything naughty, then it must be true! Besides, they're probably only spying on those naughty terrorist foreigners - not Englishmen - so everything is alright!
It's already public knowledge that the GCHQ is saving a copy of every byte passing through England, but hey, they need to do that to fight pedophiles and terrorists, and.. racists, of course!
I just wanted to point out that (from their mobile sites) I couldn't find a single story about this on CNN, FoxNews or MSNBC. (4:36pm CST)
Last time I made a fuss about the media I had Godwin's law and Occam's Razor cited in replies/counters as why bias in the press is purely organic in nature. As this story has 1800+ comments on the Guardian, reached the top of Reddit (before it was removed) and is here at the top of HN, I would say that the fact that there is barely (or 'no') coverage of this story points to an invisible hand. To clarify: I didn't say "reporting" I said "coverage."
To not milk what is the most sensational story of the year is against the very link-baity nature of these companies. While I don't watch cable news - I might be VERY wrong in that arena, but something tells me I'm not. I can't attempt to understand the forces at play, but they are there.
In other related (under-covered) news: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/02/24/what-was-fcc-news...
Or that the average US citizen (the market for those news corps) doesn't give jack shit about it (not that this is a good thing). Netizens and UK citizens don't factor into the equation for these companies.
I imagine this would piss me off if I were a Rachael-Maddow-watching soccer mom. Show anchors are hired for their ability to work up their viewers. Taking pics of me in my underwear is a softball. Notice rasz_pl's comment below -- any producer worth a damn sees the potential in this scandal. So why is Brian Williams not leading off with it on the Nightly News as he did with the snoopware-webcam story from over a year ago? Who the fuck can tell me that? Open your fucking eyes man, and start asking your own questions.
As for "this only pertains to UK citizens" - this program wasn't limited to the UK. In many ways, the UK spying on the US is more sensational. Furthermore, the NSA and GCHQ have blurred the lines between jurisdictions. As for "only netizens would care" -- most people use the Internet. Yahoo is an everyman portal. This is an egregious invasion of privacy. Who cares if you're a netizen on this story? The story's content is not to blame either; general viewership can be enraged about esoteric things too (a great ex. the "bridge to nowhere" - just think about it).
The US would care if the baby-boomer/mainstream media tried to cover it, at all.
Exactly this. Making people care about an issue is entirely a question of narrative. They aren't even narrating this story.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School_...
But now somehow dont care when 2mil Yahoo users are the target? Bitch please.
Here's an eloquent description on Reddit of how this could be the largest case of child pornography distribution on record: http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1z33wx/uk_spy_age...
We must make it our business that heads roll. Troll call-in shows of our (US) cable media--ask them why they aren't giving it its weight. Despite it being the GCHQ (not the NSA), this seems like the greatest evidence given to reformists to date of the overreaching post 9-11 mandates. And it's the unspoken duty of journalists to cover important stories and inform the tens of millions that don't check Reddit, HN, the Guardian, (believe it or not, the Drudge Report), etc.
At the time of your post, CNN and MSNBC had it. Fox got it around the time of your post.
You probably missed it because it is common for major news organizations, both inside the US and those outside, to actually maintain separate views of the news for their domestic visitors and their international visitors.
The domestic view assumes that you are interested in mostly domestic news, and only want to see the top international stories. The international view assumes that you are interested mostly in world news, and only want to see the top domestic stories.
I have no affiliation with the service, just learned about it this weekend but it seems relevant to understanding and tracking the process of law making.
S.42 appears to say that the SS(!) must issue a warrant - I wonder if this is a matter of record and whether such warrant can be viewed/verified to any extent.
That's pretty funny.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PRISM_Collection_Details.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Upstream-slide.jpg
And second, I specifically remember that all nine companies immediately denied the existence of the program. Then it became too big and it was time to "explain it"? As Bush Jr. would say, fool me once...
Limiting collection to non-Americans applies to bulk collection programs like the email header collection for unencrypted email deliveries crossing national borders and like this program. Those are programs the companies didn't know about and are understandably outraged about.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2342200/Revealed-Yah...
Now companies are able to release more info about what the government had requested, though it is delayed and limited to giving ranges periods of time instead of absolute numbers.
I was also guessing that higher bandwidth channels such as voice chat, phone calls, video conversations, etc. were likely intercepted more selectively because of the difficulty of doing something like that en masse (and in the case of phone calls, because of laws (ha)).
I'm starting to think that I've just been grossly naive.
I'm very much afraid that the real solution is probably a political one, not a technical one.
I disagree. You can trust strong enough crypto, at least to some reasonable extent. You definitely can't trust politicians saying "nah, we're not looking at it" (or anything else they might be saying).
Only crypto where only you and the one you're communicating with have the keys; in other words, not the centralised CA model of SSL, nor "secure" boot, nor any other implementation that relies on trusting some central faceless entity that will say lots about "protecting your security and privacy" while doing the exact opposite.
More seriously, in a way, I think it's good that this happened because I hope that it will be a wake up call to the public opinion so that we might avoid living in a future with no rights to privacy. I'm really grateful that Snowden made the sacrifices he did to give us those information.
It's amazing to think of the potential of blackmail over politicians these kind of scheme would give...
I fear, they will write, that the beginning 21st century was full of perverts!
What do they have from other centuries:
Goethe, Franklin, Hugo, ....
And from ours:
People that strip before the webcam??
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5257228/do-you-know-what-...
There isn't really any new moral here; other than the idea that some unprotected data is in a sense even more unprotected than other data.
It doesn't fill me with confidence that 'they' aren't remotely activating and recording images without our knowledge though.
As to topicality, it depends how narrow your interpretation of the topic is.
https://www.apple.com/imac/features/
So that won't work for me, sadly.
[1] only the vast majority of people (both computer savvy and illiterate)
http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-its-treason-to-...
Political action has been ineffective so far.
I know that in the USA the political action has been largely irrelevant and low profile, though it has weakly galvanized politicians who were anti-NSA before the leaks were even public knowledge.
I've seen the odd report (and it's very odd when they do report it indeed) on Newsnight where they had some mouthpiece using the "Oh in the wrong hands this would be dangerous but we are the right hands line" alongside the always popular "If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" and the fun "We stuck strictly within the framework we where told to".
Suddenly, those tinfoil-wearers within the Project Tango thread the other day don't sound so crazy now.
It's gotta stop, folks. It's just gotta stop. The scary thing isn't that we continue to create some dystopian nightmare. The scary thing is that this continues on and it doesn't matter; that we give up our privacy and anonymity and become some other species than the one we started off the 21st century being. (I mean that in a social behavioral sense, not that we grow new limbs or something) This would be a profound change for the negative, making us more like a beehive (with the associated single point of failure) that millions of troupes of hominids with the distributed self-optimizing pattern of improvement that model supports.
i own an old hp like that and i love it
i never need the camera and when i need to skype i just plug the headphones
I also wonder if plugging a 3rd party mic into line-in and switching it off would have a similar effect for the mic.
You can never be sure unless your fix is physical.
They are laying the foundations for a 24/7 ubiquitous and always-on surveillance and tracking system.
The ultimately goal might be to use very little resources (humans, drones, etc) yet achieve a near-omnipotent level of power and influence.
If they are able to conflate many such methods and systems into one sense of intelligence, then their ability to target their resources effectively is increased significantly.
Their priority isn't necessarily "you" as an individual, but it's "everyone" so they can make sure nothing slips through their net.
1) They grabbed these images just to test their image recognition.
2) Earlier leaks have already shown that cameras and microphones can be accessed without user knowledge, and earlier defects in products show that the light does not always come on for cameras.
You're imagining that they will ask for consent. They will not. You are equipping yourself with a lot of sensors in a network connected device, and to this they simply say "Thank you". Or would, except they're not going to say anything.
I would suggest to finally drop the premise implied in these kinds of questions / indignation / etc.: that there's an actual purpose/principle (related in some or other way to the greater good and so on) which these systems are founded upon. I really think that there is no such thing. As cliche as it sounds, I believe it's simply about power (and power breeding more power, and all that.) This is the kind of framework which in some sense is at least meaningful and fruitful for discussion. Any moral ground on their side is a mere facade/veil/pretext (including for some level of self-deception/rationalization, sure), but its existence and use is purely instrumental.
Oh wait, they really don't have a constitution...
Would it matter if there were some other document making such things unlawful? Do you think that if they had the protections of the ECHR but it was called a constitution that GCHQ wouldn't have taken the same actions?
Lawyers may tell you the UK do have a constitution - I've never really understood how that's true however.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6107478
are so easily killed off on HN.
What is ironic is that GCHQ is doing all this at the expense of the British people, whose interest they should be serving.
Democracy only works if you do.
Like it or not, this is the reality of our world now: control belongs to paranoid career bureaucrats more interested in preserving their budgets than any measure of civil liberty.
Oohh, wait, you're saying... Ukraine, who's Ukraine?
I can't understand how this would have gotten released into the wild if they were doing industry-standard code coverage tests. And .. if they're not doing industrial-strength code-coverage testing on their iOS/OSX release builds, thats the real news here ..