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Comment by josephlord | Hacker News Reader

> webcam stills may be the least important (or useful) spying the US and UK have been doing

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).

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Obviously, it's not a good thing, but is it really worse than recording all phone call metadata and phone call content?

Yes, because for political purposes, a compromising photo has far better blackmail value than other data.

But you can't use that blackmail tool without revealing that you were spying illegally. Revealing that would be worse for the blackmailer than the blackmailee.

Can't you get a tabloid to print it and give the source a cover story?

Well, if a security service decides it needs to blackmail someone, they're hardly going to send them a letter on official letterhead. In this case I imagine they'd pretend to be something like a small hacking group, infiltrating individual webcams arbitrarily/opportunistically. Something like that.

Revealing that would be worse for the blackmailer than the blackmailee.

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.

Joe Public couldn't care less about where the image originated after he's seen it. By that point the damage has already been done.

This is why you "leak" it and find a scapegoat.

Anonymous is a loose collective that has already seen headlines in mainstream media, and it's impossible to prove that Anonymous did or did not do something. "Anonymous" takes credit for a lot of things that 4chan had no involvement in, for example.

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.

Because of this article, that entire archive of pictures they're holding is now probably worthless, for blackmail value.

So, that's a plus.

Sure you can.

'Hackers Release Photo Of Prime Minister And Mistress'

Done.

Who said you have to reveal that you were spying illegally?

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").

LOL That would only be true if they were willing to break the law (by blackmailing somebody, yet felt the strange need to making a legal accusation.

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.

Its additional. I haven't put thought into which I'd most want them to stop but the combination is worse than either on their own. It also allows the possibility of automated face recognition and social graph tracking in public places via CCTV (if not now then in the future).

This is worse because they are actually doing this. They are not actually recording all phone call content.

You ever wonder why every device has a front facing camera when they're known to be one of the least used parts?.

Because they only cost $1-2 and people feel like they add value to the device (to use it with Skype, Yahoo!, Google+ Circles, and so on).

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 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...

There is, however, evidence that FedGov can remotely activate webcams on some devices of their choosing.

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...

That's what the piece of opaque tape is for.

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