It really should come as no surprise after the
revelations by Edward Snowden that the security agencies of various nations are
snooping on anyone with an Internet connection, but apparently the latest
hoo-ha is that Britain’s equivalent of the NSA, GCHQ, have been revealed as
intercepting webcam images of Yahoo users. This as reported
by the Guardian.
Yahoo of course has its knickers in a twist and denies
all knowledge of this. Because, like Captain Renault in Casablanca, after more than seven months of Snowden-related
disclosures, they are shocked—shocked,
I say—to discover that GCHQ has been trawling through their users’ activities
(with help from the NSA).
The intelligence agency, naturally, is saying they’ve done
nothing whatsoever illegal.
But what’s kind of an extra layer of creep-out is that
many, many of the images from billions of Yahoo users around the world are, ah,
sexually explicit. That’s because (in the words of one GCHQ document), “Unfortunately…it
would appear that a surprising number of people use webcam conversations to
show intimate parts of their body to the other person.”
Oh, quelle horreur!
I wonder about the poor analysts who have to look at this
stuff. I mean, think about it: after the first 30,000 of those kinds of videos,
it’s got to get to you.
Sadly, I don’t know which should be less surprising—the fact
that amateurs are using tech to expand on the sexting idea, or that security
services are scooping that stuff and a whole lot more into their “intelligence
gathering” databases. Or that platform providers like Yahoo want us to believe
they’re clueless. Frankly, all three ideas creep me out more than a little.
Well, it could be worse. At least so far we’ve not heard
of any Anthony Weiner webcam skivvy-shots going viral. But I kind of wonder if
he’s in a warehouse somewhere. So to speak.
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