GCHQ's interception and storage of Yahoo webcam images condemned

(Guardian) Politicians and human rights groups have reacted angrily to revelations that Britain's spy agency intercepted and stored webcam images of millions of people not suspected of any wrongdoing with the aid of its US counterpart.

GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 reveal that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected 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 images, including substantial quantities of sexually explicit material, from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts globally.

The Tory MP David Davis said:

"We now know that millions of Yahoo account holders were filmed without their knowledge through their webcams, the images of which were subsequently stored by GCHQ and the NSA. This is, frankly, creepy."

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