Science | ||||
UK, US spies stored millions of Yahoo webcam images: Report
Yahoo,
which was apparently chosen because its webcam system was known to be
used by GCHQ targets, expressed outrage at the reported surveillance.
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LONDON: Britain's communications spy agency GCHQ and the US National Security Agency (NSA) intercepted and stored images from webcams used by millions of Yahoo users, the Guardian newspaper reported on Thursday.
GCHQ files leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden reportedly revealed how the Optic Nerve programme collected still images of webcam chats regardless of whether individual users were suspects or not.
In one six-month period in 2008, the British spy agency collected webcam imagery from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts around the world, the Guardian said.
Yahoo, which was apparently chosen because its webcam system was known to be used by GCHQ targets, expressed outrage at the reported surveillance.
"We were not aware of nor would we condone this reported activity," a spokeswoman for the US technology firm told AFP in an email statement.
"This report, if true, represents a whole new level of violation of our users' privacy that is completely unacceptable.
"We are committed to preserving our users' trust and security and continue our efforts to expand encryption across all of our services."
Leaked GCHQ documents from 2008 to 2010 explicitly refer to the surveillance programme, although the Guardian said later information suggests it was still active in 2012.
The data was used for experiments in automated facial recognition, as well as to monitor existing GCHQ targets and discover new ones, the British paper said.
The programme reportedly saved one image every five minutes from a webcam user's feed, partly to comply with human rights legislation and partly to cut down the sheer amount of data being collected.
GCHQ analysts were able to search the metadata, such as location and length of webcam chat, and they could view the actual images where the username was similar to a surveillance target.
The data collected, which was available to NSA analysts through routine information sharing, contained a significant amount of sexual content, the newspaper added.
It cited one document as saying: "It would appear that a surprising number of people use webcam conversations to show intimate parts of their body to the other person."
In a statement to the Guardian, GCHQ said all of its work was "carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework which ensures that our activities are authorised, necessary and proportionate".
GCHQ files leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden reportedly revealed how the Optic Nerve programme collected still images of webcam chats regardless of whether individual users were suspects or not.
In one six-month period in 2008, the British spy agency collected webcam imagery from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts around the world, the Guardian said.
Yahoo, which was apparently chosen because its webcam system was known to be used by GCHQ targets, expressed outrage at the reported surveillance.
"We were not aware of nor would we condone this reported activity," a spokeswoman for the US technology firm told AFP in an email statement.
"This report, if true, represents a whole new level of violation of our users' privacy that is completely unacceptable.
"We are committed to preserving our users' trust and security and continue our efforts to expand encryption across all of our services."
Leaked GCHQ documents from 2008 to 2010 explicitly refer to the surveillance programme, although the Guardian said later information suggests it was still active in 2012.
The data was used for experiments in automated facial recognition, as well as to monitor existing GCHQ targets and discover new ones, the British paper said.
The programme reportedly saved one image every five minutes from a webcam user's feed, partly to comply with human rights legislation and partly to cut down the sheer amount of data being collected.
GCHQ analysts were able to search the metadata, such as location and length of webcam chat, and they could view the actual images where the username was similar to a surveillance target.
The data collected, which was available to NSA analysts through routine information sharing, contained a significant amount of sexual content, the newspaper added.
It cited one document as saying: "It would appear that a surprising number of people use webcam conversations to show intimate parts of their body to the other person."
In a statement to the Guardian, GCHQ said all of its work was "carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework which ensures that our activities are authorised, necessary and proportionate".
everybody knows it .nothing new
author Gregory Clark"s clerical story
Think you should do better in life? Blame your great, great, great grandfather
READ MORE
The Son Also Rises|Reason for Success|Reason for Failure|Gregory Clark|Family Factor in Man's Life
In
his book "The Son Also Rises", author Gregory Clark writes that our
chances of getting on in life are largely down to what our family did
300 years ago.
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LONDON: Miffed that you didn't get into Oxford University? Cross because you can't afford that three-bed in the town centre? Not got one non-executive directorship to your single-barrelled name? There is only one person to blame: your great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather.
According to a new book, " The Son Also Rises", by academic Gregory Clark, our chances of getting on in life are largely down to what our family did 300 years ago. Contrary to brighter estimates, which suggest that past prosperity or poverty can be erased in three to four generations, Clark reckons it takes 10 to 15.
So, those who feel held back by their modest beginnings shouldn't look to their parents' salary for an explanation: that accounts for a mere 10 per cent variation in a person's status, whereas our long-term lineage accounts for a variance of between 50 and 60 per cent.
What that means, in effect, is that if your family were shopkeepers 200 years ago, the likelihood is you may be, too.
Clark arrived at his conclusion by using surnames to track changes in familial fortune. He picked out the family names that dominated elite positions in historical records like the Doomsday Book and the Royal Society records and then tracked how long it took for those surnames to lose their wealth-predicting ability.
Was Clark surprised at his findings, implying as they do that capitalism has not led to a rapid, persistent mobility? "Very surprised; astonished," he says. "It took us considerable time to realise that surnames were revealing a surprising persistence in social life that conventional methods fail to detect."
Clark suggests that mobility in feudal England was not vastly different to today. Upwardly mobile artisans working in the 12th century took eight generations to be absorbed into the educated elite of the 16th century.
Conversely, despite the introduction of inheritance tax and rapid industrialization, the 21st-century descendant of the 1 per centers of mid-Victorian England are likely to be three times as wealthy as the average man or woman on the bus.
What is perhaps the most surprising feature of the research, though, is that the ancestral shadow appears to hang over all the countries surveyed, without exception.
"Social mobility rates are similar across societies that vary dramatically in their institutions and income levels. Cradle-to-grave socialist Sweden and dog-eat-dog, free-to-lose America have similar rates. Communist China and capitalist Taiwan have similar rates. Homogenous Japan and the ethnically fractured US also have similar rates," he says.
If proved correct, Clark's research would imply that attempts to invest society with even a ghost of social mobility have come to naught. As he says: "Only extreme, drastic and unacceptable state interventions have any hope of increasing social mobility." Not even the Communist Revolution in China in 1949 managed to have a lasting, pervasive effect on mobility, according to his study.
While one might expect that the glacial pace of change comes as a result of the old boys' network, Clark contends that, actually, we inherit our "social competences". This conclusion has led some to suggest that he is a genetic determinist. In his own writing, it must be said, he points out that he is not saying that helping the disadvantaged doesn't produce "absolute, commendable benefits", merely that such action fails to boost social status.
Still, though, it cuts both ways. As he says, the vast investments made by the super-rich in the education of their own kin eventually runs to nothing if their forefathers were not themselves wealthy.
It seems then, that playing the lineage lottery is a lot like playing the real lottery — winners are few and far between.
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