Report Says: UK Spy Agency Collected Webcam Images From Yahoo Users With The Help Of NSA

In another dramatic exposure about the digital Intelligence from NSA and US Security agency, Reports says that British surveillance agency GCHQ had started a program in 2008 and 2012, which collected photos from Yahoo Chat messenger user’s webcams. The Project was intended to collect a huge amount of Webcam photos, including Sex Content from more than 1.8 million Yahoo users in period of 6 month across the world. The project was called “Optic Nerve” project was detailed into the GCHQ documents which is exposed by NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Reports also claimed that the NSA got profit from the project, and research helped them to identify the activity of Users on Yahoo Messenger. Users didn’t even know that they were targeted by US Government, targeted not for any particular reason.

Guardianpublished a full report “Programs like Optic Nerve, which collect information in bulk from largely anonymous user IDs, are unable to filter out information from UK or US citizens. Unlike the NSA, GCHQ is not required by UK law to "minimize", or remove, domestic citizens' information from its databases. However, additional legal authorizations are required before analysts can search for the data of individuals likely to be in the British Isles at the time of the search. There are no such legal safeguards for searches on people believed to be in the US or the other allied "Five Eyes" nations – Australia, New Zealand and Canada. GCHQ insists all of its activities are necessary, proportionate, and in accordance with UK law.”

As for Yahoo, they powerfully denies any previous information about the existence of the program, Reports are coming out every day but no one taking any precautions to violation of its customers privacy. Yahoo and some other tech companies have asked for more transparency from government surveillance about what data they don’t want on the servers.