Yahoo webcam images from millions of users intercepted by GCHQ

reply to post by generik


I use cigarette foil also. It is much more sturdy than foil but solid enough to block anything

therealguyfawkes

3u40r15m

It doesn't bother me at all...

That's certainly your choice.

And it's our choice to keep giving a damn. Don't worry, we'll keep fighting to preserve your God-given freedoms... even if you can't be bothered.

Not sure what your fighting with besides a couple youtube rants and "exposing" a few obvious things on internet forums.... Hackers and Internet Militia groups do far worse damage than peeking at a few webcams. You are concerned about the wrong people. Stop listening to rumors

reply to post by 3u40r15m


Don't they train you guys to be less obvious? Gonna get fired if you're a shill.

As to the topic at hand, glad I never use Yahoo for anything at all, even more glad I've managed to steer clear of webcams and never have my mic plugged in unless using it. Intrusion whether perpetrated by the government, some company, or some perverted hacker, is a crime regardless. I don't care if it is the absolute most innocuous reason, it is just wrong and illegal.

I've been trying to tell people for years that this is going on but with a very few exceptions, they all just laugh it off and think I'm hopelessly paranoid. It's really disturbing when you think about just how much technology has evolved to give them these capabilities and we as a society are soo addicted to our little gadgets that have become little more than mobile surveillance tools. I have a new(ish) iMac that has a built in camera at the top of the screen, no indicator light to let you know that it's on or not that has had hockey tape on it since I brought it home. No mute or control over the mic either so I've got a headset plugged into the mic spot constantly which does have a mute switch on it. My phone is very un-smart and I refuse to upgrade to a fancier one.

I find it a little amusing (and pretty sad actually) that people get all bent out of shape when they hear about all the data collection going on by the NSA and yet they insist on posting every little detail of their lives on social media and taking their iPhones, tablets or other smart tech everywhere they are and go into withdrawals if they're separated from their gadgets for more than 2 minutes. Talk about making it easy for the listeners and data trackers, they don't even have to try anymore with all this juicy personal data literally at their fingertips!

reply to post by CellDamage420


I'm just giving my opinion... People are too caught up worrying about who is spying on them to enjoy their ordinary day to day lives. My point is, even if you are being watched, what is the worst that can happen?

3u40r15m
reply to post by CellDamage420

 

I'm just giving my opinion... People are too caught up worrying about who is spying on them to enjoy their ordinary day to day lives. My point is, even if you are being watched, what is the worst that can happen?

Seen the video about police charging innocent guy without any reason. Wonder what what happen to that police. What worst could happen to him anyway ? The same could happen to us, but its within our private house.
Lets link the camera to toilet and lets see if we can sue them for privacy breaching.

This is not implying people do bad stuff all the time, but having you watched make you pretty uneasy. How about putting up your webcam 24hr for us to see, deal ?

reply to post by 3u40r15m


Innocent people can go to prison for years is what can happen.

The reality of this entire thing is that its based on human beings
who can and do make mistakes, human beings who are embarrassed
by their mistakes and would rather let someone go to prison instead
of speaking up and telling the truth.

These same human beings want to be trusted not only to see and
hear anything they want to but they want it done in secrecy where
mistakes will never come to light, its a recipe for disaster, it really
is.

As we see in many agencies who are suppose to police themselves,
if secrecy is allowed to reign supreme then truth and lies become
impossible to separate and we are left with situations like those
police who hit a mans car and then tried to arrest him for hitting
their car. Oh the irony that a citizens surveillance camera caught
this on tape because otherwise i doubt the NSA would be rushing
to his rescue.....

Until our governmental agencies prove by allowing transparency in
self policing that they are willing to show some responsibility for
improper actions, i cannot ever trust that this will be a good thing.
As it is they are out of control.

reply to post by therealguyfawkes





How many stories does it take.......10........100......1,000........10,000.



With every new story we lose more and more. They are slowly using the media and I believe fake whistle blowers to desensitize us to this new world order. Think about it why are they not even upset about all these secrets being released........Hmmm.




How many stories have we all seen in the last year? How many of those stories caused change for the better? Slippery slope people.

reply to post by therealguyfawkes


See, I deal with this the old fashioned way. Rather than taping up my cameras, I tend to spend a few minutes here and there, just giving the camera the finger, in the hopes that some government man drone gets me flipping the bird every once in a while. Other than that, they can risk ocular degeneration by watching my mug if they REALLY want. Their loss as far as I am concerned lol!

We have drones in the sky put up by the army and the MoD, we have webcam monitoring *I can't let you do that Dave* on our computers, and we have more security cams per capita than is strictly logical. There is no place I can go in my locality, where I cannot be seen by someone's security gear, and if anyone can see me, then the government can see me. I hate the fact, but since the government seem to have no particular desire to see civil liberties upheld, and since there seem to be no groups prepared to DO anything about these issues, I have little recourse to stop these abuses of power on the part of GCHQ.

Oh, there are plenty of groups which send letters, and get petitions signed, and so on and so forth, but these organisations have about as much by way of teeth as your average fifteen year meth addict. No one seems to be interested in actively preventing these methods, so until an organisation comes along which has a pro-active attitude to this sort of thing, I guess I'm stuck.

I think it is horrific though, really, that this country should become the totalitarian surveillance state that it has morphed into. I cannot help but think that my grandfathers would really dislike this new direction that we are heading in, and all these revelations about how our intelligence industry works.

I saw a sign a few years ago that had a picture of a surveillance camera and the caption "1984 Was NOT Supposed to be an Instructional Manual!!"
If you haven't read it lately it's a really good one to.. though a little disturbing when you look at the similarities and just how close our society has come to what the book portrayed.

So, GCHQ in Cheltnham spent two years and probably millions of pounds infiltrating computers to steal more than 1,8.000.000 photos and videos of little Johnny choking his chicken and so forth...in the name of keeping Britain safe i've no doubt.

Should'nt these people be engaged in serving the security of the nation, i.e. catching spies, terrorists etc. and not downloading photos of little Britanny showing her tit's to her boyfriend.

They could always recuperate some of the money lost by selling the more juicier photos to "Hustler" magazine.

I'd love to see downing street forced into making a " state of the nation " speech, at least once a year. It would probably go something like. -

"Good day ladies and gentlemen, England is buggered beyond all recognicion. It wont be getting any better, The last boat leaves at 7pm, and i shall be on it. Thank you listening."

I have a separate PC for my webcam, only switched on when I contact people, the cam is blocked at all other times by a short cardboard tube with a slot in the back to go over the wire, better than sticky tape, easier to remove and replace.
Eventually I will have three PC's, one for webcam, one for emails, one for everything else.
Plus an external hard drive for each PC, which is used when the internet is switched off, and the PC has been virus checked.
Yes, I am paranoid, I don't have a cell phone, ipud, blackcurrent, lapbottom, zbox, bookface account, or twatter, worst of all, I don't watch football!!!!!

Are YOU restricted by your own country's laws for stuff you want to do to your citizens anyway?

NO PROBLEM!

Just ask your buddy's over seas (UK or USA depending on your location) to do it for you.

100% legal

100% safe

100% naughty!

*end of advertisement*

After reading the report I immediately wondered how many politicians, were compromised due to this data theft. This is an extraordinary blackmail tool. Imagine getting damaging images of a politician making a key vote on a bill or law and threatening him with the release of those images if he does not vote a certain way. The possibility to misuse these images also extends to military personnel, business executives….ect. Whoever posses and controls these images has amazing power and we all know that power corrupts. I can’t see an administration having this power and not using it to their advantage.
I’m glad I stopped using my webcam years ago.
If this happened overseas you can be sure it happened here first.

I think the day is soon coming when people are going to realize their cell phones and computers are the keys to their gilded cages and they are going to trash them in mass. Too bad the back up system is already in operation and it is far too late.

Smile at every street corner, and all your electric devices and am smart meters are probably sending their reports every second to the grand servers in the clouds.

Too bad the "Look for the silver lining takes on a whole new meaning."

i use a little folded business card to cover my government spyhole

heh.. it's kind of like a non-stop nuclear fallout of # everywhere these days..
even the customary ad on the screen here is some photoshopped hulk-looking guy, i guess if i'm not meant to be an androgynous metrosexual drone i'm meant to be this extreme hulk thing? O_o even the 'girl' used in the ats store picture (with the black shirt, black soul, black everything) looks like the opposite of what we traditionally knew it to be

....i wonder if we'll all be housed in the same facility one day?

So once again, the government lied about what GCHQ and their NSA buddies were up to!
The whole "Metadata" excuse was just another big lie, used to pull the wool over the eyes of the gullible public. After all, Metadata is meaningless without content or context.

Sometime soon I hope these establishments are razed to the ground and a few heads roll. Oh, and tell the NSA to shut up shop at Menwith Hill and bugger off!

In the meantime, given that all this surveillance is just tickity-boo with the government, maybe the citizens should just set up some groups to work shifts, around the clock, to follow, watch and record every aspect of the lives of those in the government and their families. After all, if they are doing nothing wrong, then they have nothing to fear!

I just looked up GCHQ because, well, I'm ignorant of the abreviation. GCHQ stands for Government Communications Head Quarters. It is an entity of the British Government. Yes they likely share information with the NSA and InterPol but, they are not based in the US from what I read.

This is the EXACT reason I unplugged my cam YEARS AGO.

Second verse same as the first verse with the third verse saying,

YES SIRRIE.

Once upon a time, there was an exhibit at the museum of science and industry in Chicago. The exhibit itself was a computer interface where you could look through a camera in a satellite pointed at earth. What it would show was a woman getting our of her car in the museum's parking lot and entering the building. Then it would zoom in so close that you could see that there was a bee in her hair. Then it would zoom in so close that you could see the hair follicles coming out of the skin . Now I'm not talking about the hair follicles coming out of her skin, I'm talking about the hair follicles coming out of the bees skin. When the government has cameras in satellites that can zoom in so close that they can see the hair follicles coming out of a bees skin, the camera in someone's phone is a far less important camera to worry about, they don't need the camera in your phone to observe you, they have a much more powerful camera to observe you with floating in orbit. My point is, is that if your not doing anything wrong then you don't have to care weather they are observing you or not. Now I can appreciate the people who are going to come along and scream about the right to privacy and all of that, but the fact remains that if your not doing anything wrong or illegal then they can't come along and say you are because then they would have to prove it, and if they don't have any proof then, screw them. You are worried about things that are for the most part insignificant in the great scheme of life, or you are more concerned about your ability to commit criminal behavior. Now I'm also aware that there are people here on ATS who are going to attempt to start an argument with me because they think the right to privacy is important, blah blah blah, I am going to ignore your rebuttal and not even respond to you, my point is not to start an argument or a dialogue, my point is to state a fact that they do in fact have cameras that can observe anything we do and there is nothing, at this point in time, that any one of us can do about it. So until the people rise up and put the government out of business this is going to continue to happen. The best we can hope for is a giant coronal mass ejection to get shot out of the sun and wipe out every electronic device on the planet ,VIA electromagnetic pulse, that is the only thing that is going to create a massive reset on society that you are hoping for. Now as far as I'm concerned that would be just fine with me,because I'm an electronics technician and that would mean that there is plenty of work out there for me restoring societies electronic devices.