Not the NSA this time, but the GCHQ (UK)

A new article in the Guardian describes how the one of Britain's intelligence collects Yahoo webcam chats of individuals not suspected of any crime. The extent of the survelliance is pretty scary. You should read the whole article:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/gchq-nsa-webcam-images-internet-yahoo

Given the whole scary 1984esque mass surveilliance, there is one funny part:

Sexually explicit webcam material proved to be a particular problem for GCHQ, as one document delicately put it: "Unfortunately … it would appear that a surprising number of people use webcam conversations to show intimate parts of their body to the other person. Also, the fact that the Yahoo software allows more than one person to view a webcam stream without necessarily sending a reciprocal stream means that it appears sometimes to be used for broadcasting pornography."

The document estimates that between 3% and 11% of the Yahoo webcam imagery harvested by GCHQ contains "undesirable nudity". Discussing efforts to make the interface "safer to use", it noted that current "naïve" pornography detectors assessed the amount of flesh in any given shot, and so attracted lots of false positives by incorrectly tagging shots of people's faces as pornography.

This is so hilarious and sad at the same time.

Sasha Grey was on top of this (figuratively speaking, of course) last year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtJ29UoedkM

I am eagerly waiting for the day when such documents get leaked from the NSA.

Bitter, bitter humour aside, you know what the supreme irony is? How with all the surveillance, how with all the cameras in London (which has been dubbed because of that the "most watched city in the world"), they are so supremely incompetent that they couldn't  stop one madman from decapitating a police officer in broad daylight.

I am sure the British citizens are sleeping soundly because the CGHQ watching them having webcam sex is for their protection.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pjwPqS20fc&hd=1

10/17/08 - On The Rachel Maddow Show

did not get a better source sorry