The Panoptican State

Texas Senator Gets Anonymous Phone Call

It seems that the Snowden revelations tell a far, far worse story than was imagined when they began.  Now it turns out the government spying agencies have been eavesdropping and watching private video exchanges between individuals.  No warrants.  No suspicion of spying.  Just snooping. Just testing out technical capabilities.  Imagine the local cop shop sneaking up to your house and peering the the windows at night just because they could.  We have a word for this--voyeurism.  But, far worse, is the realisation that the panoptican state is here, is now, and is operating.  All in the name of national security.  Does that make you feel any better? 

This, from The Guardian:

Britain's surveillance agency GCHQ, with aid from the US National Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal.  GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicitly state that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still 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 imagery – including substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications – from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts globally. [Emphasis, ours]

Snigger.  Snigger.  Snigger.  We are watching you!
  Just to remind ourselves--the US National Security Agency ("NSA") is "supposed" to spy only on non-US citizens.  Ah, but when you hoover up millions of internet images of individuals communicating via webcams, what's a bit of the collateral damage, huh?  It's all in a good cause.  The state's cause.

GCHQ does not have the technical means to make sure no images of UK or US citizens are collected and stored by the system, and there are no restrictions under UK law to prevent Americans' images being accessed by British analysts without an individual warrant.  The documents also chronicle GCHQ's sustained struggle to keep the large store of sexually explicit imagery collected by Optic Nerve away from the eyes of its staff, though there is little discussion about the privacy implications of storing this material in the first place. [Emphasis, ours.]

Here is where the spying system gets cute.  The US is prevented by law from spying on its own citizens.  But the vid-cam captures could not distinguish between US citizens and non-US citizens.  So the UK agency, which has no such legal restriction, did it--effectively spying on US citizens and its own without probable cause or warrants or any such protective legal hurdles.  Thus, it would appear, the Five Eyes collaboration has become a cute means of subverting and bypassing the law.  "Look", says the NSA, "It's not us spying on Alice Brown in Tuscaloosa.  It's those unconscionable Brits."  Snigger.  Snigger. Snigger.  Now, is that plausible deniability, or what?  Only in the world of Kafka and Orwell. 

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 authorisations 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. [Emphasis, ours.]

Yahoo is understandably apoplectic.  

In its statement to the Guardian, Yahoo strongly condemned the Optic Nerve program, and said it had no awareness of or involvement with the GCHQ collection.  "We were not aware of, nor would we condone, this reported activity," said a spokeswoman. "This report, if true, represents a whole new level of violation of our users' privacy that is completely unacceptable, and we strongly call on the world's governments to reform surveillance law consistent with the principles we outlined in December.

"We are committed to preserving our users' trust and security and continue our efforts to expand encryption across all of our services."  Yahoo has been one of the most outspoken technology companies objecting to the NSA's bulk surveillance. It filed a transparency lawsuit with the secret US surveillance court to disclose a 2007 case in which it was compelled to provide customer data to the surveillance agency, and it railed against the NSA's reported interception of information in transit between its data centers.

The intercepted webcams had so much nudity included that GCHQ staff were required to have protocols to "govern"  how much they looked at, to ensure compliance with restrictions against voyeurism and office porn. We are sure that's comforting to Alice Brown.

GCHQ did not make any specific attempts to prevent the collection or storage of explicit images, the documents suggest, but did eventually compromise by excluding images in which software had not detected any faces from search results – a bid to prevent many of the lewd shots being seen by analysts.

The system was not perfect at stopping those images reaching the eyes of GCHQ staff, though. An internal guide cautioned prospective Optic Nerve users that "there is no perfect ability to censor material which may be offensive. Users who may feel uncomfortable about such material are advised not to open them".  It further notes that "under GCHQ's offensive material policy, the dissemination of offensive material is a disciplinary offence".

Nice to know.  The Guardian piece contains the standard denials, which are now way past credibility.  But the response is classic bureaucratic legalese issued by a bunch of folk who, by now, should probably be considered traitors because they have collectively weakened and undermined and eviscerated their respective nations--while the politicians in the know have oh-so-quietly clapped and cheered. 

The NSA declined to respond to specific queries about its access to the Optic Nerve system, the presence of US citizens' data in such systems, or whether the NSA has similar bulk-collection programs.  However, NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines said the agency did not ask foreign partners such as GCHQ to collect intelligence the agency could not legally collect itself.  "As we've said before, the National Security Agency does not ask its foreign partners to undertake any intelligence activity that the US government would be legally prohibited from undertaking itself," she said.

"The NSA works with a number of partners in meeting its foreign intelligence mission goals, and those operations comply with US law and with the applicable laws under which those partners operate.  "A key part of the protections that apply to both US persons and citizens of other countries is the mandate that information be in support of a valid foreign intelligence requirement, and comply with US Attorney General-approved procedures to protect privacy rights. Those procedures govern the acquisition, use, and retention of information about US persons."

OK.  Now we feel better.  Let's imagine how this might run.  Let's imagine some time in the future, like now, a general was having a spat with a thin-skinned president.  The general, let's say his name was Betrayus, was suddenly exposed as having an extra-marital affair, and made to resign in disgrace.  Now, the NSA was "forbidden" to spy on Betrayus.  Moreover, it was forbidden from instructing or requesting any of its Five Eyes partners to spy on any of its citizens.  Imagine the myriad of ways informal messages could be conveyed that did not constitute an instruction or request to the Brits, to ensure the US spy officials got what they wanted.  "You know, My Limey Spy, we are a bit worried about General Betrayus."  Wink.  Wink.  British spy responds.  Nod.  Nod. "May I suggest that you keep an eye on your in-box, old boy."  Of course, just for the record, said conversation never happened.  No instructions or requests there.

But just think again about the final paragraph of that bureaucratic burble above:

"A key part of the protections that apply to both US persons and citizens of other countries is the mandate that information be in support of a valid foreign intelligence requirement, and comply with US Attorney General-approved procedures to protect privacy rights. Those procedures govern the acquisition, use, and retention of information about US persons." [Emphasis, ours.]

We are to understand that under a "key part" of the protections, the UK was able to hoover up millions of private Yahoo carried webcam images of US citizens and store those images, along with those of its own citizens, on its databases.  There were many compromising or lewd images included.  The potential for blackmail and extortion is off the scale.  A new firebrand senator with a Latino name, let's say from Texas, is getting under the skin of the current US administration.  Firebrand senator receives an anonymous message.  "We have photos.  Shut up.  Back off." 

It was under those protections that supposedly are so effective in preventing abuse that such images have been captured in the first place.  We say again--these people--in fact the whole swamp--should be considered respectively traitorous and treacherous.