The U.K.'s Extensive Photo Album Brought To Light

There has been another startling revelation against U.K.'s surveillance agency GCHQ. in corroboration with the United States N.S.A., GCHQ has gathered millions of images from Yahoo's video chat services.


The material regarding U.K.'s spying was leaked by none other than Edward Snowden, whom a year prior, revealed to the world the extensive monitoring the U.S. and U.K. did through its secret PRISM and other surveillance programs. The british news agency, The Guardian, has been continually releasing more and more of the classified material Snowden took since 2013.

Codenamed Optic Nerve, GCHQ collected stills of Yahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them in their systems. The program stretched from the years 2008 to 2010 and collected alarming amounts of data. In one six month period in 2008 more than 1.8 million Yahoo User Accounts had stills collected.

The Guardian reached out to Yahoo for comment and were told that they had no inclination ever of the secretive program. They had no idea this was happening? Hard to believe. In fact, the spokesperson for Yahoo was outraged at the fact that GCHQ was doing these invasive surveillance measures. GCHQ declined to comment on the matter, but did say everything they do is in accordance of strict internet legal frameworks.

This story adds evidence to both the U.S. and U.K.s' spy agencies ability to use individual computer cameras to peek at what people are up to. The F.B.I. has allegedly been able to covertly activate a computer's camera without triggering any light or notice to the user letting them know it is recording. Who knows what else they can remotely do.

I don't believe this will be the last revelation in the series of the Snowden leaks. If anything, I have become a bit desensitized to the scandals we hear about monthly. Obviously our government and others has been able to keep a close eye on the internet and its traffic since I was young. Generations are born into this cycle which makes it seem permanently apart of our culture now. Is there a way to stem the flow, or will we continually spiral into a police state? More than likely we probably already are that police state we so fear. It's depressing.