GCHQ's interception and storage of Yahoo webcam images condemned

Politicians and human rights groups have reacted angrily to revelations that Britain's spy agency intercepted and stored webcam images of millions of people not suspected of any wrongdoing with the aid of its US counterpart.

GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 reveal that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected images of Yahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases, regardless of whether individual users were an intelligence target or not. The Tory member of Parliament David Davis said: "We now know that millions of Yahoo account holders were filmed without their knowledge through their webcams, the images of which were subsequently stored by GCHQ and the NSA. This is, frankly, creepy." While MP Davis said it was perfectly proper for the intelligence agencies to use any and all means to target those suspected of terrorism, kidnapping and other serious crimes, but that the indiscriminate nature of the program was alarming. "It is entirely improper to extend such intrusive surveillance on a blanket scale to ordinary citizens," he said. The Liberal Democrat MP Julian Huppert said he was "absolutely shocked" at the revelation. "This seems like a very clear invasion of privacy, and I simply cannot see what the justification is," he said.