Yahoo responded “furiously” when informed of the Optic Nerve program, the Guardian reported, denying knowledge of the program and calling it “a whole new level of violation of our users’ privacy that is completely unacceptable.”
U.S. and British spy agencies intercepted and stored images from the webcams of millions of likely innocent Yahoo users, including “large quantities” of sexually explicit images, the Guardian reported Thursday — a revelation the web giant described as “a whole new level of violation.”
A secret program called Optic Nerve appears intended to collate a digital mugbook of sorts, snapping screenshots every 5 minutes or so from user feeds. But the program targeted indiscriminately, regardless of whether the webcam owner was an intelligence target or not.
More than 1.8 million user accounts from around the world were accessed in one six-month period alone.
Image data from the Yahoo accounts was hoovered up between 2008 and 2012 under the program, which was run by U.K. surveillance agency GCHQ with assistance from the National Security Agency (NSA). The report is based on secret documents taken by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, which have led to international outrage over the stunning extent of oversight of Internet activities.
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