London: Britain's signals intelligence division is stealing screenshots from hundreds of thousands of innocent Yahoo users' webcam videos, according to the Guardian newspaper, which also reported that the years-long operation has swept up a huge haul of intimate photographs.
The newspaper said GCHQ has been scooping up the sensitive images by intercepting video chats such as the kind offered by Yahoo Messenger, an effort codenamed OPTIC NERVE. It's not clear how many Yahoo users were spied on in this way.
The Guardian said that in one six-month period in 2008, GCHQ intercepted the video communications of 1.8 million users, but it's possible that the program, which the Guardian says was still active in 2012, has either grown or shrunk in scope since then.
If the program expanded, millions more could have had their video communications intercepted.
Yahoo Messenger had 75 million users worldwide in late 2011, according to an estimate by digital analytics company comScore, although numbers have fallen steadily since then.
The Guardian said the documents were provided by former US intelligence worker Edward Snowden, who remains in Russia after having sought temporary asylum there.
If confirmed, the newspaper's report would represent "a whole new level of violation of our users' privacy," Yahoo said in a written statement.
The Sunnyvale, California-based company said it was unaware of such snooping and would never condone it, calling on governments across the world to reform their surveillance practices.
