Britain's GCHQ; Chatroom Images are Collected and Stored

Hi everyone, on the topic of serious breaches of personal privacy...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/gchq-nsa-webcam-images-internet-yahoo

Summary: 

Britain has a surveillance agency named GCHQ. A program used by this agency, called Optic Nerve, has been collecting images and 'metadata' through various internet sources, including Yahoo webcam chats. It appears that GCHQ, however, cannot control which are initially collected and stored by this system due to the massive influx of data. The collection is not unlimited; in respect to Yahoo chatrooms, one image per chatroom every 5 minutes is collected based on random selection. This is because GCHQ does not have databases big enough to store each of these video chats in their entirety, and also to protect user privacy (though the latter does not seem to have been fulfilled very effectively, since a very large number of explicit and lewd images have been captured and stored on GCHQ databases). 

Note that not only are these private images available to the agency, they were actually saved to the agency’s databases, regardless of whether the images in question had any relevance to initial ‘intelligence targets’. This includes sexually explicit communications and images from general users. Yahoo itself has denied any prior knowledge of the surveillance. 

Main issues: 

Collecting the images of an extremely high number of individuals without their awareness, and then subsequently storing those images indefinitely, warrants some serious concern about privacy interests online. This isn’t data that’s voluntarily been made publicly available, and is distinct from consenting to a ‘Terms of Agreement’ policy on a social media site before posting a profile that a user is aware will remain available until its removal. From a user perspective,  data such as a chatroom video feed is likely to be thought of as only momentarily available (if at all), because the kinds of images provided are fleeting rather than lasting, and are not saved by the host website. In reality, the GCHQ seems to have virtually unlimited access because of the way their collection technology works; though they have taken some steps to reduce the collection of such images, the randomized influx information is so massive that a great deal of what might be compromising personal information gets collected in the process. 

Thoughts to consider: 

Keep in mind that there are apparently no laws requiring the GCHQ agency to remove, or minimize, the information it collects from its databases even if the information is not relevant to intelligence targets. This means that the lewd images of civilians who believe themselves to be in a private (though virtual) context are legally able to be collected and stored, and there is no remedy available to parties who oppose these actions. Are users aware of the extent to which their images, even in a 'private' online context, are unprotected? Shouldn't they be made aware?
In this case, national security (surveillance for the purpose of identifying and monitoring intelligence targets) is presumably being weighed against national privacy interests. But if civilian safety is the ultimate justification to disregarding civilian privacy interests, it is disturbing that the GCHQ apparently cannot prevent the collection of this lewd civilian data, and yet has no legal obligation to remove or delete it. To further illustrate, this agency has the capability of sorting through these images using facial recognition software, so that while criminals and other intelligence targets could be identified through this data, so could unrelated, innocent and unsuspecting individuals. I am not arguing that there is some sort of larger conspiratorial agenda at play that is meant to monitor users' every move. However, the fact remains that there is a database which has captured and saved lewd images of  individuals, and these images are stored in a database which can be cross-referenced in its entirety with any other photo provided, because of the software's facial recognition capabilities. The potential ramifications in the case of a security breach or hacking of the database could be monumental for anyone whose images have been stored.

Overall, a large amount of personal data that is not restricted to intelligence targets and criminal targets of the GCHQ is still being collected and stored. The law as it currently stands has yet to provide any limitations on this morally-treacherous infringement upon personal lives. According to this technology, not only are our online personas available to be held against us in the future, so too are 'private' internet interactions.