Snowden acknowledged that lots of NSA and GCHQ activity does indeed hoover up dick pics . But he offered some slight reassurance. “Well, the good news is, there’s no program named the Dick Pic Program.”

The strange thing is, there’s something that comes pretty close: the UK intelligence agency GCHQ has collected so many dick pics they’ve become something of a problem for the organisation.

The problem arose, as it were, through a capability codenamed Optic Nerve, which allowed the agency to identify and hoover up any Yahoo webcam imagery that crossed its various bulk interception points across the internet. Rather than just collect the information for specific surveillance targets, the system hovered up virtually everything it saw. In what must surely rank as the most predictable complication in history – though it still apparently took the agency by surprise – it turned out a substantial quantity (up to 11%) of what it was intercepting were pornographic pictures. GCHQ did attempt to add some automated filters to protect its staff from seeing too much adult content, but noted there was “no perfect ability” to do this. Reassuringly (or disturbingly, depending on your point of view), policy documents reminded GCHQ staff that “dissemination of offensive material is a disciplinary offence”.

Such is the reality of modern internet surveillance: the UK’s intelligence agency has, quite literally, taken and stored material from a camera in your bedroom. The UK government has collected what must be one of the world’s largest collection of dick pics (and, for that matter, tit pics), stored them, and on a regular basis viewed – even if unwillingly – quite a lot of them.

And like any disreputable teenager, or modern five-eyes government bound by intelligence-sharing treaties, it will have shared quite a few of those pics with its friends. UK intelligence is typically and automatically shared with the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Thanks to the actions of Edward Snowden in leaking documents, of reporters spending months studying them, and editors brave enough to publish the results of that work, we now know about this.

It is currently perfectly possible, and perfectly legal, that a government employee has seen you naked. The question is, are you bothered? Because when we talk about surveillance reform, this is what we’re talking about.

MekongMouse wrote:It isn't like this story is that hard to believe. In any case, he's shown himself to be more truthful than the CIA and all his statements can be verified by independent journalists with access to his documents. I agree he wants to stay relevant though. He's in a tenuous situation in hostile territory. When he ceases to be useful to Russia, he'll be out of options.

OrangeDragon wrote:They call me the Catinator.