GCHQ, a British surveillance agency, has intercepted millions of still images coming from webcams of internet users. GCHQ receives aid from the National Security Agency of the United Sates. The said webcam images were reported to be from internet users who were not in the "watch list" of doing any offensive or criminal acts. According to reports, secret documents had been revealed.

There were tons of dating files, codenamed Optic Nerve, which was caught between 2008 and 2010. These were actually still images collected from chats using Yahoo webcam. The images were then saved to the agency databases. However, the images saved came from users regardless if they were or were not an intelligence target.

The images taken were from around 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts worldwide in 2008. The collected data even included sexually explicit communications, said TheGuardian report.

Yahoo went furious to the interception of the webcam images. The company denied that they had any idea regarding the collection of surveillance data by GCHQ. Yahoo also stressed out that it was a new level of violation with the privacy agreement between the company and its users.