Karma Police (surveillance programme)
Karma Police (usually capitalised as KARMA POLICE) is the code name for an Internet mass surveillance and data collection programme operated by the United Kingdom's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).
In 2015, documents obtained by The Intercept from U.S. National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that GCHQ had carried out the KARMA POLICE operation since about 2008.[1] The KARMA POLICE operation swept up the IP address of Internet users visiting websites. The program was established with no public scrutiny or oversight. KARMA POLICE is a powerful spying tool in conjunction with other GCHQ programs, because IP addresses could be cross-referenced with other data.[1] The goal of the program, according to the documents, was "either (a) a web browsing profile for every visible user on the internet, or (b) a user profile for every visible website on the internet."[1]
Karma Police was apparently named after the Radiohead song "Karma Police", which includes the lyric "This is what you’ll get when you mess with us".[1][2]
See also[edit]
- Tempora – another programme revealed by Snowden
- Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group – another GCHQ programme
- Website visitor tracking
- Web browsing history
- Web analytics
- Web mining
- Internet privacy
- Mass surveillance in the United Kingdom
References[edit]
- ^ a b c d Ryan Gallager (25 September 2015). "Profiled: From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users' Online Identities". The Intercept. Archived from the original on 10 September 2021. Retrieved 12 June 2017.
- ^ David Davis (6 November 2015). "UK government's missed chance to fix broken surveillance system". Financial Times. Archived from the original on 30 April 2017. Retrieved 12 June 2017.