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The UK government has almost definitely recorded your internet usage through a programme called 'Karma Police'

Sep 25, 2015, 21:01 IST

Cheap Trick
Cheap Trick

The UK government's spy arm, GCHQ has spied on "every visible user on Internet" from 2007 to the present day, according to The Intercept.

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Using a programme called KARMA POLICE (possibly named after the Radiohead song), the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) worked to track the browsing habits of the entire internet, creating profiles of suspicious activity such as visiting Islamist websites.

The programme started off by tracking those who visited online radio stations and has since expanded to include other aspects of the web. Each variant was given a separate - and very strange - code-name. "SOCIAL ANTHROPOID" is what the agency uses to analyse text based conversation, such as email; "MEMORY HOLE" monitors search engine terms and links them to IP addresses; "MARBLED GECKO" tracks Google Maps and Earth; and "INFINITE MONKEYS" checks online forums and bulletins.

According to the report, GCHQ has captured over 1.1 trillion "events" - web browsing sessions - in its database, titled "Black Hole." Volume grew from 30 billion "events" per day in 2010 to 50 billion in 2012, according to the documents.

KARMA POLICE uses cookies from other websites to track the public around the web, a process one analyst described as "presence events." When they spot the same cookie in two locations, the analysts know it's the same person. From here, the agency can build up a profile of who visits what. GCHQ collected cookies from Facebook, Amazon, YouTube, Microsoft Live, Reddit, and Wordpress as well as news organisations, such as Reuters, CNN and the BBC.

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The data that is collected can help GCHQ, along with its equivalents in other countries, to target highly specific individuals. According to The Intercept, the technology was used to find engineers within a Belgian mobile network who could then be used to transfer malware into the company's system - all without their knowledge.

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