HAAHAHAHAAAAAa! OMG!!! Hahahaaaa!!!
Spit my coffee all over the place! Heehehe!!

@1 yes! I second that idea!

I've said it all along. The NSA and other government agencies are doing the same thing everyone else is doing on the internet -- playing games and watching porn.

A British comedy remake of the Lives of Others is just what Brittany needs.

My webcam is safe, because it has a strip of gaffer tape over it. Not that I'm paranoid or anything.

This is hilarious, of course, and it just points up what I've been saying all along: the reason mass data collection is stupid isn't because ZOMG BILDERBERG NEW WORLD ORDER but because it's just bullshit. The only people who are ever going to use the data are creeps stalking their ex-girlfriends or random women they don't even know (as has already happened, both). Just like the only use for those backscatter machines at the airport wasn't detecting weapons (they couldn't) but providing fodder for mouthbreathing TSA dorks to laugh at.

@6: It's not paranoia. Agents of United States' and other nations' governments are actually trying to collect everything they can about you and everyone else.

If everyone in the us added "Fuck You NSA to their email signature, and everyone taped a picture of a giant hairy asshole over their webcam. It wouldn't solve anything but damn that would be awesome.
The NSA would have the worlds largest collection of hairy asshole pics.

P.s. Fuck You NSA and fuck you James Clapper.

"...collected still images of Yahoo webcam chats in bulk..."

Yeah, I'm sure they just took one snap off each available webcam every week or so... last I heard, all formats of movin' pitchers use a pile of still images. That seems painfully contrived to try to fool people into thinking their whole grunting, grimacing, thirty-second to three-hour sessions weren't recorded on video.

@8, we've gotta figure out the optics. However Google Glass parks a display half-an-inch from your cornea and makes it legible, that's what needs doing to make that ocean of starfish hi-def.

I get your point here Paul, but let's not forget that women are just as capable of transmitting images of clam slapping as men are of dick pics, just saying.

Clam slapping?

Like @6, I have placed black tape over the web cam in my laptop. I don't use it (and if I did I could always take the tape off). Don't forget the computer viruses that allow nefarious people to turn your web cam on without alerting you. Or the school system that gave out laptops to their students and then spied on them at home. The NSA isn't the only threat (though they are the ones that can arrest you and send to to foreign prisons to be tortured).

My guess is they can turn on your cell phone remotely listen to even when you aren't on a phone call.

Instead of facial recognition software maybe they need it to recognize other... umm... parts