Stefan Mileschin

Human rights group Privacy International has filed a legal complaint against GCHQ.

The group says that the British spooks installed malware on millions of devices without their owners' permission.

The complaint, filed Tuesday by Privacy International, accused the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) of surveillance techniques that were "incompatible with democratic principles and human rights standards."

The privacy watchdog was miffed that GCHQ installed hacking programs such as Nosey Smurf, Tracker Smurf, and Foggybottom on computers, mobile phones, and webcams to secretly record users' doings.

"In allowing GCHQ to extract a huge amount of information (current and historical), much of which an individual may never have chosen to share with anybody, and to turn a user's own devices against him by coopting them as instruments of video and audio surveillance, it is at least as intrusive as searching a person's house and installing bugs so as to enable continued monitoring," the complaint states.

http://news.techeye.net/business/pri...british-spooks