Karma Police (usually capitalised as KARMA POLICE) is the

code name A code name, call sign or cryptonym is a code word or name used, sometimes clandestinely, to refer to another name, word, project, or person. Code names are often used for military purposes, or in espionage. They may also be used in industrial c ...

for an Internet

mass surveillance Mass surveillance is the intricate surveillance of an entire or a substantial fraction of a population in order to monitor that group of citizens. The surveillance is often carried out by local and federal governments or governmental organizati ...

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 Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American and naturalized Russian former computer intelligence consultant who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013, when he was an employee and su ...

revealed that GCHQ had carried out the KARMA POLICE operation since about 2008. 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. 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." Karma Police was apparently named after the

Radiohead Radiohead are an English rock band formed in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke (vocals, guitar, piano, keyboards); brothers Jonny Greenwood (lead guitar, keyboards, other instruments) and Colin Greenwood (bass) ...

song " Karma Police", which includes the lyric "This is what you’ll get when you mess with us".

References

{{Reflist Privacy of telecommunications Secret government programs Mass surveillance Surveillance scandals War on terror GCHQ operations Internet in the United Kingdom Intelligence agency programmes revealed by Edward Snowden

See also

References