Music

UK spy agency name surveillance program after Radiohead's "Karma Police"

by Jesse Locke

Today in Orwellian irony, a British government security and intelligence agency has code-named a surveillance program “Karma Police” after the song from the infamously anti-authoritarian band Radiohead.

As Flavorwire reports (with notes from an extensive article on The Intercept), the program from Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) — the UK’s answer to the NSA — was launched between 2007 and 2008. Its goal was to create “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.”

Alongside sweeping searches of browsing history and digital communication (Skype calls, emails, texts), the program also analyzed the listening habits of 200,000 people worldwide. Allegedly, GCHQ were looking for sources that “spread radical Islamic ideas,” though they largely landed on unrelated targets such as France’s Hotmix Radio, “which plays pop, rock, funk and hip-hop music.” The existence of operation “Karma Police” was revealed in documents obtained by former NSA subcontractor Edward Snowden, whose whistleblowing provided the catalyst to widespread debate about the role of government surveillance. Radiohead singer Thom Yorke sounded off on the topic two years ago.

While the band’s members are yet to comment on this story, the irony of GCHQ staffers naming the program after Radiohead’s 1997 song continue to be pointed out with these lyrics in particular: “This is what you get / When you mess with us.” In a 2006 piece for The Independent, Yorke outlined his own meaning behind “Karma Police”: “It’s for someone who has to work for a large company. This is a song against bosses. Fuck the middle management!”