British surveillance agency, GCHQ, loves to see people in the nude. Seriously they do; recently it was reported that the agency collected nude images of people over Yahoo chat via webcam with a program called Optical Nerve. If that wasn’t enough, leaked documents show the GCHQ was looking into doing the same to those who use the Kinect motion camera on the Xbox 360.

“While the documents do not detail efforts as widescale as those against Yahoo users,” The Guardian reports, “one presentation discusses with interest the potential and capabilities of the Xbox 360?s Kinect camera, saying it generated “fairly normal webcam traffic” and was being evaluated as part of a wider program.”

Wanting to see gamers in the nude is a fool’e errand I must say. The only thing the GCHQ would achieve here is to see people flaunting themselves around in awkward and disturbing ways in the name of video games, or maybe just a blank feed. Microsoft might have sold 25 million units of the original Kinect, but that doesn’t mean it is used by all.

Obviously, Microsoft was not too happy about the GCHQ’s plan, as this is one of the main reasons why the Xbox One is struggling against the PlayStation 4, and things are about to get tougher now that the fears of gamers were proven as legitimate.

“Microsoft has never heard of this program,” according to a spokesperson to Eurogamer.

“However, we’re concerned about any reports of governments surreptitiously collecting private customer data. That’s why in December we initiated a broad effort to expand encryption across our services and are advocating for legal reforms.”

We can see Microsoft is trying its best to play this off, but it won’t end. Maybe the only option right now to save the Xbox One is to remove Kinect from the bundle.

[via The Gaurdian]