What is "optic nerve"

n. (context neuroanatomy English) Either of a pair of nerves that carry visual information from the retina to the brain

n. the cranial nerve that serves the retina [syn: nervus opticus, second cranial nerve, optic tract]

Optic Nerve may refer to:

• Optic nerve, the anatomical structure
• Optic Nerve (GCHQ), a mass surveillance program run by the British intelligence agency GCHQ
• Optic Nerve (comic), the comic book series
• Optic Nerve (CD-ROM), a Red Hot Benefit Series tribute to David Wojnarowicz
• Optic Nerve Studios, a special make-up effects studio run by Glenn Hetrick

Optic Nerve is a comic book series by cartoonist Adrian Tomine. Originally self-published by Tomine in 1991 as a series of mini-comics (which have later been collected in a single volume, 32 Stories), the series has been published by Drawn and Quarterly since 1995.

Tomine's style and subject matter are restrained and realistic. Many are set in Northern California. Many of his stories for Optic Nerve feature Asian American characters, including "Hawaiian Getaway," "Six-Day Cold," "Layover," and "Shortcomings." Adrian Tomine is Asian American and lives in Brooklyn, New York. Many topics of his stories are at least partly autobiographical.

In the initial self-published issues, as well as the first eight Drawn & Quarterly issues (1995-2001), Optic Nerve was typically a collection of short stories. After an extended hiatus, Tomine resumed the comic in fall of 2004 and began his first multi-issue storyline, "Shortcomings," with #9.

Optic Nerve is an interactive CD-ROM showcasing the life and work of multimedia artist David Wojnarowicz. The disc includes film, interviews, music, performance, painting and writing from the artist. The release is the first entry in the Red Hot AIDS Benefit Series with a non-musical focus. Production was handled by the Red Hot Organization (RHO) and Funny Garbage, in conjunction with the New Museum of Contemporary Art exhibit entitled "Fever: The Art of David Wojnarowicz."

The disc also features an interactive version of ITSOFOMO — the series of public performances, featuring readings from Wojnarowicz's work, along with multiple video images which the artist either created or selected. One musical composition inadvertently attributed to David Wojarowicz is a John Fekner, Dennis Mann and Sasha Sumner 1986 composition from the EP Concrete People performed by the John Fekner City Squad.

Optic Nerve was originally available from New York City's New Museum bookstore. At that time, four dollars received from the sale of each disc was donated to the Hetrick Martin Institute — an entity which had Wojnarowicz as a patron. The HMI is a leading professional provider of social support and programming for all at-risk youth, particularly lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or questioning youth in the New York metropolitan area. The CD-ROM has since become available from the Red Hot Organization.

Optic Nerve is a mass surveillance program run by the British signals intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), with help from the US National Security Agency, that surreptitiously collects private webcam still images from users while they are using a Yahoo! webcam application. As an example of the scale, in one 6-month period, the program is reported to have collected images from 1.8 million Yahoo! user accounts globally. The program was first reported on in the media in February 2014, from documents leaked by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, but dates back to a prototype started in 2008, and was still active in at least 2012.

The leaked documents describe the users under surveillance as "unselected", meaning that data was collected indiscriminately in bulk from users regardless of whether they were an intelligence target or not. The vast majority of affected users would have been completely innocent of any crime or suspicion of a crime. Optic Nerve as described in the documents collected one still image every 5 minutes per user, attempting to comply with human rights legislation. The images were collected in a searchable database, and used for experiments in facial recognition, to monitor known targets, and to discover new targets. The choice of Yahoo! for surveillance was taken because "Yahoo webcam is known to be used by GCHQ targets". Unlike the US NSA, the UK GCHQ is not required by law to minimize the collection from domestic citizens, so UK citizens could have been targeted on the same level as non-UK citizens.

The story was broken by The Guardian in February 2014, and is based on leaked documents dating to between 2008 and 2012. Yahoo! expressed outrage at the programme, when approached by The Guardian, and subsequently called it "a whole new level of violation of our users' privacy." A GCHQ spokesperson stated "It is a long-standing policy that we do not comment on intelligence matters".

Though there were some limits to which photos security analysts were allowed to see, with bulk searches limited to metadata, security analysts were allowed to see "webcam images associated with similar Yahoo identifiers to your known target".