Let’s see how this goes over with the US Public.
According to the New York Times, the NSA who aren’t exactly in the good books with the American public are collecting millions of photos for a facial recognition database:
The spy agency’s reliance on facial recognition technology has grown significantly over the last four years as the agency has turned to new software to exploit the flood of images included in emails, text messages, social media, videoconferences and other communications, the N.S.A. documents reveal. Agency officials believe that technological advances could revolutionize the way that the N.S.A. finds intelligence targets around the world, the documents show. The agency’s ambitions for this highly sensitive ability and the scale of its effort have not previously been disclosed.
The agency intercepts “millions of images per day” — including about 55,000 “facial recognition quality images” — which translate into “tremendous untapped potential,” according to 2011 documents obtained from the former agency contractor Edward J. Snowden. While once focused on written and oral communications, the N.S.A. now considers facial images, fingerprints and other identifiers just as important to its mission of tracking suspected terrorists and other intelligence targets, the documents show.
According to one NSA Power Point presentation described by the newspaper included several images of the same man in different settings and appearances, along with data points such as travel status and known associates. Creepy isn’t it.
Now, here are the key question that need to be asked. The NSA is supposed to do foreign intelligence. So are any Americans caught up in this? How can Americans be assured of the lawfulness of this?
I cannot wait to see what the answer to that is.
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This entry was posted on June 1, 2014 at 9:30 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags NSA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Smile! You’re In The NSA’s Facial Recognition Database!
Let’s see how this goes over with the US Public.
According to the New York Times, the NSA who aren’t exactly in the good books with the American public are collecting millions of photos for a facial recognition database:
The spy agency’s reliance on facial recognition technology has grown significantly over the last four years as the agency has turned to new software to exploit the flood of images included in emails, text messages, social media, videoconferences and other communications, the N.S.A. documents reveal. Agency officials believe that technological advances could revolutionize the way that the N.S.A. finds intelligence targets around the world, the documents show. The agency’s ambitions for this highly sensitive ability and the scale of its effort have not previously been disclosed.
The agency intercepts “millions of images per day” — including about 55,000 “facial recognition quality images” — which translate into “tremendous untapped potential,” according to 2011 documents obtained from the former agency contractor Edward J. Snowden. While once focused on written and oral communications, the N.S.A. now considers facial images, fingerprints and other identifiers just as important to its mission of tracking suspected terrorists and other intelligence targets, the documents show.
According to one NSA Power Point presentation described by the newspaper included several images of the same man in different settings and appearances, along with data points such as travel status and known associates. Creepy isn’t it.
Now, here are the key question that need to be asked. The NSA is supposed to do foreign intelligence. So are any Americans caught up in this? How can Americans be assured of the lawfulness of this?
I cannot wait to see what the answer to that is.
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This entry was posted on June 1, 2014 at 9:30 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags NSA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.