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NSA Collecting Millions of Faces From Web Images

Advocatus Diaboli (1627651) writes "The National Security Agency is harvesting huge numbers of images of people from communications that it intercepts through its global surveillance operations for use in sophisticated facial recognition programs, according to top-secret documents. 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."

26 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. Re:failure of scope... by olsmeister · · Score: 3, Funny

    Oddly enough, they often do.

  2. Re:Porn database! by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 3, Funny

    Ah, so that's why they're developing technology to recognize facials?

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  3. Why wouldn't they? Everybody knows that what... by EzInKy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ....you put online stays online. Forever!!

    --
    Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
  4. 1984+100=2084 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think George Orwell's classic 1984 needs an update... Any bids from the rest of you /. reading cellar dwelling SciFi nerds on what 2084 will be like? Will our kids and grandkids have micro drones hovering about them, recording their every utterance and their every move and reporting it to private corporations and/or christian conservative ayatollahs in Washington? Will people be walking around with masks to avoid the omnipresent surveillance society? Will masks even be legal? In the UK hey've already entertained the idea of banning hooded garments because they enable you to hide your face from CCTV.

    1. Re: 1984+100=2084 by rubycodez · · Score: 2

      funny this world will never be energy starved, we've fossil fuel for centuries.

      instead, we have cartels that would like us to stay with fossil fuels and so have governments and armies in their pockets

    2. Re:1984+100=2084 by Alain+Williams · · Score: 2

      They already did make wearing a mask a crime in Canada, punishable by 10 fucking years in jail.

      That is wearing a face mask in public, it does not cover private pictures.

      However: so that you can recognise me when we meet to plant our bomb at the embassy I have some pictures of me.

  5. Re:failure of scope... by seven+of+five · · Score: 3, Informative
  6. Reciprocal approach by BSAtHome · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why not start spying on the spies and publish every single move and action they make. Follow the spies by spying on them and publish the results. Not only celebrities are public goods, the spies who collect information should be must be as transparent as they live on and deal in public goods. What is good for the goose...

    1. Re:Reciprocal approach by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Informative

      Why not start spying on the spies and publish every single move and action they make. Follow the spies by spying on them and publish the results.

      Because they will put you in PMITA prison for interfering with law enforcement or obstructing an investigation or some other bullshit. You can't use their techniques against them, those techniques only work when you have the upper hand.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:Reciprocal approach by camperdave · · Score: 2

      Why not start spying on the spies and publish every single move and action they make.

      Okay. Here's a start.

      Oh, wait! I think I saw one of them blink.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
  7. The web is not the internet by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 3, Informative

    NSA Collecting Millions of Faces From Web Images

    The National Security Agency is harvesting huge numbers of images of people from communications that it intercepts

    Intercepted communications aren't "the web."

    emails, text messages, social media, videoconferences

    Apart from social media (largely), none of those things are "the web."

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  8. Hey, just like Facebook by dingen · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's funny how little difference there is between what Facebook's servers are doing and the NSA's. I wonder who has more info on you.

    --
    Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
  9. Re:And GCHQ was watching intimate skype videos ow- by camperdave · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you don't want someone else to see it, don't send it.

    Pray tell, how do I get someone to not post pictures of me?

    --
    When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
  10. Re:Color me by TapeCutter · · Score: 2

    But since GCHQ is a bought and paid for subsidary of the NSA.

    Learn some history mate.

    --
    And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
  11. Re:Porn database! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    Now that's what I call a sticky situation.

  12. Re:failure of scope... by rmdingler · · Score: 3, Funny

    Why? Did your Skylark throw a rod?

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

  13. Re:edit by currently_awake · · Score: 2, Informative

    Documents don't stop being top secret just because someone leaked them.

  14. Re:List of NSA employees by dotancohen · · Score: 2

    Great!

    1. Larry
    2.

    Now, someone please fill in number 2.

    2. Edward S.. s.. something. Scissorhands, maybe.

    --
    It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
  15. Re:edit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Sadly no. A terrifyingly stupid EO was signed that made it so that the wikileaks info was still classified. So that every single person with a clearance that ran across it on the web had to report it as a security violation. Yes, the national security adviser is that stupid.

  16. Re:Color me by Travis+Mansbridge · · Score: 5, Insightful

    GCHQ, NSA, and their equivalent agencies in Australia, Canada and NZ are all members of the "five eyes" spying group also known as ECHELON. Any time a law might restrict one from spying on citizens of their own country, they just have another member spy for them and hand over the info.

  17. Re:They would silly not to... by hey! · · Score: 2

    Honestly it is kind of what you would expect that kind of organisation to be doing..

    And that's supposed to be reassuring?

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  18. Folks do this to themselves by Ritz_Just_Ritz · · Score: 2

    The flip side of posting the most innocuous details of your life online for all to see. What did you THINK would happen?

  19. Re:Color me by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3

    Why do you think that contradicts his statement? Take a look at how much funding GCHQ receives from the NSA - it's a significant amount of their total budget and has led to some concerns that they act more in the interests of the US than UK.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  20. Re:Color me by Eunuchswear · · Score: 2

    History?

    http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/01/nsa-paid-gchq-spying-edward-snowden

    The real history is that the UK found it didn't have the resources to fund Bletchley Park without American help and by the end of the war most of the work was being done in the US:

    By December 1943, 120 machines were installed. For the remainder of the war, the US took care of breaking the majority of German Naval Enigma traffic and in particular the messages of the dreaded German U-Boats.

    http://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/bombe/

    --
    Watch this Heartland Institute video
  21. Who says the politicians are using the info? by bussdriver · · Score: 2

    Every politician who is a threat to the system, when they get the power to do something they suddenly flip. Why is that??

    Sure, in some cases when they hear the arguments they change their minds; but it seems that it is extremely easy to make any politician to flip sides and behave. It is naive to just assume that it is always a result of lying politicians and whatever other stereotypes you are more comfortable with than questioning whether the system is so corrupt that it has working control over politicians who threaten the soft spots.

    Hoover used the FBI to blackmail; the CIA has done it as well; political parties use it on their members to some degree as well. I'm confident we have psychological profiles of our leaders and not just all the foreign ones; I bet that info gets abused as well.

    Automation and technology isn't going to bring us new powers of "persuasion"; it's going to make old ones more effective and widespread. The NSA doesn't need to do this, they can just get facebook to give them access to their system and maybe throw a tax break their way to add some features... if they are not already doing this now.

  22. Re:failure of scope... by imatter · · Score: 2

    and that's why you signed up, right? oh wait that's why you signed up for the second tour.

    At least you are not an AC.