The NSA is harvesting millions of faces from photos shared online - by Lindsay Abrams

The US National Security Agency is collecting “millions of images per day” from photos shared online for use in its advanced facial recognition programs, a new report from the documents obtained by Edward Snowden reveals. The New York Times reports that the agency culls faces from “emails, text messages, social media, videoconferences and other communications,” gaining “tremendous untapped potential” to track intelligence targets throughout the world. 

“It’s not just the traditional communications we’re after: It’s taking a full-arsenal approach that digitally exploits the clues a target leaves behind in their regular activities on the net to compile biographic and biometric information” that can help “implement precision targeting,” noted one 2010 document, according to the Times.

The extent to which Americans are being tracked in this manner is unclear: an NSA spokeswoman said that the agency does not have access to databases of driver’s licenses or passport photos, but did not say whether it could access photos of foreign visa applicants. She also declined to comment on whether the agency collects Americans’ faces through Facebook and other social media channels. But “because the agency considers images a form of communications content,” she told the Times, “the N.S.A. would be required to get court approval for imagery of Americans collected through its surveillance programs, just as it must to read their emails or eavesdrop on their phone conversations.”

More than anything else, however, the revelations are a reminder of our increased vulnerability to being tracked online by any number of interested parties.
Read more: Revealed: The NSA is harvesting millions of faces from photos shared online - Salon.com