N.S.A. Collecting Millions of Faces From Web Images

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.

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.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/01/us/nsa-collecting-millions-of-faces-from-web-images.html

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FACEBOOK PHOTO:

What Me Worry?

Naw

‘Para Noid’

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Gingrich®’s New Facebook Timeline Is Missing Some Things

Via: Artlantic Wire

Techno-futurist Newt® Gingrich® has adopted Facebook’s new Timeline feature with a detailed accounting of his life story, there are some things from Gingrich®’s past that do not make the cut, among them his first two marriages.

Gingrich®’s timeline stretches all the way back to his birth, then documents his high school education, and then, in 1963, “Kathy Gingrich® Lubbers was Born.” From whose womb his daughter sprang, Newt® does not say.

~

Gingrich® has done some editing.

He notes leaving the House of Representatives in 1999, and getting married in 2000, but not getting censored for ethics violations or divorcing his second wife in between.

Naturally, he doesn’t mention working as a historian for Freddie Mac 🙂 in the 2000s either.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/02/gingrichs-new-facebook-timeline-missing-some-things/48648/

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How I feel logging into the new Facebook

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June 14, 2011

News hit the other day that Facebook may have LOST about SIX MILLION users in the U.S. in ONE MONTH, according to Inside Facebook, a site that analyzes the social network for developers and marketers.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2386884,00.asp

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Juror gets caught adding female defendant to Facebook friend’s list

Via: Yahoo News

When Jonathan Hudson of Arlington, Texas sent a Facebook friend request to Courtney Downing, he probably didn’t realize that it would eventually result in FOUR charges of contempt of court.

At the time of the friend request, Hudson was taking a break from delivering pizzas to serve on  a Texas jury. Courtney Downing happened to be the defendant in the case that concerned a 2008 car wreck and Hudson thought it would be a brilliant idea to befriend Downing on Facebook during the trial.

Downing reported the friend request to her attorney and this led the judge to dismiss Hudson from the jury immediately.

After being dismissed, Hudson contacted Downing on Facebook yet again through the messaging system pretending to have befriended the wrong Courtney Downing.

This course of action yielded no help for Hudson and he ended up pleading guilty to contempt charges last week. Hudson could have faced up to six months in prison for his actions, but the court sentenced him to 16 hours of community service to be determined by the court bailiff.

http://news.yahoo.com/juror-gets-caught-adding-female-defendant-facebook-friends-054205448.html

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personal thought:

If/when Rick ‘good-hair’ Perry becomes president, I believe we are looking at President Perry’s first Supreme Court nominee.

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‘Back from the Future – Part IX’

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status: I had a great BM today; thanks for asking!

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Superman’s social nework nightmare

Via: someecards

For everyone’s favorite spandex-clad Jesus metaphor, social networking would be a virtual minefield.

He’d have an inbox jam-packed with distress messages from whiny bank tellers and earthquake victims, inappropriate pokes from a drunk Jimmy Olsen, embarrassing Scrabble losses to Krypto the Superdog, and constant grief from Lois about updating their relationship status.

With all that going on, you couldn’t blame him for forgetting to remind his mom not to jeopardize the lives of everyone he’s ever met by publicly exposing his biggest secret.

http://www.happyplace.com/9809/facebook-ruins-supermans-secret-identity

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Facebook

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comment:

I know there are many users who have hundreds, and in some case thousands, of Facebook ‘friends’; so how do they possibly read their feed?

I mean do they just simply go ahead and post: “I had a great BM this morning!”, or what?

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He may be homeless, but he has Facebook

Via: Gizmodo

The homeless man I photographed has rigged up some speakers to a shopping cart, and seems to have some sort of lighting/solar panel rigged up atop of his cart. I’ve seen him around town a couple of times, and he’s always seems to be doing a laptop DJ routine (all techno music).

http://gizmodo.com/#!5661222/he-may-be-homeless-but-at-least-he-has-facebook

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betamax?

Via: Yahoo News / AP

From a shabby, makeshift office, he ran a global terrorist empire. The world’s most wanted man watched newscasts of himself from a tiny television perched atop a rickety old desk cluttered with wires.

For years, the world only saw the 54-year-old Osama bin Laden in the rare propaganda videos that trickled out, the ones portraying him as a charismatic religious figure unfazed by being the target of a worldwide manhunt.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110507/ap_on_re_us/us_bin_laden;_ylt=Ah1RnkQEd.PfeFNeSw5DKWes0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNjdnZsMDRrBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTEwNTA3L3VzX2Jpbl9sYWRlbgRjY29kZQNtb3N0cG9wdWxhcgRjcG9zAzEEcG9zAzIEcHQDaG9tZV9jb2tlBHNlYwN5bl90b3Bfc3RvcnkEc2xrA2NhbmRpZHZpZGVvcw—

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Facebook – hey kids, could be worse

Are kids slipping through the cracks in Facebook’s just-ask age screening approach?

The social networking site kicks off around 20,000 underage users per day, its chief privacy adviser, Mozelle Thompson, told Australia’s parliament this week.

He admitted that the site’s way of weeding out those who don’t meet the 13-and-up age requirement — essentially a user-entry honor system — is “not perfect,” because there’s no mechanism for detecting kids who simply enter a false age.

“There are people who lie. There are people who are under 13,” Thompson said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110323/bs_yblog_thelookout/facebook-kicks-off-20000-underage-users-a-day