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

213 points by r0h1n 12y ago

deleted 12y ago
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Centigonal 12y ago
This is ridiculous! Whenever some revelation about the NSA makes the news again, it sounds like something out of Mission Impossible or Batman. I'm beginning to think they just hired action movie writers to design their programs.
Asparagirl 12y ago
And since we know that SnapChat doesn't actually delete the photos people send with it, it's probably safe to say that the NSA now also has the largest boob and dick recognition system in the world.
- RollAHardSix 12y ago
  You can just imagine how the conversation goes: "Sir, he burned off half his face to resist identification." "...Have him drop trough." Serious note though, it's similar to how the kinect is sitting in households across America, and I think the new one with the XBOX One can't be turned off. A microphone and camera system right into people's living rooms. And of course, the government now wants a database of consumers credit information. I try to not be a conspiracy theorist but when you hand them this much information, it's hard to trust people to do the 'right' thing.
  - rasz_pl 12y ago
    >XBOX One can't be turned off you are only half a year to the party http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/08/12/microsoft-reverses-xbox-one-kinect-policy-gamers-can-now-unplug-motion-sensor/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/08/12/microsoft-re...
    - rbanffy 12y ago
      Of course it can be unplugged. You can also unplug the whole thing from the wall outlet. That's not the point. The point is it works even when you are not playing games.
      - rasz_pl 12y ago
        Turn off whole console then, with a physical switch.
        indrax 12y ago
        You shouldn't have to engage in combat against your appliances, even if it's easy to win.
        wpietri 12y ago
        Thinking like this is a problem. The question isn't "is it possible for people to X". It's "will average citizens have the knowledge, time, and energy to X". 99% of XBox owners will not physically unplug the XBox every time they are done using it because of hazy privacy concerns. Suggesting that a few people could is worse than doing nothing. Those with the knowledge and skill to understand the problem will be inclined to solve the problem only for themselves. A bunch of others will use the "they could just unplug it" line to blame the average user for being insufficiently dedicated/savvy. It dissipates the energy for solving the problem properly. And if the NSA is using the Kinect cameras, then they'll be perfectly happy with photos of 99% of users. As an example, consider the iPhone. Smartphones existed before it. But by packaging the tech in a way that anybody could use it, they made smartphones mainstream. If we want to make privacy mainstream, we need to do something similar, not fall back on blame-y non-solutions like telling people to unplug things.
  - outside1234 12y ago
    Or the Nest, which is constantly sending proximity information to Google (and the NSA).
    - ihsw 12y ago
      There will be a Nest in every Google self-driving car. I don't have any concrete evidence of this, but it's not that far-fetched.
      - 31reasons 12y ago
        Why would a car need Nest ? I am curious.
    - selmnoo 12y ago
      Wait, there's a proximity sensor in the Nest (thermostat, I'm assuming you're talking about)? What function does the sensor serve? And what is its capability exactly - it can detect a person within 10 feet - who happens to be in the same room as the Nest thermostat? Or?
      - zippergz 12y ago
        It turns on the display when you approach (normally it's dark), and also tries to detect when no one is home so it can go into "away" mode automatically.
- sitkack 12y ago
  Even if SnapChat deleted stuff, the NSA would have grabbed it all off the wire anyway. Not that it makes it right, but if it transits, it archives.
  - Dolimiter 12y ago
    That didn't happen. Except in the fantastical magical world of the conspiracy theorist.
    - zxcdw 12y ago
      > That didn't happen. Are you saying that thus far it has never been the case that NSA or some other US Governmental agency has intercepted Snapchat images off the wire? How would you know whether or not it has ever happened? I think it is very reasonable to assume that NSA can do this. > Except in the fantastical magical world of the conspiracy theorist. This is an outright insult. Vent your frustrations elsewhere.
      - Dolimiter 12y ago
        Wait what? The parent OP said that every snapchat was being intercepted and archived by the NSA.
    - insuffi 12y ago
      I feel like you're trolling, but this[0] [0]http://vr-zone.com/articles/nsa-tapped-fiber-backbone-spy-google-yahoo-according-report/65006.html?utm_source=rss http://vr-zone.com/articles/nsa-tapped-fiber-backbone-spy-go...
      - Dolimiter 12y ago
        The article says that theoretically it is possible that the NSA hacked internal server traffic at Google. Therefore they are intercepting and archiving every snapchat ever sent? This is not intelligent discourse.
- DanBC 12y ago
  GCHQ has specific exemptions in legislation to cover them if they scoop up images of child sexual abuse or other images of naked children. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/part/1/crossheading/indecent-photographs-of-children http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/part/1/crosshead... > (c)at the time of the offence charged he was a member of GCHQ, and it was necessary for him to make the photograph or pseudo-photograph for the exercise of any of the functions of GCHQ. ("Make" here includes "download from the Internet" becuase that causes a local copy). Looking through all the legislation is a bit worrying. Perhaps it's all just exemptions asked for but not used as a way pf covering what they actually do; or maybe it's asked for because they might do it in the future but don't do it now; or maybe they ask for it because they do it?
  - samstave 12y ago
    What is your take on this: "Pentagon declined to investigate hundreds of purchases of child pornography" [0] -- http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/upshot/pentagon-declined-investigate-hundreds-purchases-child-pornography.html http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/upshot/pentagon-declined-investi...
- inzax 12y ago
  You joke about it, but with the betterment of facial recognition and Facebook, just imagine 1 scenario... All those folks who share selfies of themselves anonymously online both of them clothed and unclothed, we are starting to see the ability to pinpoint who they are, just because they keep an online facebook.
a3n 12y ago
I don't think Skynet is going to be our problem, it's going to be Spynet, when the two to four large chunks of aligned intelligence forces (US, China, Russia, larger Europe depending on how it goes) gradually merge and it really becomes us (human citizens) vs them (lizard overlords).
zacinbusiness 12y ago
The stated reason for this are two failed bombings. How would this facial recognition tech have stopped those two failed bombings?
- mpyne 12y ago
  > The N.S.A. achieved a technical breakthrough in 2010 when analysts first matched images collected separately in two databases — one in a huge N.S.A. database code-named Pinwale, and another in the government’s main terrorist watch list database, known as Tide — according to N.S.A. documents. Sounds like this is the answer. One of the difficult aspects of investigating terrorist networks through signals intelligence would be deciphering the network itself (which is why NSA would have been interested in phone metadata). If you had a known list of terrorist suspects (TIDE) and could match those to legally-intercepted video feeds or pictures (which is what I'm assuming PINWALE is for) then you could identify the user IDs being chatted with and then use PRISM and other approved signals interception methods to decipher "who's who in the zoo". With a better selectivity of who the targets would be then you could use targeted access operations to both get better fidelity on actual plots (instead of dumb keywords searches, actually assign analysts to get a "deep dive" into any of the plot(s) under discussion). This would also enable you to avoid wasting time and resources on people who are not a threat by filtering out "where the terrorists are not". The ideal end result: Disrupting a bombing plot before it happens. Both the 2009 and 2010 bombings were disrupted only by luck, so "clearly" the NSA didn't have the tools they needed, which is why I warn you guys that the argument "oh but they didn't catch Tsarnaev" doesn't end the way you think it does. :P ---- I know you all like to claim that counter-terrorism is just rhetoric used to justify more sinister motives, but I've found it striking how almost every time a leak is presented the evidence shows a bunch of NSA analysts trumpeting... counter-terrorism. This case is no different: "another 2011 N.S.A. document reported that a facial recognition system was queried with a photograph of Osama bin Laden.", "A 2011 PowerPoint showed one example when Tundra Freeze, the N.S.A.’s main in-house facial recognition program, was asked to identify photos matching the image of a bearded young man with dark hair.", "One N.S.A. PowerPoint presentation from 2011, for example, displays several photographs of an unidentified man — sometimes bearded, other times clean-shaven — in different settings, along with more than two dozen data points about him. These include whether he was on the Transportation Security Administration no-fly list, his passport and visa status, known associates or suspected terrorist ties, and comments made about him by informants to American intelligence agencies." There's certainly an argument to be made about whether such investigative abilities are safe for democracy, but what we've consistently not seen is a bunch of people trying to subvert democracy, not even according to the very documents NSA and their managers thought would be safest from ever being publically disclosed.
Asparagirl 12y ago
Countdown until these are treated like pressure cookers... http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groucho_glasses http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groucho_glasses
munin 12y ago
We could do this right now and sell it as an app http://www.mimisbrunnr.net/~munin/blog/apps-for-privacy.html http://www.mimisbrunnr.net/~munin/blog/apps-for-privacy.html
panarky 12y ago
The N.S.A. collects iris scans of foreigners through other means. No way that ordinary snapshots have enough resolution for iris scans. What "other means" could there be?
- jambo 12y ago
  All non-citizens are photographed & fingerprinted by cbp when entering the US. Maybe that?
  - lawnchair_larry 12y ago
    No they aren't.
    - DanBC 12y ago
      Which ones aren't fingerprinted and photographed? http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/US-VISIT http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/US-VISIT > The U.S. government states that the purpose of US-VISIT is to advance the security of both the United States and worldwide travel, through the use and sharing of biometric information for identity management. U.S. Department of State consular officers and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers collect biometric information (digital fingerprints and a photograph) from all non-U.S. citizens between the ages of 14 and 79, with some exceptions, when they apply for visas or arrive at major U.S. ports of entry.[4] There are "some exceptions", and it doesn't cover people under 14 or over 79.
- mpyne 12y ago
  The U.S. military has long been conducting biometric scanning in Afghanistan, as it was very successful in Iraq in helping identify insurgents and terrorists [1] I would assume this is a major source, possibly along with the attempts to gain covert access to other nations' similar counter-terrorism biometric databases. [1] http://www.wired.com/2010/09/afghan-biometric-dragnet-could-snag-millions/ http://www.wired.com/2010/09/afghan-biometric-dragnet-could-...
  - 12y ago
walrus 12y ago
You know, I don't really mind that the NSA is collecting this information. What bothers me is that it's not being released to the public. What good are their efforts if no one else can build off of their work?
- obituary_latte 12y ago
  As if they care about the common good. Hilarious.
  - jonnybgood 12y ago
    For US citizens, it's an obvious yes. If you disagree, can you show me where collecting this information has held detrimental effects on the common good of US citizens?
    - keithpeter 12y ago
      Perhaps, over time, the increasing isolation of the US coupled with deep distrust of future presidents by the leaders of other governments may lead to a reduction in economic power? Also, the impossibility of organising a broad based political movement for change within the US in response to, say, severely worsening economic or climatic conditions because of 'self censorship' by US citizens? These are weak signals working over a long timescale. But those things are important.
    - ivanca 12y ago
      If you don't know what information they are collecting and how they are using it, then how would you know if it has or has not detrimental effects? It's impossible to know.
    - olefoo 12y ago
      If being under surveillance really does trigger the feeling of being stalked as prey; then it raises everyones stress level ( as represented by cortisol in the bloodstream ) and that should be detectable in the general population through the incidence of stress related injuries and mental health issues. Of course it could just be lost in the noise of the ongoing financial and environmental crises.
guelo 12y ago
I have my doubts that the fully surveilled society that is being created by the government and corporations can be turned back, I see it as only becoming more comprehensive for the foreseeable future. We don't understand the ethical issues that will be involved in this new society, there are surely some benefits along with the many negatives. I envision it kind of like The Matrix where we are all plugged into the global brain with shrinking spaces for any kind of underground.
- deleted 12y ago
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- pdkl95 12y ago
  As these people keep getting away with ignoring the constitution/law, they are being conditioned[1] to believe that nobody can/will stop them. What we've been seeing recently is the lack of fear. Usually, threat of having to defend yourself in front of a judge keeps keeps this kind of behavior limited to smaller, often one-off events. When you have a proper Fear of getting caught, one event where you get away with some illegal and/or immoral behavior isn't a pattern yet, and so most people quietly go on with their life. After a sufficient amount of conditioning, this changes. A pattern emerges, and the idea that maybe you really can get away with anything starts to creep in. This is a rational decision on their part (Bayes Theorem obviously applies). Worse, there seems to be a kind of "avalanche breakdown" effect in how we see our social position/role, due to the large amount of hysteresis[2] in how we interpret/rationalize our own social standing. The feedback loop between these two effects is probably why the current situation can appear to be impossible to turn back. It certainly will be impossible if left alone and unchallenged. The soap box hasn't worked. The ballot box is a joke (and might be rigged, depending on who you ask). The use of the jury box is still pending in some areas places, and has failed in others. I would love to be wrong about this, but... nothing will change until the ammo box has been used to kill at least a few. So I guess we should start preparing for the Civil War. /sigh/ [1] e.g.: Skinner ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning ) [2] The ideas taken from this RSA[3] Animate, which explains the idea better than I ever could: http://www.thersa.org/events/rsaanimate/animate/rsa-animate-the-truth-about-dishonesty http://www.thersa.org/events/rsaanimate/animate/rsa-animate-... [3] This RSA == The Royal Society, not the crypto by Rivest, Shamir and Adleman
dantheman 12y ago
Seems like it's more damage control than an actual expose. It's extremely confusing, why certain quotes were included unless they were to mislead the reader, e.g. "It is not clear how many images the agency has acquired. The N.S.A. does not collect facial imagery through its bulk metadata collection programs, including that involving Americans’ domestic phone records, authorized under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, according to Ms. Vines." Why would a phone metadata program, which is basically call records ever be thought to include photos?
ww520 12y ago
Semi-off topic, what are some of the good algorithms to search faces with a similarity factor? Let's say I have a database of millions of faces and I want to go through the streaming of a video to identify all the faces showing up in the video with a 90% similarity factor. I assume the faces on each frame of the video are extracted to be queried against the face database. Would all the faces in the db loaded into memory and constructed in some data structure for efficient query? Or some mapping to SQL's standard B+ tree index with range searching can be done?
- deleted 12y ago
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cottonseed 12y ago
> In addition to in-house programs, the N.S.A. relies in part on commercially available facial recognition technology, including from PittPatt, a small company owned by Google, the documents show.
- jreuh 12y ago
  These docs are from 2011, the acquisition of PittPatt happened in July 2011: http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/22/google-acquires-facial-recognition-software-company-pittpatt/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/22/google-acquires-facial-reco... Any "commercially available facial recognition technology" was a pre-Google thing, PittPatt is no more.
  - cottonseed 12y ago
    > Any "commercially available facial recognition technology" is a pre-Google thing, PittPatt is no more. I see no reason to believe this. Google certainly had an obligation to honor existing PittPatt agreements after the acquisition. And I see no reason why they wouldn't continue working with the NSA if it was in their interest. I am very pessimistic about bulk electronic surveillance reform. One of the few points of leverage I can see is publicly making it clear when companies work with the NSA, and avoid them when possible. I would include companies that acquire companies that work with the NSA. For example, I have slowly stopped using services of the PRISM companies, including Google.
    - jreuh 12y ago
      > Google certainly had an obligation to honor existing PittPatt agreements after the acquisition [citation needed] one has to be privy to such contracts to make these conjectures, also they're software might have been of the "off the shelf" variety. > One of the few points of leverage I can see is publicly making it clear when companies work with the NSA, and avoid them when possible. I would include companies that acquire companies that work with the NSA. That's fine, but you should get the facts straight before lobbing accusations, as for 'companies that acquire companies' point, I don't subscribe to any guilt by association sort of animosity, this doesn't seem fair and lots of things are more connected than you think. My main objection is that the NYT should have used "... now owned by Google" instead of "owned by Google" in their piece.
dan_bk 12y ago
> “We would not be doing our job if we didn’t seek ways to continuously improve the precision of signals intelligence activities [...]” said Vanee M. Vines, the agency spokeswoman. Which leads directly to the annihilation of any form of privacy (total surveillance), given the exponential advances that technology embodies. If our governments really think that this is what their voters/citizens want, then this subject should be put to a very explicit vote.
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  It's hard enough to get even Congress as a whole to care about issues normal people actually care about, but it's even worse if even Congress itself can't pass good laws because it's being hijacked by a few. For example, most of the House voted to pass the USA Freedom Act as is (which was pretty good originally), but the Rules Committee, comprised of a handful of people, stripped down almost all the good reforms in it, making it essentially useless, and potentially worse than if it had not existed: http://www.emptywheel.net/2014/05/23/four-reasons-usa-freedumber-is-worse-than-the-status-quo/ http://www.emptywheel.net/2014/05/23/four-reasons-usa-freedu... Sometimes, it all falls onto one man, such as the Audit the Fed bill, which also got a huge majority in House, but Harry Reid refused to put it on the floor in Senate, or when Patrick Leahy single-handedly killed the recent patent reform bill. All of this doesn't seem "democratic" at all to me.
  - dan_bk 12y ago
    > Sometimes, it all falls onto one man I suppose you're looking for this type of system [0]. Switzerland is a proud and well-known defender of it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy
    - pyre 12y ago
      We're not even talking direct democracy, here. The parent post is saying (for example) that a single Senator can prevent a bill from entering the Senate, even if said bill would get a majority of Senate votes. If it was possible to get such bills put to a vote over the objections of singular individual representatives, then there would be less need for direct democracy.
empressplay 12y ago
... of course although the NSA can't analyse domestic US photographs themselves, they can still mine the metadata attached to the photographs, which can include GPS data in some cases...
CHY872 12y ago
How is this even unusual? Google do much the same, all the time. You'd expect the NSA to do it.
flurdy 12y ago
"John, don't run." http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181689/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181689/
icantthinkofone 12y ago
Whether this works or is right or wrong misses the point of doing it. This is being done because bad people brought bad things into this world. None of this was done until bad people did stuff. People forget that side of the equation.
vixin 12y ago
And algorithms now work better than humans at face detection. https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/2c567adbf7fc https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/2c567adbf7fc They don't even have to snoop.
plg 12y ago
CV Dazzle explores how fashion can be used as camouflage from face-detection technology http://cvdazzle.com http://cvdazzle.com Anonymous releases how-to instructions on fooling facial recognition (VIDEO) http://rt.com/usa/video-surveillance-face-trapwire-237/ http://rt.com/usa/video-surveillance-face-trapwire-237/
- deleted 12y ago
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op4 12y ago
heres one for the nsa... http://i.imgur.com/bp7bJFh.jpg http://i.imgur.com/bp7bJFh.jpg
pasbesoin 12y ago
They insist (through actions, as opposed to any words they might use) upon total transparency of the lives of the general public, while submitting to practically zero transparency in their own behaviour. This asymmetry should bother everyone who has made the effort to consider information as power -- and to consider self-governance as necessarily based upon an informed self. If nothing else, one should consider the horror of a world-spanning bureaucracy that seeks a singular, uncompartmentalized rule and control. Many thoughts flicker through my consciousness about the limits and diversity of human culture -- and the robustness that comes from that latter. Or, I can think of a more "basic" quip, that Nature abhors a monoculture. People need to think seriously about how much they can "just let someone else deal with", and how much they need to step up and be at least partially responsible for, themselves. "Liberal" or "Conservative", most seem to, one way or another, reach the conclusion that they have to take responsibility for their own affairs and community. What we are currently developing seems to be an antithesis to this.

213 points by r0h1n 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

This is ridiculous! Whenever some revelation about the NSA makes the news again, it sounds like something out of Mission Impossible or Batman. I'm beginning to think they just hired action movie writers to design their programs.

Asparagirl 12y ago

And since we know that SnapChat doesn't actually delete the photos people send with it, it's probably safe to say that the NSA now also has the largest boob and dick recognition system in the world.

RollAHardSix 12y ago
You can just imagine how the conversation goes: "Sir, he burned off half his face to resist identification." "...Have him drop trough." Serious note though, it's similar to how the kinect is sitting in households across America, and I think the new one with the XBOX One can't be turned off. A microphone and camera system right into people's living rooms. And of course, the government now wants a database of consumers credit information. I try to not be a conspiracy theorist but when you hand them this much information, it's hard to trust people to do the 'right' thing.
- rasz_pl 12y ago
  >XBOX One can't be turned off you are only half a year to the party http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/08/12/microsoft-reverses-xbox-one-kinect-policy-gamers-can-now-unplug-motion-sensor/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/08/12/microsoft-re...
  - rbanffy 12y ago
    Of course it can be unplugged. You can also unplug the whole thing from the wall outlet. That's not the point. The point is it works even when you are not playing games.
    - rasz_pl 12y ago
      Turn off whole console then, with a physical switch.
      - indrax 12y ago
        You shouldn't have to engage in combat against your appliances, even if it's easy to win.
      - wpietri 12y ago
        Thinking like this is a problem. The question isn't "is it possible for people to X". It's "will average citizens have the knowledge, time, and energy to X". 99% of XBox owners will not physically unplug the XBox every time they are done using it because of hazy privacy concerns. Suggesting that a few people could is worse than doing nothing. Those with the knowledge and skill to understand the problem will be inclined to solve the problem only for themselves. A bunch of others will use the "they could just unplug it" line to blame the average user for being insufficiently dedicated/savvy. It dissipates the energy for solving the problem properly. And if the NSA is using the Kinect cameras, then they'll be perfectly happy with photos of 99% of users. As an example, consider the iPhone. Smartphones existed before it. But by packaging the tech in a way that anybody could use it, they made smartphones mainstream. If we want to make privacy mainstream, we need to do something similar, not fall back on blame-y non-solutions like telling people to unplug things.
- outside1234 12y ago
  Or the Nest, which is constantly sending proximity information to Google (and the NSA).
  - ihsw 12y ago
    There will be a Nest in every Google self-driving car. I don't have any concrete evidence of this, but it's not that far-fetched.
    - 31reasons 12y ago
      Why would a car need Nest ? I am curious.
  - selmnoo 12y ago
    Wait, there's a proximity sensor in the Nest (thermostat, I'm assuming you're talking about)? What function does the sensor serve? And what is its capability exactly - it can detect a person within 10 feet - who happens to be in the same room as the Nest thermostat? Or?
    - zippergz 12y ago
      It turns on the display when you approach (normally it's dark), and also tries to detect when no one is home so it can go into "away" mode automatically.
sitkack 12y ago
Even if SnapChat deleted stuff, the NSA would have grabbed it all off the wire anyway. Not that it makes it right, but if it transits, it archives.
- Dolimiter 12y ago
  That didn't happen. Except in the fantastical magical world of the conspiracy theorist.
  - zxcdw 12y ago
    > That didn't happen. Are you saying that thus far it has never been the case that NSA or some other US Governmental agency has intercepted Snapchat images off the wire? How would you know whether or not it has ever happened? I think it is very reasonable to assume that NSA can do this. > Except in the fantastical magical world of the conspiracy theorist. This is an outright insult. Vent your frustrations elsewhere.
    - Dolimiter 12y ago
      Wait what? The parent OP said that every snapchat was being intercepted and archived by the NSA.
  - insuffi 12y ago
    I feel like you're trolling, but this[0] [0]http://vr-zone.com/articles/nsa-tapped-fiber-backbone-spy-google-yahoo-according-report/65006.html?utm_source=rss http://vr-zone.com/articles/nsa-tapped-fiber-backbone-spy-go...
    - Dolimiter 12y ago
      The article says that theoretically it is possible that the NSA hacked internal server traffic at Google. Therefore they are intercepting and archiving every snapchat ever sent? This is not intelligent discourse.
DanBC 12y ago
GCHQ has specific exemptions in legislation to cover them if they scoop up images of child sexual abuse or other images of naked children. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/part/1/crossheading/indecent-photographs-of-children http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/part/1/crosshead... > (c)at the time of the offence charged he was a member of GCHQ, and it was necessary for him to make the photograph or pseudo-photograph for the exercise of any of the functions of GCHQ. ("Make" here includes "download from the Internet" becuase that causes a local copy). Looking through all the legislation is a bit worrying. Perhaps it's all just exemptions asked for but not used as a way pf covering what they actually do; or maybe it's asked for because they might do it in the future but don't do it now; or maybe they ask for it because they do it?
- samstave 12y ago
  What is your take on this: "Pentagon declined to investigate hundreds of purchases of child pornography" [0] -- http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/upshot/pentagon-declined-investigate-hundreds-purchases-child-pornography.html http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/upshot/pentagon-declined-investi...
inzax 12y ago
You joke about it, but with the betterment of facial recognition and Facebook, just imagine 1 scenario... All those folks who share selfies of themselves anonymously online both of them clothed and unclothed, we are starting to see the ability to pinpoint who they are, just because they keep an online facebook.

a3n 12y ago

I don't think Skynet is going to be our problem, it's going to be Spynet, when the two to four large chunks of aligned intelligence forces (US, China, Russia, larger Europe depending on how it goes) gradually merge and it really becomes us (human citizens) vs them (lizard overlords).

zacinbusiness 12y ago

The stated reason for this are two failed bombings. How would this facial recognition tech have stopped those two failed bombings?

mpyne 12y ago
> The N.S.A. achieved a technical breakthrough in 2010 when analysts first matched images collected separately in two databases — one in a huge N.S.A. database code-named Pinwale, and another in the government’s main terrorist watch list database, known as Tide — according to N.S.A. documents. Sounds like this is the answer. One of the difficult aspects of investigating terrorist networks through signals intelligence would be deciphering the network itself (which is why NSA would have been interested in phone metadata). If you had a known list of terrorist suspects (TIDE) and could match those to legally-intercepted video feeds or pictures (which is what I'm assuming PINWALE is for) then you could identify the user IDs being chatted with and then use PRISM and other approved signals interception methods to decipher "who's who in the zoo". With a better selectivity of who the targets would be then you could use targeted access operations to both get better fidelity on actual plots (instead of dumb keywords searches, actually assign analysts to get a "deep dive" into any of the plot(s) under discussion). This would also enable you to avoid wasting time and resources on people who are not a threat by filtering out "where the terrorists are not". The ideal end result: Disrupting a bombing plot before it happens. Both the 2009 and 2010 bombings were disrupted only by luck, so "clearly" the NSA didn't have the tools they needed, which is why I warn you guys that the argument "oh but they didn't catch Tsarnaev" doesn't end the way you think it does. :P ---- I know you all like to claim that counter-terrorism is just rhetoric used to justify more sinister motives, but I've found it striking how almost every time a leak is presented the evidence shows a bunch of NSA analysts trumpeting... counter-terrorism. This case is no different: "another 2011 N.S.A. document reported that a facial recognition system was queried with a photograph of Osama bin Laden.", "A 2011 PowerPoint showed one example when Tundra Freeze, the N.S.A.’s main in-house facial recognition program, was asked to identify photos matching the image of a bearded young man with dark hair.", "One N.S.A. PowerPoint presentation from 2011, for example, displays several photographs of an unidentified man — sometimes bearded, other times clean-shaven — in different settings, along with more than two dozen data points about him. These include whether he was on the Transportation Security Administration no-fly list, his passport and visa status, known associates or suspected terrorist ties, and comments made about him by informants to American intelligence agencies." There's certainly an argument to be made about whether such investigative abilities are safe for democracy, but what we've consistently not seen is a bunch of people trying to subvert democracy, not even according to the very documents NSA and their managers thought would be safest from ever being publically disclosed.

Asparagirl 12y ago

Countdown until these are treated like pressure cookers... http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groucho_glasses http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groucho_glasses

munin 12y ago

We could do this right now and sell it as an app http://www.mimisbrunnr.net/~munin/blog/apps-for-privacy.html http://www.mimisbrunnr.net/~munin/blog/apps-for-privacy.html

panarky 12y ago

The N.S.A. collects iris scans of foreigners through other means. No way that ordinary snapshots have enough resolution for iris scans. What "other means" could there be?

jambo 12y ago
All non-citizens are photographed & fingerprinted by cbp when entering the US. Maybe that?
- lawnchair_larry 12y ago
  No they aren't.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    Which ones aren't fingerprinted and photographed? http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/US-VISIT http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/US-VISIT > The U.S. government states that the purpose of US-VISIT is to advance the security of both the United States and worldwide travel, through the use and sharing of biometric information for identity management. U.S. Department of State consular officers and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers collect biometric information (digital fingerprints and a photograph) from all non-U.S. citizens between the ages of 14 and 79, with some exceptions, when they apply for visas or arrive at major U.S. ports of entry.[4] There are "some exceptions", and it doesn't cover people under 14 or over 79.
mpyne 12y ago
The U.S. military has long been conducting biometric scanning in Afghanistan, as it was very successful in Iraq in helping identify insurgents and terrorists [1] I would assume this is a major source, possibly along with the attempts to gain covert access to other nations' similar counter-terrorism biometric databases. [1] http://www.wired.com/2010/09/afghan-biometric-dragnet-could-snag-millions/ http://www.wired.com/2010/09/afghan-biometric-dragnet-could-...
- 12y ago

walrus 12y ago

You know, I don't really mind that the NSA is collecting this information. What bothers me is that it's not being released to the public. What good are their efforts if no one else can build off of their work?

obituary_latte 12y ago
As if they care about the common good. Hilarious.
- jonnybgood 12y ago
  For US citizens, it's an obvious yes. If you disagree, can you show me where collecting this information has held detrimental effects on the common good of US citizens?
  - keithpeter 12y ago
    Perhaps, over time, the increasing isolation of the US coupled with deep distrust of future presidents by the leaders of other governments may lead to a reduction in economic power? Also, the impossibility of organising a broad based political movement for change within the US in response to, say, severely worsening economic or climatic conditions because of 'self censorship' by US citizens? These are weak signals working over a long timescale. But those things are important.
  - ivanca 12y ago
    If you don't know what information they are collecting and how they are using it, then how would you know if it has or has not detrimental effects? It's impossible to know.
  - olefoo 12y ago
    If being under surveillance really does trigger the feeling of being stalked as prey; then it raises everyones stress level ( as represented by cortisol in the bloodstream ) and that should be detectable in the general population through the incidence of stress related injuries and mental health issues. Of course it could just be lost in the noise of the ongoing financial and environmental crises.

guelo 12y ago

I have my doubts that the fully surveilled society that is being created by the government and corporations can be turned back, I see it as only becoming more comprehensive for the foreseeable future. We don't understand the ethical issues that will be involved in this new society, there are surely some benefits along with the many negatives. I envision it kind of like The Matrix where we are all plugged into the global brain with shrinking spaces for any kind of underground.

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pdkl95 12y ago
As these people keep getting away with ignoring the constitution/law, they are being conditioned[1] to believe that nobody can/will stop them. What we've been seeing recently is the lack of fear. Usually, threat of having to defend yourself in front of a judge keeps keeps this kind of behavior limited to smaller, often one-off events. When you have a proper Fear of getting caught, one event where you get away with some illegal and/or immoral behavior isn't a pattern yet, and so most people quietly go on with their life. After a sufficient amount of conditioning, this changes. A pattern emerges, and the idea that maybe you really can get away with anything starts to creep in. This is a rational decision on their part (Bayes Theorem obviously applies). Worse, there seems to be a kind of "avalanche breakdown" effect in how we see our social position/role, due to the large amount of hysteresis[2] in how we interpret/rationalize our own social standing. The feedback loop between these two effects is probably why the current situation can appear to be impossible to turn back. It certainly will be impossible if left alone and unchallenged. The soap box hasn't worked. The ballot box is a joke (and might be rigged, depending on who you ask). The use of the jury box is still pending in some areas places, and has failed in others. I would love to be wrong about this, but... nothing will change until the ammo box has been used to kill at least a few. So I guess we should start preparing for the Civil War. /sigh/ [1] e.g.: Skinner ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning ) [2] The ideas taken from this RSA[3] Animate, which explains the idea better than I ever could: http://www.thersa.org/events/rsaanimate/animate/rsa-animate-the-truth-about-dishonesty http://www.thersa.org/events/rsaanimate/animate/rsa-animate-... [3] This RSA == The Royal Society, not the crypto by Rivest, Shamir and Adleman

dantheman 12y ago

Seems like it's more damage control than an actual expose. It's extremely confusing, why certain quotes were included unless they were to mislead the reader, e.g. "It is not clear how many images the agency has acquired. The N.S.A. does not collect facial imagery through its bulk metadata collection programs, including that involving Americans’ domestic phone records, authorized under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, according to Ms. Vines." Why would a phone metadata program, which is basically call records ever be thought to include photos?

ww520 12y ago

Semi-off topic, what are some of the good algorithms to search faces with a similarity factor? Let's say I have a database of millions of faces and I want to go through the streaming of a video to identify all the faces showing up in the video with a 90% similarity factor. I assume the faces on each frame of the video are extracted to be queried against the face database. Would all the faces in the db loaded into memory and constructed in some data structure for efficient query? Or some mapping to SQL's standard B+ tree index with range searching can be done?

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cottonseed 12y ago

> In addition to in-house programs, the N.S.A. relies in part on commercially available facial recognition technology, including from PittPatt, a small company owned by Google, the documents show.

jreuh 12y ago
These docs are from 2011, the acquisition of PittPatt happened in July 2011: http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/22/google-acquires-facial-recognition-software-company-pittpatt/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/22/google-acquires-facial-reco... Any "commercially available facial recognition technology" was a pre-Google thing, PittPatt is no more.
- cottonseed 12y ago
  > Any "commercially available facial recognition technology" is a pre-Google thing, PittPatt is no more. I see no reason to believe this. Google certainly had an obligation to honor existing PittPatt agreements after the acquisition. And I see no reason why they wouldn't continue working with the NSA if it was in their interest. I am very pessimistic about bulk electronic surveillance reform. One of the few points of leverage I can see is publicly making it clear when companies work with the NSA, and avoid them when possible. I would include companies that acquire companies that work with the NSA. For example, I have slowly stopped using services of the PRISM companies, including Google.
  - jreuh 12y ago
    > Google certainly had an obligation to honor existing PittPatt agreements after the acquisition [citation needed] one has to be privy to such contracts to make these conjectures, also they're software might have been of the "off the shelf" variety. > One of the few points of leverage I can see is publicly making it clear when companies work with the NSA, and avoid them when possible. I would include companies that acquire companies that work with the NSA. That's fine, but you should get the facts straight before lobbing accusations, as for 'companies that acquire companies' point, I don't subscribe to any guilt by association sort of animosity, this doesn't seem fair and lots of things are more connected than you think. My main objection is that the NYT should have used "... now owned by Google" instead of "owned by Google" in their piece.

dan_bk 12y ago

> “We would not be doing our job if we didn’t seek ways to continuously improve the precision of signals intelligence activities [...]” said Vanee M. Vines, the agency spokeswoman. Which leads directly to the annihilation of any form of privacy (total surveillance), given the exponential advances that technology embodies. If our governments really think that this is what their voters/citizens want, then this subject should be put to a very explicit vote.

higherpurpose 12y ago
It's hard enough to get even Congress as a whole to care about issues normal people actually care about, but it's even worse if even Congress itself can't pass good laws because it's being hijacked by a few. For example, most of the House voted to pass the USA Freedom Act as is (which was pretty good originally), but the Rules Committee, comprised of a handful of people, stripped down almost all the good reforms in it, making it essentially useless, and potentially worse than if it had not existed: http://www.emptywheel.net/2014/05/23/four-reasons-usa-freedumber-is-worse-than-the-status-quo/ http://www.emptywheel.net/2014/05/23/four-reasons-usa-freedu... Sometimes, it all falls onto one man, such as the Audit the Fed bill, which also got a huge majority in House, but Harry Reid refused to put it on the floor in Senate, or when Patrick Leahy single-handedly killed the recent patent reform bill. All of this doesn't seem "democratic" at all to me.
- dan_bk 12y ago
  > Sometimes, it all falls onto one man I suppose you're looking for this type of system [0]. Switzerland is a proud and well-known defender of it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy
  - pyre 12y ago
    We're not even talking direct democracy, here. The parent post is saying (for example) that a single Senator can prevent a bill from entering the Senate, even if said bill would get a majority of Senate votes. If it was possible to get such bills put to a vote over the objections of singular individual representatives, then there would be less need for direct democracy.

empressplay 12y ago

... of course although the NSA can't analyse domestic US photographs themselves, they can still mine the metadata attached to the photographs, which can include GPS data in some cases...

CHY872 12y ago

How is this even unusual? Google do much the same, all the time. You'd expect the NSA to do it.

flurdy 12y ago

"John, don't run." http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181689/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181689/

icantthinkofone 12y ago

Whether this works or is right or wrong misses the point of doing it. This is being done because bad people brought bad things into this world. None of this was done until bad people did stuff. People forget that side of the equation.

vixin 12y ago

And algorithms now work better than humans at face detection. https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/2c567adbf7fc https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/2c567adbf7fc They don't even have to snoop.

plg 12y ago

CV Dazzle explores how fashion can be used as camouflage from face-detection technology http://cvdazzle.com http://cvdazzle.com Anonymous releases how-to instructions on fooling facial recognition (VIDEO) http://rt.com/usa/video-surveillance-face-trapwire-237/ http://rt.com/usa/video-surveillance-face-trapwire-237/

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op4 12y ago

heres one for the nsa... http://i.imgur.com/bp7bJFh.jpg http://i.imgur.com/bp7bJFh.jpg

pasbesoin 12y ago

They insist (through actions, as opposed to any words they might use) upon total transparency of the lives of the general public, while submitting to practically zero transparency in their own behaviour. This asymmetry should bother everyone who has made the effort to consider information as power -- and to consider self-governance as necessarily based upon an informed self. If nothing else, one should consider the horror of a world-spanning bureaucracy that seeks a singular, uncompartmentalized rule and control. Many thoughts flicker through my consciousness about the limits and diversity of human culture -- and the robustness that comes from that latter. Or, I can think of a more "basic" quip, that Nature abhors a monoculture. People need to think seriously about how much they can "just let someone else deal with", and how much they need to step up and be at least partially responsible for, themselves. "Liberal" or "Conservative", most seem to, one way or another, reach the conclusion that they have to take responsibility for their own affairs and community. What we are currently developing seems to be an antithesis to this.