NSA pulls millions of photos a day from the internet for facial recognition

The NSA would collect millions of photos from the internet every day. The photos would be used for facial recognition to track potential suspects. It was previously announced that the NSA, together with the British GCHQ, intercepted webcam images.

The New York Times found in documents provided by Edward Snowden that the NSA has invested heavily in facial recognition. Millions of photos would be collected every day, several tens of thousands of which would be suitable for the facial recognition software to unleash.

With the photos, the NSA tries to provide itself with information about suspicious persons and terrorists; for example, the location of a person can be traced via photos and the information can be linked with other data about a person available to the service. For example, it can be determined whether a person recognized in the photo has a passport or driver’s license, or what his or her ties to terrorist organizations are.

Earlier it appeared that the NSA, but also the British GCHQ intercept webcam images. However, the NSA also gets its footage from social media, email, video conferencing, cell phone messages and other forms of communication, according to The New York Times. Software developed by the NSA is able to link different photos of the same person, with facial recognition also working if the person in question changes facial recognition features, such as shaving off a beard.

Documents available to The New York Times show that the NSA has become increasingly intensive in collecting photos in recent years. In 2011, the service took ‘only’ 55,000 photos a day from the internet. It is unclear whether a judge has given permission for the extensive collection program. It is also unclear how many people have photos stored in the NSA’s databases.