Obama's Secret Terrorist-Tracking System, by the Numbers

How depressing.

And yesterday Australia announced that it will be pushing ahead with an ISP level data retention scheme in the name of fighting terrorism [0]. This is after last year explicitly asking for feedback on the proposal to retain Australian's internet history, and receiving countless concerned letters from the community (along with security agencies who were pushing for data retention) [1].

I suspect in a decade or so that we will also have a similar chart as this post [2].

[0] - http://www.zdnet.com/abbott-brings-on-mandatory-data-retenti...

[1] - http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Hous...

[2] - Only an order of magnitude smaller due to our population difference.

thanks obama

The article indicates many states are beginning to supply federal agencies with biometric data including driver's license photographs. It also states a local police force (the NYPD) was a customer of a facial recognition system.

How long until central databases are collecting datapoints on our whereabouts at all times, not only from mobile devices, but just the image of our faces?

I don't think the founders [US-centric post, but I think this applies to most technologically-advanced nations] envisioned this type of surveillance, and thus offered little protection against it. As the technology to employ this type of capability becomes simpler and cheaper, potential resistance in the form of court processes and public opinion will be comparitively slow to form. This will get a lot worse before it gets better.

The article never claims that the documents are from Snowden. There is likely one or more new whistleblowers leaking documents post-Snowden: this series of articles from The Intercept, the stories in the German press last month, and Jacob Applebaum's TAO Catalog presentation last year.