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.
N.S.A. Collecting Millions of Faces From Web Images
Nearly 800 killed in Iraq's bloodiest month this year: U.N.
Nearly 800 people were killed in violence across Iraq in May, the United Nations said on Sunday, making it the deadliest month so far this year.
Of the total 799 people killed, 196 were members of the Iraqi security forces, and the rest were civilians - often victims of attacks by Sunni Islamist insurgents who have been regaining ground and momentum in Iraq over the past year.
The real toll is in fact higher because the UN figures do not include casualties in the western province of Anbar, where the Iraqi army has been fighting tribal and insurgent groups since they overran two cities at the start of the year.
6 climbers missing on Mount Rainier
Six climbers are missing on Mount Rainier, and a helicopter search was launched on Saturday for them, a National Parks spokeswoman said.
The missing group includes four clients of Seattle-based Alpine Ascents International and two guides. They were due to return from the mountain on Friday. When they did not return, the climbing company notified park officials, Park Ranger Fawn Bauer said.
"The last contact with them was at 12,800 feet," Bauer said.
The Real Origins of the Religious Right
One of the most durable myths in recent history is that the religious right, the coalition of conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists, emerged as a political movement in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion. The tale goes something like this: Evangelicals, who had been politically quiescent for decades, were so morally outraged by Roe that they resolved to organize in order to overturn it.
This myth of origins is oft repeated by the movement’s leaders. In his 2005 book, Jerry Falwell, the firebrand fundamentalist preacher, recounts his distress upon reading about the ruling in the Jan. 23, 1973, edition of the Lynchburg News: “I sat there staring at the Roe v. Wade story,” Falwell writes, “growing more and more fearful of the consequences of the Supreme Court’s act and wondering why so few voices had been raised against it.” Evangelicals, he decided, needed to organize.
Former Counterterrorism Czar Richard Clarke: Bush, Cheney Committed War Crimes
Richard Clarke, the nation’s top counterterrorism official under former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, accused Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney of committing war crimes in their 2003 invasion of Iraq during an interview Tuesday with Democracy Now! that will air next week.
"I think things that they authorized probably fall within the area of war crimes. Whether that would be productive or not, I think, is a discussion we could all have,” said Clarke, who resigned in 2003 after the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq. “But we have established procedures now with the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where people who take actions as serving presidents or prime ministers of countries have been indicted and have been tried.”
Expert: We can fix the problem of gun violence – but the NRA blocks research to find the solution
Every system is perfectly designed to produce exactly the results it produces.
Research indicates our existing public health system is designed to produce an increasing number of mass shootings, along with 20,000 gun suicides and 10,000 gun homicides annually and a tragic number of unintentional shootings involving children.
The results are not caused by one particular feature of our system, but by all the parts acting together. Our cultural norms frequently promote violence over nonviolent conflict resolution, and there are 300 million firearms in the hands of civilians.
Bill legalizing fracking heads to North Carolina governor
A bill to allow permits for fracking in North Carolina was all but a done deal Thursday as it heads to Gov. Pat McCrory for his signature.
It was a fast turnaround for the bill after being passed with no debate by the Senate hours after the House approved it with minor changes. McCrory, an ardent proponent of expanding natural gas exploration in North Carolina, will very likely sign the bill.
Natural gas exploration includes fracking, which refers to hydraulic fracturing, a method of extracting oil and gas by injecting high-pressure mixtures of water, sand or gravel and chemicals into rock. Permits for the practice could be issued by May 2015.
New Orleans to Become All-Charter School District
New Orleans’s Recovery School District will close all of its remaining traditional public schools, according to the Washington Post.
Education was one of the major reforms for the city after its recovery from Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Benjamin Banneker Elementary closed Wednesday as New Orleans’s Recovery School District permanently shuttered its last five traditional public schools this week.
Obama will let states decide how to cut greenhouse gas emissions
President Barack Obama is about to unveil the centerpiece of his agenda to fight climate change, a much anticipated rule to slash the emissions of planet-warming gases from power plants.
The president will call for major reductions, according to sources familiar with the planning, with each state given its own greenhouse gas emissions reduction target and the power to decide how to meet it. The Environmental Protection Agency is putting the plan together, and Obama will announce it Monday.
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