Before having a knee-jerk response, let me describe something that undoubtably someone will provide within 5-10 years, and which I'm sure the NSA can already do.
Pick a time period and a geographic location. Scoop up all pictures on Facebook (or some other social media) that match this. Run image recognition algorithms to pull back all pictures that might include a particular person. Then manually go through that list.
Sample use case, "So what did you really do at SXSW?" (I name this example because I was surprised at what I saw when I went there a few years ago, but plenty of other conferences have reputations as well.)
Given current trends, universal surveillance is a technological inevitability. Coming soon to a spouse near you. When it becomes commonplace, are we really going to say that it isn't available to law enforcement?
Entropy leaks, and pirates aren't the only beneficiaries. It's just a fundamental fact when sieving that entropy is cheap that life will be less private.
Pick a time period and a geographic location. Scoop up all pictures on Facebook (or some other social media) that match this. Run image recognition algorithms to pull back all pictures that might include a particular person. Then manually go through that list.
Sample use case, "So what did you really do at SXSW?" (I name this example because I was surprised at what I saw when I went there a few years ago, but plenty of other conferences have reputations as well.)
Given current trends, universal surveillance is a technological inevitability. Coming soon to a spouse near you. When it becomes commonplace, are we really going to say that it isn't available to law enforcement?
See http://www.davidbrin.com/transparency.html for more meditations on this theme.