The document cites Zaidan as an example to demonstrate the powers of SKYNET, a program that analyzes location and communication data (or “metadata”) from bulk call records in order to detect suspicious patterns. In the Terminator movies, SKYNET is a self-aware military computer system that launches a nuclear war to exterminate the human race, and then systematically kills the survivors. According to the presentation, the NSA uses its version of SKYNET to identify people that it believes move like couriers used by Al Qaeda’s senior leadership. The program assessed Zaidan as a likely match, which raises troubling questions about the U.S. government’s method of identifying terrorist targets based on metadata.

RT @jeremyscahill: SKYNET is real: by @coracurrier @ggreenwald @AndrewDFish

RT @brianbeutler: Nice dry touch in an important story

RT @coracurrier: NSA's SKYNET looks for suspect behaviors in millions of Pakistani cell records

Fighting that Terminator in our Pockets

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.

Plusieurs documents secrets américains laissent entendre que la France participe au « chalutage » de la NSA. Un article top secret datant de 1989 récemment déclassifiés, provenant de la revue interne de la NSA Cryptologic quarterly, met en avant l’intérêt pour l’agence américaine d’une coopération renforcée avec les pays appelés « Third Party Nations », dont la France fait partie. Dès les années 1980, les Américains ont jeté les bases d’une coopération élargie, alors qu’elle était pour le moment limité aux partenaires anglo-saxons. Ils préparaient ainsi le monde qu’il allait survenir avec l’avènement d’internet.

Parallèle Citizenfour et projet de loi

Claude Shannon - Father of the Information Age

RT @extinctsymbol: Monsanto's Roundup pesticide is "a butterfly killer, a frog killer and potentially an infant and adult human killer" htt…