01 | June | 2014 | Peter "Just Loves Flying"

N.S.A. Collecting Millions of Faces From Web Images – NYTimes.com

June 1, 2014

N.S.A. Collecting Millions of Faces From Web Images – NYTimes.com.

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.

The agency intercepts “millions of images per day” — including about 55,000 “facial recognition quality images” — which translate into “tremendous untapped potential,” according to 2011 documents obtained from the former agency contractor Edward J. Snowden…

Gambia may get first pilot school – Daily Observer

June 1, 2014

Gambia may get first pilot school – Daily Observer.

If the words of the latest investors from the Trans-continental nation of Turkey are anything to go by, The Gambia may be on the way toward getting its first ever pilot school.

This was disclosed by the chairman of the OmniTek Company, who is leading a team of investors from his company to explore possibilities of extending to The Gambia.

“We are also representing Airport Traffic Management System and we will be setting up training educational centers for airport traffic controllers and pilots. So this will make The Gambia benefit from these services and all the neighboring countries to be trained in The Gambia,” he disclosed.

If successfully put in place, he noted, people from all over Africa and even Europe would be attracted to come to The Gambia to undergo these trainings. ..