Big Brother now wants to know what everybody looks like.

The National Security Agency or NSA now wants to put a face behind the name of every person of interest on the Internet.

Documents leaked by Edward Snowden reveal the NSA has collected millions of faces from the Internet as part of its relentless digital image harvesting campaign.

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It said the NSA has been using facial recognition software to scan the Internet for pictures and match them with data. The NSA can now detect subtle changes in a target person's face, like a beard, and link this photo to satellite data to determine that person's location.

In 2011, the NSA was generating 55,000 facial recognition quality images per day out of millions of candidates. That output has undoubtedly increased.

Analysts said US privacy and surveillance laws protect facial images but the NSA has found ways to skirt this prohibition.

Civil liberty advocates are worried the NSA may be diminishing privacy by learning too much about someone from a simple picture.

The NSA is heavily into digital image harvesting because of new software that can process the tsunami of digital communications such as emails and videos. News reports said the NSA believes the new technologies will revolutionize how it locates targets around the world.

The NSA, however, said it is required to get court approval for imagery of Americans collected through its surveillance programs.

TagsNSA, digital, image, harvesting, facial, recognition, Edward Snowden, Privacy