The National Security Agency is capturing millions of images from social media and other communication networks to develop "sophisticated facial recognition programs," according to the New York Times.

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Former contractor-turned-fugitive Edward Snowden released documents to the paper detailing a comprehensive image collection program, mining data from state identification cards, emails, text messages, 'selfies' and other online media. The N.S.A. combs through millions of images per day, approximately 55,000 of which are "facial recognition quality."

The development of high-resolution cameras in mobile devices and the increasing need for millennials to capture every facet of their daily lives on social media, has created "tremendous untapped potential" for everyone's favorite super invasive, privacy agnostic government agency.

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The one question the report leaves unanswered is how the intelligence agency filters through all those uploaded pictures of cats, which — as we all know — is what the Internet was actually made for.

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