Here’s How U.S. Spies Will Find You Through Your Pics

For all the non-criminals out there who actually think they are entitled to privacy this is another good use case for Social Fortress[1][2].

[1] Disclaimer: I'm involved with Social Fortress

[2] Social Fortress protects messages and photos with transparent client side encryption directly within services such as Facebook, Google+, Outlook and others. It can be had for free from https://www.socialfortress.com

Is this a joke? Any halfway credible criminal would make sure to strip that info out before posting (or use a device that doesn't capture it).

Exactly, which is why the article spends most of its time discussing how location can be determined through other means, such as Google Images, to find photos with similar geographic features to narrow possible locations.

US Intelligence is smart enough to check EXIF data now?