Slashdot Mirror
Matt Blaze Examines Communications Privacy
altjira writes "Matt Blaze analyzes the implications of a recent Newsweek story on the Bush administration's use of the NSA for domestic spying on communications, and questions whether the lower legal threshold for the collection of communications metadata is giving away too much to the government: 'As electronic communication pervades more of our daily lives, transaction records — metadata — can reveal quite a bit about us, indeed often much more than a few out-of-context conversations might. Aggregated into databases with other people's records (or perhaps everyone's records) and analyzed by powerful software, metadata by itself can paint a remarkably detailed picture of connections, relationships, and other patterns that could never be recovered simply from listening to the conversations themselves.'"
Indeed, metadata is a powerfull thing, very powerfull.
Infact, it's metadata which matters the most. An real world example of the power of metadata is Google. Basicly, the ranking works because of metadata, originating as metadata or derived from the content of the page.
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
This is just another example of something that penalises innocent people who just want to communicate, while barely hindering those who are up to genuine mischief. These bills are usually designed to counter terrorism. One fatal flaw: most terrorist organisations would have someone with the technological experience to find a way around such monitoring - like routing network traffic through servers in foreign countries, or using TOR.
Excuse for why is your room always messy?
Just look at websites like Facebook and Myspace. You are basically telling those companies, through their website, who you are, who your friends are, where you like to hang out, etc. There is a rapidly decreasing margin of privacy for the government to encroach on; just quickly looking through someone's Facebook profile tells you who their friends are, and which of those friends they hang out with the most (based on which friends are most likely to appear in pictures with the target of interest). That's enough information to track down and capture a person, and nobody had to leave their office or interview anyone. The worst part? People are voluntarily giving this information to Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, and so forth.
Palm trees and 8
... wasn't to find terrorist, but to weigh the public response so to know how best to manipulate the public via the media, so to support political agendas... such as the war on Iraq drum banging bandwagon for public approval.
It is because such information can be used in such a way, and inherently will be as who wouldn't make use of such information to achive their own agendas, especially when they think they are doing nothing wrong?... that such information should not exist.
However, there is no stopping it now but it can be made public where it's destructive value can be neutralized as was the stock market formula that lead to the trillion dollar bet, made public to neutralize it.
Personally, I try to work the words "bomb plan", "explosive" or "sulfuric acid as a catalyst" in all of my instant message conversations online. The poor analysis software must get lonely without stuff to find in most communications.
Of course a real anarchist bomb making skeptic might also include words like "tax dodge" or "after downing street" in their mail...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If the government argues that meta-data isn't important and doesn't need to be protected, then the citizens should demand that the government also abide by this and release all communications meta-data relating to government employees. It might open the eyes of a few to see who their elected representatives actually spend their work days talking to. It would also massively boost the case for greater government transparency.
Having done some considerable work with, e.g., Analyst's Notebook (http://www.i2inc.com/products/analysts_notebook/), metadata can be an incredibly powerful tool. When you can work with the information in a flexible manner and see the patterns emerge ... Lots of things become clear, or at least point to powerful inferences.
geek. lawyer.
The fact of the matter is that this NSA program was illegal. The Newsweek article suggests that several high-ranking members of the Justice Department were aware that the program was illegal, and did nothing to stop it.
Such a violation of the law represents a fundamental failure of our system of government to protect the rights of its citizenry. Because the Bush administration has willfully broken the law, the federal government no longer has the moral right or authority to govern the people of the United States.
Barack Obama needs to take drastic steps, including impeachment and prosecution of all those within the Bush administration who have broken the law, if he wishes to restore the validity and authority of the federal government.
The only communications the government listened in on were calls FROM this country TO other countries. IF the call was routine, then it was dropped. IF the call was about terrorism, then your asses were protected from it. Got it?
your lord and master obama.
I don't particularly object to loss of privacy or to people being held accountable for anything regardless of how they are caught, but I do object to the creation of a new class that is allowed to snoop and know things the rest of us don't. I'd favor making _everything_ obtained through any kind of wiretap or other spy techniques public unless there was a reason to keep it classified, and that should be reviewed periodically.
GWB's administration, that's who.
Obama, that's who.
One man's data is another man's meta-data.
Why not extend this test to national-security information? I bet if you ask the military, CIA, NSA, etc. whether they would consider their own "meta-data" as less sensitive than the actual content of messages, they'd say no. The history of traffic analysis in military and foreign-policy applications is a pretty good indication of that.
But it does sound like a 21st Century version of the Watergate scandal mantra of "Follow The Money"...
There IS no debate in the context cited. The Bill of Rights lays to rest any questions about what the .gov should be able to do. The fact that they are doing things that go AGAINST the Bill of Rights is something nobody disputes. The only debate should be about HOW to prosecute those officials who have enabled and participated in crimes against the our rights as American citizens.
Unfortunately we can't even get to the plateau where everyone agrees something needs to be done. This country IMO is done; it just took the financial aspects a while to catch up.
After a thousand Brooklyn Bridges, hundreds of thousands wow goldof pet rocks and millions of Creed albums later, ol' P.T. may have been on to something. But Tuesday night, wow goldthe fans -- the consumers -- got it right and got their money's worth.
And who says that all Facebook and Myspace users are telling the truth about themselves and who are their friends and so on?
I tell Facebook and Myspace only that I want them to know.
Some people love to live in a fantasyworld, like in Facebook and Myspace. I shouldn't never trust on anything written on Facebook and Myspace.