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.'"

Comments

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on what definition of "terrorist" you use.

The Maryland State Police classified 53 nonviolent activists as terrorists and entered their names and personal information into state and federal databases that track terrorism suspects, the state police chief acknowledged yesterday.

source