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.'"
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.
While probably correct, there really isn't much substance to your comment, so I decided to add some links to one of the best examples of exploiting metadata: network analysis (or applied graph theory, depending on your bent). It's been applied to webpages, phone call records (using just who calls whom), scientific collaboration networks, social networks, and a whole bunch more. The following links make for some interesting reading about the scope and power of exploiting metadata (at least the introductions):
PageRank, HITS: rank webpages as authoritative based on the links between them (i.e. assume that good pages link to good pages, etc.) PageRank Analyzing the web web communities based on link structure analyzing scientific collaborations based only on patterns of co-authorship and co-citation another one like the previous (although as a computer scientist, i don't think much of mark newman, he writes well).
Remember kids, it's popular because it works!
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
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
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...
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.