What Does Six Months of Meta-Data Look Like?

SpicyBrownMustard sends in a fascinating data visualization at Zeit Online showing what information about a person's life can be gleaned from cellphone metadata. Quoting: "Green party politician Malte Spitz sued to have German telecoms giant Deutsche Telekom hand over six months of his phone data that he then made available to ZEIT ONLINE. We combined this geolocation data with information relating to his life as a politician, such as Twitter feeds, blog entries and websites, all of which is all freely available on the internet. By pushing the play button, you will set off on a trip through Malte Spitz's life. The speed controller allows you to adjust how fast you travel, the pause button will let you stop at interesting points. In addition, a calendar at the bottom shows when he was in a particular location and can be used to jump to a specific time period. Each column corresponds to one day."

Comments

This is years old

[Animats]

This was years ago. I think it was even on Slashdot.

Re:This is years old

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but now we know the NSA has these on all allied politicians. I think it would be interesting to see how theirs compares to zeit's. I'm guessing its more accurate, but has a less html5 compliant interface.

Re:This is years old

[Russ1642]

While we're on the subject, who came up with the internet rule that no discussion shall take place more than once? That it's old or that it was discussed years ago doesn't mean it isn't relevant today.

Re:This is years old

[Krazy Kanuck]

Here's the subject from 2011, however i believe the visualizations is the news this time around. http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/03/26/179257/german-politician-demonstrates-extent-of-cellphone-location-tracking

Re:This is years old

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you repeat the question please?

Re:This is years old

[Trax3001BBS]

Here's the subject from 2011, however i believe the visualizations is the news this time around. http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/03/26/179257/german-politician-demonstrates-extent-of-cellphone-location-tracking

Reply to that article:

This would never happen in the USA (Score:4, Insightful)
  Saturday March 26, 2011 @03:54PM

No phone company could ever be forced to divulge those sort of records simply because a customer demanded it.

We have very strong privacy protections in this country - for the telcos

As Max Smart ("Get Smart" TV series) would say "Missed it by that much".

Re:This is years old

[Pseudonym Authority]

Control freak moderators on shitty forums decided that years ago. You are supposed to use the search function to find a thread, but then you cannot post in it, as it is locked for going to long without a bump; you cannot start a new thread without being redirected to the old, and having your new thread locked.

It's basically a way to be obsessed with rules and wave your dick around. This is good because it shows how long you've been on the site, and proves that you are a valuable contributor (a very important thing for people with low self-esteem).

Re:This is years old

[steelfood]

I think people are just taking the idea of dupes too far. Dupes happen within a short period of time and are a result of sloppy editing.

This is NOT A DUPE.

This would be a great link to add to for every discussion on Snowden as a response to people who say that what the NSA is doing is OK because it's only "metadata." Then tell them that's the data they have on them as well, and ask them if they've been to a strip club recently.

Re:This is years old

[bfandreas]

It was years ago. And it was in response to proposed legislation for mandatory telco data retention. The legislation didn't go anywhere due to massive protests.
Now it turns out that that data still gets stored and will be used after clearance by secret courts. Which actually makes you wonder if western democracy is even skin-deep.

So yes, Malte's data porn still is relevant. And he also quite recently published an op-ed on the NYT which does a good job explaining why state snooping doesn't fly in Germany. Even if he forgets to mention the massive protests against temporary random searching installed in the 70ies to catch red terrorists. "Temprary" turned out to partly include "the next 40 years and potentially indefinitely".

This isn't metadata. It's just data.

[lasermike026]

The term "metadata" being used by the politicians is off the bullcrap meter.

it even confused me

[Anonymous Coward]

And i've been in tech for quite a long time. Then I realized it just means "All Data"

Re: This isn't metadata. It's just data.

[msauve]

Nope. It's metadata only in very specific reference to phone calls. In every other sense, it's data, pure and simple. It's data in terms of location tracking. If you had tracking information from a GPS, that would be data. If they were tracking you by machine reading license plates, taken from security camera, that would be data. If they followed you around and recorded your location, that would be data. Just because the tracking info comes from a cell provider's records, doesn't make it any less than tracking data.

When they say they're only collecting "metadata, not the calls themselves," they're being deliberately, disingenuously, misleading.

Along the same lines

[Ghjnut]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv7Y0W0xmYQ