Schneier: Metadata Equals Surveillance

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Bruce Schneier writes that lots of people discount the seriousness of the NSA's actions by saying that it's just metadata — after all the NSA isn't really listening in on everybody's calls — they're just keeping track of who you call. 'Imagine you hired a detective to eavesdrop on someone,' writes Schneier. 'He might plant a bug in their office. He might tap their phone.' That's the data. 'Now imagine you hired that same detective to surveil that person. The result would be details of what he did: where he went, who he talked to, what he looked at, what he purchased — how he spent his day. That's all metadata.' When the government collects metadata on the entire country, they put everyone under surveillance says Schneier. 'Metadata equals surveillance; it's that simple.'"

Comments

Metadata is the most important data

[i kan reed]

This is a basic fact for anyone dealing with any substantive volume of data. The details are of no interest to anyone in power, but patterns are.

The dividing line people will have here is whether the 4th amendment(and the human right it's based on) protects a right to privacy or a right against freely targed witchhunt prosecutions. This spying won't especially invade the first, but could easily be construed to lead to the second.

Re:Metadata is the most important data

[SirGarlon]

Actually, when it comes to metadata, you could make a First Amendment case: freedom of association.

Re:Metadata is the most important data

[icebike]

The details are of no interest to anyone in power, but patterns are.

It has already been made public that huge volumes of email, actual phone conversations are recorded.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57589495-38/nsa-spying-flap-extends-to-contents-of-u.s-phone-calls/
http://reason.com/blog/2013/06/15/yes-actually-the-nsa-says-they-can-eaves
http://www.dailyfinance.com/on/irs-audit-emails-warrant-aclu/

And further, the NSA leaks content to local and state law enforcement.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130805
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/10/the_nsa_dea_police_state_tango/

So the this whole discussion about meta-data is moot. When you can archive, transcribe and catalog content, who needs metadata?

Re:Metadata is the most important data

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because the importance of an inalienable right is judged by the number of the amendment. Good thing they are only violating our 4th amendment rights in passing on the way to the 2nd amendment.

Re:Metadata is the most important data

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't guarantee the general privacy of the masses you don't have freedom of association. In my mind freedom of association is suppose to be that guarantee. Unfortunately the government uses assumptions / suspicions that are not founded on hard evidence to target groups of people. As an example they targeted everybody who accessed services / web sites hosted by Freedom Hosting. If you ask me that was illegal. The same thing can be said about monitoring a group organizing publicly. There is a huge difference between policing a general population and targeting population with surveillance even if many of its members are involved in criminal acts, and then targeting those within, when those within are not themselves necessarily committing illegal acts. You should not assume / suspect me of committing an illegal act simply because I'm associating with a group whose individual members are known to be committing crimes. A few good examples of this would be KKK groups, communist groups, civil rights groups, various African American groups like the Black Panther Party, LGBT groups, pedophilia groups, free software groups (yes, they were targets of the IRS under the Obama administration), etc.

Re:Metadata is the most important data

[icebike]

But if you had bothered to even give those links a cursory look, you would find that they DO CARE what you said, and if the NSA doesn't personally care, they know agencies that do, and they freely share what they learn.

The story is fairly straightforward. A unit of the DEA known as the Special Operations Division has been receiving and distributing vast levels of intelligence from agencies such as the NSA, CIA, and Department of Homeland Security. Upon receiving information about a particular transaction or meeting place, DEA agents go make arrests, using traffic stops as pretext.

There is nothing "beneath them". In order to hold that view, you have to subscriber to the whole "Defenders of America" flag wrapping nonsense. These agencies have ceased working for YOU.

You can't worry about the consequences will have on the people, and ignore the fact that some how, somewhere along the line, this government has taken it upon itself to vet every communication, be party to ever conversation, and monitor every action, and watch every person. Where did that idea of government EVER come from?

Re:Metadata is the most important data

[Anonymous Coward]

At least the NSA isn't going to tell my employer to fire me.

No, no no. Oh, no, of course not. They wouldn't tell anyone to fire anyone.

What happens is men in suits come to your office and speak with the boss behind closed doors. Then they speak with the coworkers. They ask questions about what you were doing, how you work with other people. Has anyone seen you get angry, raise your voice, raise your fist, get a little violent? Do you have weapons? Do you bring them to work?

The details are fuzzy, but when I worked as a student worker at a big university back in the 90's, exactly this happened to one of my coworkers, courtesy of the CIA. The men introduced themselves as such, didn't suggest that we couldn't speak about the meeting (though he suggested we not discuss the boss's closed door meeting), but isn't that the point? Everyone knew the guy was being investigated for something. Things got awkward, and eventually the guy was let go because nobody wanted to work with him anymore.

Re:Metadata is the most important data

[mendax]

Actually, when it comes to metadata, you could make a First Amendment case: freedom of association.

Indeed, and, in fact, this is the major argument being made by the ACLU acting on its own behalf in its lawsuit against the NSA over the collection of metadata. It allows the government to determine who its clients are, who are its members, etc. Numerous Supreme Court rulings from the civil rights era make it clear that the First Amendment guarantees the right to associate anonymously. It should also be noted that the First Amendment freedoms are the most protected by the courts. When the government feels the need to do so it MUST MUST MUST as little as possible and only to satisfy its legitimate needs and no farther. The courts call the application of this "strict scrutiny". Because this is a geeky forum, most people here know a way this collection of metadata can be done that protects the identity of the parties. Because this exists, the NSA's collection of meta data is unconstitutional on its face.

There is no point in arguing that the NSA has a legitimate need to collect metadata from phone companies and ISPs. We don't like it but It has that need, it can demonstrate the validity of that need, and the courts are going to recognize it. But there is a less restrictive way of doing it that would accomplish the same thing and they didn't use it.

Re:Metadata is the most important data

[Anonymous Coward]

The Supreme Court ruling you are looking for is National Association for the Advancement of Colored people v. Alabama

Re:Metadata is the most important data

[Phrogman]

The modern day equivalent to Bread and Circuses, Cheezeburgers and Movies/TV perhaps?

Consumers get focused on consuming, poor people get focused on where the rent is coming from and can they afford to eat. Neither gets involved in Politics, particularly when everyone knows that politicians do not have the interests of the people at heart, are actively accepting bribes (in the form of campaign contributions) and that the system is rigged to ensure that one of two candidates who are mostly the same will be elected no matter how they choose to vote, plus of course the rich are running it all.

Wrong response mind you but its easy to see how it happens.

Re:Metadata is the most important data

[bigfoottoo]

I absolutely agree that they are scooping up EVERYTHING. When the Snowden story first broke, the government story was that they were collecting metadata on 3 billion US phone calls per day. They acted like this was a big deal. But, think about it. Suppose that each metadata entry requires 100 bytes. In this case, they are collecting 300 GBytes of meta data per day. Hell, I can store that much on my laptop! Instead, they are bringing an exa-Byte facility online in Utah, and they are building another giant farm at Ft. Meade. Something doesn't add up. I suspect that the raw data stream goes into the NSA "haystack" where it sits. So when Obama said, "Nobody is listening to your phone calls.", he technically was correct. Your phone calls are recorded, but nobody is listening to them. The voice data sits in the archive until probable cause is established by examining metadata. Once probable cause is established, an analyst gets to listen to everything you have muttered on the phone over the last several years. This retroactive aspect of NSA actions is truely disgusting. There probably are many good people in the NSA. But, there also were many good Germans doing bad things in WWII. Or, what we often did in Vietnam. The NSA, as an institution, seems to dispise the Bill of Rights, and unless this is changed, we will lose our nation.

Re:Metadata is the most important data

[Swampash]

Citizen you are free to associate with whomever you want, we'll just record who it was, where, when, for how long, and how that compares with previous meetings.

Re:Metadata is the most important data

[icebike]

The technology that Google Voice uses, and that Android phones use, and even iPhones use to convert voice to text would allow them to grind away at those recorded conversations and weed out the "Honey pick up some milk on the way home" conversations and dump these to save space.

Meanwhile any talk of interesting subjects would get added to the text database for searching, and the audio saved.

Nobody "listened" to that call. But a computer did, and translated it, and cataloged it and made it searchable. And a human will listen to it, and so will the judge and jury any time the government wants to hang you out to dry for getting an ounce of weed, or a stock tip, or any little discrepancy on your taxes.

Now that these abuses are known, I actually expect to see the data used more often. Because they don't need to worry about disclosing a secret project any more. We will be treated to all sorts of "see how surveillance is good for you" stories cherry picked and praises sung when the meth dealer gets caught or the pedophile gets outed. We are all in for the "Frogs in a kettle" treatment.

Re:Metadata is the most important data

[dryeo]

Came across this interesting link yesterday, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism

Big Data

[Anonymous Coward]

The result would be details of what he did: where he went, who he talked to, what he looked at, what he purchased — how he spent his day.

And with big data hitting the databases of Amazon (and every other retailer you shop), Google, credit cards, banks, credit bureaus, medical information bureau, IRS, .... they can find out just about anything they want about you.

When you turn off Ghostery, NoScript and AdBlock, it's pretty fucking eerie the ads that are placed on pages - and that's JUST the marketing people. Just image what the NSA can do!

Yep! Made fun of the Tin Foil hat wearers all those years and we're RIGHT!

Re:Big Data

[VortexCortex]

I recently opted out of Google targeted ads because of the interests it thought I liked. Among them: Women's Issues, Defense and Aerospace, Arts and Crafts, etc. I'm interested in Men's Issues (90%+ workplace deaths are males, 80%+ homeless are men, 40%+ of domestic abuse victims are male, and women are as violent or more so than men yet there are only "battered womens' shelters" no men's shelters), I don't really care about Defense just Space (why these are linked in their interests might be to fuzz defense nuts as possible space nuts? Maybe cryptography = defense?), I make inde games as a hobby but could give a fuck less about arts and cratfs... The list goes on and on -- over 20 interests, 5 were half right, the rest were just WAY off base.

The shit they know is WRONG. And if this is any indication of the power of "big data" (a new buzword for Analytics) then I'm even more wary of what the NSA thinks they can glean from their aggregate bullshit. With the things I research for my fictional writing & game plots, and my outspoken stance on government accountability, anti-war posts, and patent/copyright reform, etc. they probably think I'm a terrorist, when in reality, I would sooner die than kill another sentient being.

The road to despotism is paved with absolutist notions. Do not try to create absolute security, that is impossible. This complete intolerance for risk is ridiculous and destructive. You have more risk of heart attack or automobile accident than terrorist attack.... The funding should be in tastier health food, not killing brown people and spying on every citizen. Of course the message to the people is one of protection from drummed up threat. The reality is that those doing the spying know their ends can't fit the means; They have completely other set of agendas, and practically have to manufacture offenders to prove they're protecting you. Only thing you could really do with the data on that scale is controlling the world's financial markets. Protip: the CIA and other black-ops are funded not by tax money primarily, but by investments via shell corps...

You don't have anything to fear, citizen, unless you use uncontrollable currencies, like bitcoins, or develop new cryptographic ciphers, or use untrackable data transfers.

Truth is, I live not in fear of terrorists, but in fear of being hit by a bus or disappeared by a black van... I refuse to NOT post things online that could be taken the wrong way. Fuck 'em. Live free or Die, I say, like an American of braver times.

Additionally, my websites know when you're using Ghostery, NoScript, and AdBlock, or user agent spoofers, fingerprint normalizers, etc. Your use of these damn near perfectly profiles the kind of user you are... I just use the data to serve you the page for a downloadable game instead of the WebGL or flash version, but others could do much more...

Give people time...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's gonna take awhile for everyone to get upto speed on this whole 'spying on everyone' thing.
Heck just 5 years ago if you made the statement 'the goverment is spying on all of us'. You'd get some sort of response involving tinfoil and hats even tho it was 100% true 5 years ago as it is today.

And now... People are starting to realize it wasn't just crazy tinfoil hat ramblings... Give them some time and they'll wise up. Somewhat...
Nother 10 years we might be able to even start fixing the problem. But i wouldn't bet on it.

Re:Give people time...

[Ralph Wiggam]

Heck just 5 years ago if you made the statement 'the goverment is spying on all of us'. You'd get some sort of response involving tinfoil and hats

I read this all the time and it's just not true.

In 2006, the front page of the New York Times detailed how the NSA was copying basically all internet traffic right from the backbone. At the time it was seen as a confirmation of what basically everyone had suspected for decades. Obviously if they were gathering all of that data, they were doing something with it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

The USSC has said otherwise

[Anonymous Coward]

In 1979, the US Supreme Court ruled that collection of this metadata did not contitute a search.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_v._Maryland

Re:The USSC has said otherwise

[Attila Dimedici]

Actually, while they did say that collecting metadata did not constitute a search, they have never said that putting someone under surveillance was a search either. The police do not need a search warrant to follow you around. In 1979, when the Supreme Court made the ruling in question, the metadata available was no more thorough than a police officer could obtain by following you around. Since that time, things have changed significantly. If a lawyer argued the case correctly, they could convince the court that it could overturn the precedent without having to find that the original ruling was a mistake.

Re:The USSC has said otherwise

[ZombieBraintrust]

In 2012 the US Supreme Court ruled that the police needed a warrant to track your car with a GPS. That attaching a device to your car was a trespass.

Re:The USSC has said otherwise

[intermodal]

The fundamental difference between this and the Smith case is that the agencies had to do their own recording to accomplish it, as opposed to demanding (and getting, whether coerced, cooperative, or compelled) records. I have been saying for weeks that the most disturbing part of this is that even if your data is handed over by the telcos, you have no recourse because the documents searched were not yours in the first place. Even with the fourth amendment.

Re:The USSC has said otherwise

[Anonymous Coward]

The police do not need a search warrant to follow you around.

They don't need a warrant, but they DO need a reason.

while they did say that collecting metadata did not constitute a search

No, that's not what they said. Nowhere was the phrase "metadata" used. What they said was that you did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in regards to the numbers you dialed, because you told the phone company by dialing them. The term "metadata" is not defined legally anywhere, which is why the politicians keep using it.
You're also ignoring the fact that there are laws specifically dealing with information collected by Telcos. Search the FCC page for "CPNI" if you want specifics, but put simply the phone company is not allowed to disclose your call details to anybody other than you without a warrant or court order.

Metadata

[LoraxLobster0202]

Metada is as private as the contents is. However, I can't loose the the feeling, that somehow entire debate is being spun as if society "accepts" that metadata does not matter. It matters. The thing is that if existing law would be followed " The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized", then most of NSA would be out of work. The Irony is that one, merely mentioning his rights is automatically classified as potential terroris http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/ridiculous-dhs-list-you-might-be-domestic-ter

US President Hides His Metadata

[Anonymous Coward]

The President of the United states refuses to divulge his visitor lists claiming that it might divulge privileged information. This has been going on for years under presidents of both parties. Visitor lists are metadata (who he talked to, not what they talked about). If the president recognizes his metadata is confidential, how can he claim other peoples' metadata is not confidential?

I propose Americans get metadata for politicians

[JoeyRox]

If the NSA collecting metadata on Americans isn't such a big deal then I propose the metadata for all politicians be posted on a publicly accessible website. I'm particularly interested in the phone records between Congress and K Street.

Not just the NSA

[ThatAblaze]

People seem to be losing sight of the fact that it isn't only the NSA that is doing this tracking. Europe and China are both huge on tracking, they just haven't had this kind of public leak. So, while the question of which US Constitutional Amendment has been breached is a good question, it doesn't address the larger picture question: Where do we, as citizens of whichever country, draw the line and force our governments to stop?

Re:Not just the NSA

[SirGarlon]

We don't care what China and Europe are doing.

Speak for yourself. The Slashdot audience is global and the problem is global.

a few thousand people killed 12 years ago did not give the government of the USA the right to start using the Constitution for toilet paper

Quite right: an apathetic public gave the government the ability (not the right) to violate its founding principles. The terrorist attacks were a pretext to accelerate the trend, not the real reason.

Re:Not just the NSA

[digsbo]

I don't think it's the left/right axis. Communism is left. Communism is also authoritarian. It's the authoritarian/libertarian axis that you're interested in here.

Re:Not just the NSA

[Anonymous Coward]

Communism is also authoritarian. It's the authoritarian/libertarian axis that you're interested in here.

Communism isn't authoritarian, Authoritarianism is. On paper, communism couldn't be authoritarian - it's arguably closer to democracy than even the ideal American state was. But that's on paper - in reality it's used by those desiring power to implement something completely different.

There's many schools of 'libertarian' (which should really be stated as Anarchism) communism, such as anarcho-communism. Marx was, ultimately, and Anarchist/Libertarian.

Re:Not just the NSA

[sFurbo]

In most democratic states, there are two forms of decisions: the ones made by elected officials, and the ones made by corporate leaders. Ideally, democratic elections should ensure that the first kind of decision is in line with what the people want; while the second kind of decision is usually dominated by a rich and powerful individuals.

That's a bit of a double standard, isn't it? The reasonable way to put it would either be "ideally, democratic elections should ensure that the first kind of decision is in line with what the majority wants, while market forces should ensure that the second kind is in line with what the individual wants" or "usually, the first kind of decision is dominated by powerful individuals, while the second kind is dominated by rich individuals". The first example also highlights how communism becomes authoritarian: While it is fine for the majority to decide that murder it not OK, it becomes authoritarian for the majority to decide whether people are allowed to eat cereal for breakfast.

the social graph colours all nodes

[epine]

Traffic analysis is the process of intercepting and examining messages in order to deduce information from patterns in communication. It can be performed even when the messages are encrypted and cannot be decrypted. In general, the greater the number of messages observed, or even intercepted and stored, the more can be inferred from the traffic.

The primary filter has always been traffic analysis. It constructs the social graph. I've heard that's worth something. An otherwise valueless company seems to trade on it.

Traffic analysis is what one can do effectively on a perversive scale. It puts the "focus" into focused intelligence, which would otherwise amount to extracting needles from haystacks concerning the detection of novel threats. Indeed, often the forest is worth more than the trees. The bits of business of an individual life are often less easy to read than a person's extended social footprint.

Fu..hrermore, in an electronic society where six degrees of separation is an overestimate by half, is there anyone in the population less secluded than a junior wife in a Mormon splinter town who couldn't be painted as a threat for having crossed digital paths with at least three shady characters over three decades of normal living?

The social graph colours all nodes. Does anyone think that members of the judicial oversight committee are required to bone up on Turing's use of log probability to establish meaningful discrimination thresholds?

Consider the four principal categories of metadata:
* who
* what
* when
* where

Looks harmless to me. What goes under "why"? Anything their little minds decide to write down.

Who: public school teacher
What: google search for "pressure cooker"
When: yesterday
What: google search for "backpack"
When: day before yesterday
Where: domestic residence, Springfield

Yet again, the metadata paints a compelling picture: moral turpitude. What could be more obvious among a law enforcement community prone to the syllogism that "I don't like the look on your face" equates to "disturbing the peace".

Checks and balances? Guess what? Metadata signs all cheques.

Re:So in other words...

[Zero__Kelvin]

Since metadata is data about data nobody ever questioned if metadata was data. The argument was that it wasn't important data. Of course, the simple question: If it isn't important data, then why gather it? seems to elude most people even to this day.

The metadata is how we figure you out

[WillAffleckUW]

the metadata is how we figure you out.

the data is just the evidence when we finally put you in jail for thoughtcrimes.

Re:police

[WillAffleckUW]

You guys still haven't understood you lived in a police state ?
What's it gonna take ??

When they start quartering troops (e.g. bots) in our houses (e.g. computers).

oh.

wait.

NSA Definition of Metadata and it's official usage

[wjcofkc]

Metadata can be abused as an ambiguous term, as we are seeing the NSA doing. I would like to hear the NSA definition of metadata in clear, no uncertain, and thorough terms. They are peddling the term to a populace that hasn't realized that by and large, they themselves don't know what it means. By saying "it's just metadata" that seems to be enough for much of the population to think what they are up to is benign without even knowing what it is, and I really don't understand why.

Never yield

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Politicians stole the word "metadata" from computer science, and declared it on-limits for warrantless spying. This is a sophistry, invented out of whole cloth.

The king of England would have used phone metadata to round up the Founding Fathers in quick order. Therefore government doesn't get to do this.

Stop government from building the tools of tyrrany to begin with. That is the meaning of the Constitution.

This won't be popular

[msobkow]

This won't be a popular perspective, but I agree that metadata is not data.

It's like collecting the "from" addresses on the mail delivered to your door without opening the envelopes. They're not steaming open your letters, so it's legal.

The problem is that "legal" isn't necessarily moral. Especially given the sheer volume of meta data generated by the average internet-connected humanoid in modern times.

For one thing, I keep in touch with far more people and places using email than I ever did using snail mail. I used to get maybe 3-4 letters a year, a few magazines, and anonymous junk mail when I relied on snail mail for communications. In the electronic age, I keep in touch with several dozen friends, get newsletters from vendors and sometimes click on the links to read the articles they've published or subscribe to the online training they've offered, I broadcast emails to groups of friends (something I couldn't do with snail mail at all), and generally am far more connected via email alone than I ever was by snail mail or phone calls.

Add in the browsing meta data, and you start to get a painfully clear picture of my likes, dislikes, interests, and associations without ever diving into the details. When you consider that the NSA, CSEC, GCHQ, and others track not only my direct interests but n levels of indirection, and I end up associated with all kinds of distasteful figures that I'd never willingly associate with in real life, much less send a snail-mail letter to.

The only saving grace is the needle-in-a-haystack problem. The more meta data they collect, the bigger the haystack and the harder it is to find the needles buried within.

And the number of mass shootings and bombings in the US and around the world just proves that point. I've not seen it broadcast that they arrested anyone other than the VIA train plotters in Canada to date.

One instance where surveillance did what it should. Versus dozens of instances where it failed abysmally.