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Stanford Researchers Spot Medical Conditions, Guns, and More In Phone Metadata
An anonymous reader writes "Since the NSA's phone metadata program broke last summer, politicians have trivialized the privacy implications. It's 'just metadata,' Dianne Feinstein and others have repeatedly emphasized. That view is no longer tenable: Stanford researchers crowdsourced phone metadata from real users, and easily identified calls to 'Alcoholics Anonymous, gun stores, NARAL Pro-Choice, labor unions, divorce lawyers, sexually transmitted disease clinics, a Canadian import pharmacy, strip clubs, and much more.' Looking at patterns in call metadata, they correctly diagnosed a cardiac condition and outed an assault rifle owner. 'Reasonable minds can disagree about the policy and legal constraints,' the authors conclude. 'The science, however, is clear: phone metadata is highly sensitive.'"
"Outed" an assault rifle owner? I wasn't aware guns had been banned in the United States. Stop trying to act like perfectly legal actions are illegal to further your already-weak agenda.
Think of all the harm secrecy has done throughout history. Although I as well as almost everyone else sort of hate being spied upon there really is a vast upside to knowing what people are up to. My real concern is that some groups and classes have more privilege to spy than does the man on the street. That can get dangerous in a hurry. At the vey least we should have the same privileges as any corporation and maybe the citizen should have the same ability as government to spy back at government. I expect my military to have sufficient power to never have to be concerned about what knowledge an enemy gains. I feel that our military should be like Babe Ruth pointing at the fence showing where the home run would be hit before the pitch is thrown. Are our weapons so inadequate that other nations could build them even if we handed them the blue prints and specs? Are we so weak that we must be concerned with spy vs. spy activities?