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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.'"
"Reasonable minds can disagree about the policy and legal constraints"
Not really. They're infringing upon the constitution and privacy rights. A reasonable mind would always view this as a bad thing.
Who you are, who you're talking to, where you are, where they are and how fast you're moving if you're changing cells.
davecb@spamcop.net
Of course it's sensitive and provides "useful" information. If it didn't provide any information, they wouldn't bother collecting it.
Stazi. NSA. CIA. CSEC. GCHQ.
All the same animal, just different flags.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Dianne Feinstein is the same senator who complained that the CIA searched congress's computers.
It was obvious before that it was a violation of privacy, this is just an illustration. Do you think politicians will care if it doesn't have anything to do with them?
No beer and no TV make Homer something something
I suspect the individual never even knew he was hiding his Assault Rifle Orientation.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
You are clueless, and clearly have no idea about what kinds of things get classified.
For example, say we hand over the specs and signatures for the subs carrying our nuclear deterrents (MIRVs). As it is, any aggressor has no idea where those subs are, what they sound like, their physical limits or their capabilities for detecting threats. If you hand that information over, suddenly, the entire sub fleet becomes useless. Defeats the purpose of being hidden.
Now, that is a fundamental part of MAD and our second-strike capability. Not something that can just be hand-waved away to be "we should just be so strong to not need secrets". We'd bankrupt the country chasing that pipe dream, and still be no better off, given we'd be footing the bill for decades of technology and handing it over, for free, to any interested enemy.
Stealth is another good example. The only countries developing stealth aircraft other than us, were countries that stole the technology or were able to examine downed stealth aircraft we had designed. That advantage gave us at least 3 decades of air superiority, and could have been more. That is a major cost savings and powerful tool compared to building a massively more expensive army to compensate for the lack of that technological superiority(yes, I known we already have a massively expensive army).
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
"outed" does have a negative connotation as if someone was hiding something.
From the Urban Dictionary: To reveal some previously secret part of someone's life.
Of course the original article doesn't say anything like that. It is the original poster's bias that added that phrase
Right, because who needs to pass a law requiring a gun registry when we can just ask the NSA for a list on demand?
Oh, wait, maybe this is a BAD thing.
You gun nutjobs would probably be a lot more successful at making your case if you could string together at least 140 characters that make sense. Right now, people like you are actively keeping the phrase "gun nutjob" alive, and you're turning off people like me who actually support your position. I know it's asking a lot of someone with a room temperature IQ, but could you at least try to think before you click "post"?
Sure. There is nothing wrong with everyone knowing everything about everyone IF nobody will use such knowledge for malicious activities, nor to judge and/or segregate people into groups based on their preferences. I wouldn't mind people knowing which porn genre I prefer if they wouldn't treat me different for it. I'm sure many transsexuals wouldn't mind other people knowing that they are if people would just treat them as human beings just like any other.
The biggest issue with all information being public is that any deviation from social norm is usually met with hostility, instead of curiosity, thought, acceptance that not everyone thinks the same and that not all deviation is "bad".
If it's so useless, then why are they collecting it under the guise of preventing terrorism? It has some use, and obviously, they're able to identify people if they want.
I'm just saying that fears of metadata abuse are overexaggerated.
It's really not.
You seem to be implying that the loss of some privacy is worth the perceived safety society might get from it? Really! Then why not give up all privacy because it would benefit society so much!. That people don't understand the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects" is a fundamental right. Not violating that right is worth any perceived, or even real, danger to society.
"OMG he has kerosene and fertilizer in his garage he must be planning to use it for bomb making! We must investigate and watch him."
later
"OH the kerosene was for a heater but he was using the fertilizer to grow pot so that's why we did the raid and how his wife and dog got shot"
It all starts at 0
I agree, but I think 'gun nutjob' applies to both ends of the spectrum. A majority of Americans believe in the right to own _some_ guns. I assume you are pointing out the right-end of the spectrum. But among the left end, there is a double-speak that is equally counter-productive. Conservatives are aware of this, but most centrists don't realize it. i.e. News headlines and quotes from the left state things like "Common sense" gun laws. But conversations among liberals or progressives are decidedly 100% anti-gun. "Gather them all up and throw them away" This is part of the reason that seemingly reasonable people dig in their heels on any proposed gun laws.
Actually, it wasn't Roe v. Wade.. it was Griswold v. Connecticut, and had to do with the availability of contraception. Essentially saying that what you do in the privacy of your home is none of the government's business. Importantly, there's no explicit "right to privacy" in the US Constitution, but Griswold laid the foundation for why it follows from many of the other parts.
Roe did cite Griswold and other cases and essentially held that decisions to have abortions are a *private matter* between woman and doctor
Yeah, that was my first take as well. This telephone number called that telephone number. Big whoop. Unless we have the name of the person who owns that first telephone number it's still just a number. Granted, matching a name to a phone number is trivially easy, except more and more people are not putting their cell phones into the phone book so it at least requires an Internet connection.
Did you really just say that you think clandestine government agencies are using the White Pages?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I am thinking to a while back when gun owners were outraged at the idea of the addresses of anyone with a registered fire arm being made public.
Even if you are not ashamed of what you are doing, one can still fear potential repercussions and thus 'outed' sounds about right.
As a gun ambivalent Democrat, I'd like to thank the current president for doing so much to stop these abuses.
Actually, the NRA is involved and has joined with the EFF, ACLU, and other groups in opposing NSA snooping.
It is almost worth having all my other comments nulled out just to mod this up. This is exactly the problem with information being too public. In an ideal world we would all have nothing to hide, but in reality stereotypes and biases are rampant, with plenty of people perfectly happy to make your life miserable for failing to conform to norms they hold.
Yeah, but 'suggestive' is all that is needed to potentially make someone's life difficult. As a society we put a lot of emotional stock in 'red flags' that indicate someone is a threat, and are quick to take very limited information and combine it with some authority or socially reenforced magic 8 ball and conclude that 'something is wrong there'.
I'm pretty liberal and fairly progressive, but I'm not 100% anti-gun, so your statement is certainly not broadly generalizable outside of conversations in the media, in my experience. I voted against a gun law just a few months ago, though it passed anyway. I wanted to vote for it, because the requirement that weapons be stored securely (either in a safe or with a trigger lock) was good, and the requirement for timely reporting of stolen firearms was good, but I couldn't vote for it because it also contained a ban on large magazines, which violates the fourth amendment by depriving people of property without due process—in other words, eminent domain all over again.
We do, IMO, need to mandate some changes, like gun safety classes for anyone purchasing a firearm for the first time, electronic fingerprint safeties on all new firearms, etc. And I wouldn't personally want to have a firearm in my house because I think the safety risk exceeds the safety benefit, at least in my neighborhood, but that doesn't mean I think that my opinion should be forced on everyone else. That's part of being a true liberal. Anyone who believes otherwise is a progressive authoritarian, not a progressive liberal.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Excellent!
On the downside, if a coalition of the NRA and the ACLU can't get anywhere, then we're well and truly fucked. I am curious about how many Americans were awake in history class. I was boiled in the Bill of Rights, and the reasoning and historical justification for it. If you're going to wave the flag, you really should know what it stands for.
... then Ms. Feinstein should have no problem with a FOIA request for the metadata for her cellphone.
I bet it would take about an hour to find a call from a lobbyist, received during a break in a legislative session.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
You don't hate guns. You hate the people who own guns. Hating guns is illogical as hating chairs or hats or the air you breathe. They are inanimate objects and if you "hate" them, then you're clearly unable to deal with reality.
That being said, you don't hate guns, you hate "we the people" having guns. As a liberal, forcing people to join your collective under threat of government guns is what you depend upon. Your support of Government owning guns, is very likely. You likely support army, police and other national security people owning and bearing guns, even to protect the President (Republican OR Democrat) and high ranking officials like Feinstein, Reid and so on.
I have YET to meet a "gun hating democrat" that wants to disarm EVERYONE (including the government). Therefore, you don't hate guns. You hate average people having guns. And that speaks higher volumes about your hypocrisy than anything else.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
We're well and truly fucked!!
FTFY
When Feinstein was okay with NSA spying on Americans we were fucked. Now that that chicken came home and roosted upon her doorstep, she is suddenly "offended". Where was that outrage when it didn't affect her. She is a hypocrite of the highest order. ANYONE who supports her at this point is the problem, regardless of how she votes on every other issue.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
And of course there are plenty of people who would like to lynch gun owners as a matter of policy. A bit ironic, but that's the kind of hysteria the U.S. experiences every time someone goes on a rampage.
That's just not ironic. It's asinine.
It would be akin to every time a man rapes a woman, men all over are randomly attacked due to their potential to rape.
It would be akin to every time someone drives drunk and injures someone, people are attacked randomly at a wine tasting event for their potential to drive drunk.
Seems we only care about certain abuses and take them to asinine levels.
People have plenty of guns that the government doesn't know about as they were inherited or obtained through private sales.
electronic fingerprint safeties
After police and military forces (including the special forces and SWAT teams who might actually fire a gun someday) standardize on some technology like, then I think we can talk about the merits of this. Until then we might as well be talking about mandating that all cars run on Cold Fusion by 2017.
You don't hate guns. You hate the people who own guns. Hating guns is illogical as hating chairs or hats or the air you breathe. They are inanimate objects and if you "hate" them, then you're clearly unable to deal with reality.
That being said, you don't hate guns, you hate "we the people" having guns. As a liberal, forcing people to join your collective under threat of government guns is what you depend upon. Your support of Government owning guns, is very likely. You likely support army, police and other national security people owning and bearing guns, even to protect the President (Republican OR Democrat) and high ranking officials like Feinstein, Reid and so on.
I have YET to meet a "gun hating democrat" that wants to disarm EVERYONE (including the government). Therefore, you don't hate guns. You hate average people having guns. And that speaks higher volumes about your hypocrisy than anything else.
This may be true for you, but many people hate created objects. I, for one, hate land mines. I don't care who made them, or where they exist; I don't even care if they're armed or disarmed. I see no problem with someone making a land mine, but I do see a problem with that mine existing for any length of time. I find this logical; land mines not only kill people, they incite (yes, anthropomorphic, but still true) people to carelessly and indiscriminately maim and kill other people.
Likewise, I know of people who hate fully automatic weapons (doesn't matter if it's a gun or not). I know others who hate guns and want them to go away.
You seem to have a very small partisan US-centric world view. Hopefully my comment will help you to think outside the box :)
You have given the most amazing logical argument in favor of gun ownership I think I have ever heard. I have never thought about it this way, but it makes perfect sense.
Dr. Strangelove was not a documentary.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Analysis of metadata is traffic analysis. It has always been one of the staples of military intelligence, and everyone involved in intelligence-gathering knows it. It's based on the knowledge that a great deal of information--often including identities--can be gleaned simply from patterns of communication. Anyone in the intelligence world who says otherwise is knowingly lying.
Hyperbole just makes you look like a fool.
No one owns landmines legally and while many do have automatic firearms, they are highly regulated and owners go through extensive background checks.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The Brady Zombies just won't die.
Gun violence and deaths have been trending down for decades while gun ownership has been going up.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Replace GUN with CAR in the above rant and it still works. (If you compare annual automobile deaths vs gun deaths, CAR is far more concerning).
Using fingerprint scanners for logging into PC's has demonstrated their uselessness. So you want the operator of a firearm to stuff around getting their thumb to scan correctly in a situation where aiming a gun is literally a matter of life and death (not necessarily the holder of the weapon, but lets assume self defence for the sake of argument).
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.