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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.'"
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
THE Muslims want to kill and subdue us? All of them?
With such broad generalized accusations, you are a much greater danger to freedom than the average Muslim is. Specifically you seem to be defending your freedom by pissing it away.
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.
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.
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
Reasonably minds rarely make the claim that only people who agree with them are reasonable.
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.
Importantly, there's no explicit "right to privacy" in the US Constitution
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects" sure sounds a hell of a lot like "privacy" to me. Of course, an "explicit" right to privacy is not required, it's already guaranteed by those pesky 9th and 10th amendments.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
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.
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).