President Obama has emphasized that the NSA is “not looking at content.” “[T]his is just metadata,” Senator Feinstein told reporters. In dismissing the ACLU’s legal challenge, Judge Pauley shrugged off possible sensitive inferences as a “parade of horribles.”Go to the link for tables on what they found. And be aware that they can use your facebook page to fill in the blanks about you as part of the metadata.
On the other side, a number of computer scientists have expressed concern over the privacy risks posed by metadata. Ed Felten gave a particularly detailed explanation in a declaration for the ACLU: “Telephony metadata can be extremely revealing,” he wrote, “both at the level of individual calls and, especially, in the aggregate.” Holding the NSA’s program likely unconstitutional, Judge Leon credited this view and noted that “metadata from each person’s phone ‘reflects a wealth of detail about her familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations.’”
This is, at base, a factual dispute. Is it easy to draw sensitive inferences from phone metadata? How often do people conduct sensitive matters by phone, in a manner reflected by metadata?
Friday, March 14, 2014
Phone Metadata: They Know A Lot About YOU.
A Stanford Student Study reals the truth about metadata:
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4 comments:
Here is the chilling part:
"At the outset of this study, we shared the same hypothesis as our computer science colleagues—we thought phone metadata could be very sensitive. We did not anticipate finding much evidence one way or the other, however, since the MetaPhone participant population is small and participants only provide a few months of phone activity on average.
We were wrong. We found that phone metadata is unambiguously sensitive, even in a small population and over a short time window. We were able to infer medical conditions, firearm ownership, and more, using solely phone metadata."
The average person (and a lot of computer scientists who are not specialists in the relevant field([s]) would be absolutely astonished at what inferences can be drawn between supposed items of "metadata". The relevant field is database technology, with the subspecialties of data warehousing and data mining.
This is one area in which I KNOW at least some of the capabilities that exist commercially, outside of the official "snooping" agencies which have their own in-house technical staffs elaborating on and extending the commercial capabilities. I designed the IRS Excise Tax Division's database system, back in 2000-2002. We used an Oracle database system, with full data warehousing and data mining capabilities. I left the prime contractor company right after the system went live. It had TERABYTES of data collected from every interaction that any person or organization had done that was excise tax related. The design allowed for the capability to cross-reference the data with other governmental agencies when needed.
If you are under the mistaken impression that "Big Brother" is not watching YOU, or is not capable of watching YOU, you are living in a fantasy world circa 1984.
I once made sarcastic remarks about the testimony of a Deputy Commissar (Commissioner) before Congress. The remarks were made on a private, subscription only site run out of Canada by a Y2K expert for Y2K experts only. The very next day after my remarks, I was called into the site manager's office and grilled over how I had acquired the inside information on the status of the Y2K project at SSA. The only two things that kept me from being fired on the spot was that (1) I had paid to be on that private list myself, not with company funds, and (2) I had been directed to stay active on that site during work hours by the assistant site manager. Here's the reality: the Deputy SSA Commissioner had demanded (directly to the Executive Vice President of my company) that I be fired or muzzled, or the company would lose nearly $350 million in federal contracts. Hence, the "witch hunt" by the company.
It turned out that the "private" site was not quite as private as I had thought. The US government had several agency "spies" enrolled as members, reporting everything and anything that was posted that reflected unfavorably on the Y2K status of government agencies.
Fortunately for me, the site manager was a retired Colonel in the Marine Corps. He slapped my wrist and told me, "Don't do anything else that stupid." Aye, aye, sir!
WOW! Close call. And back then, who knew? The extent of spying on US citizens is probably far greater than we know, even now, and certainly not then. There is no proper oversight. And that is especially problematic in a weaponized, leftist government.
I had not thought about it very seriously until recently, but the power of congress over a rogue administration is actually ineffectual; their power is just the purse, but the administration controls inflation and the injection of cash into the system via the Fed, which influences taxes. It appears that whenever the senate refuses to pass a budget, the only spending limit is the debt cap, which is perpetually raised to allow more spending by the administration. And going back as far as Nixon, the administration can just sequester funds it doesn't want to spend, and get away with it, because Nexon did that. So it has back up cash, and the feds have never been bashful about "reallocating" funds.
So, I'm not sure that congress can effectively throttle the rogue actions when it needs to. Apparently congress can't even take the administration to court to force it to obey the law.
Every Communist must grasp the truth; “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
-- Mao Tse Tung
Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. (6 Pet.) 515 (1832)
"John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!"
-- President Andrew Jackson (supposedly)
Neither the Congress nor the Supreme Court have direct access to the world's most potent military force. With addition of the armed Dept. of Homeland Security, the IRS and other agencies, the dangers of a rogue President usurping and wielding dictatorial power has increased far beyond the capability of the other two branches of government to reign in the President, even if they had any inclination to do so. The Congress is a mere advisory board and the Supreme Court is the ultimate rubber stamp.
"These are the times that try men's souls."
-- Thomas Paine
Robert:
Yes.
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