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To: FredZarguna
what your post on Free Republic. But it's just metadata. So...

No, that and most of your other examples are data. They are specific records associated with a specific person. Metadata is the "names and addresses of everyone you get mail from" and also email and phone calls. Metadata is everything and it is from everybody which is a big part of the problem. As the author said he has no problem collecting data about non-US persons to which I would add US persons with a foreign terrorist association.

6 posted on 08/09/2015 7:21:06 AM PDT by palmer (Net "neutrality" = Obama turning the internet into FlixNet)
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To: palmer
Nope, they're not. What constitutes data, and what constitutes metadata is an entirely arbitrary distinction based on usage. Knowing who calls you, and when, who mails you and where they live, who emails you, when, from where, and what IP route they use is data to some consumer every bit as much as it is metadata to somebody else.

A coder's [or a spy's] definition of what constitutes acceptable intrusion under the Fourth Amendment, or what constitutes "metadata" as opposed to "data" is arbitrary, situational, and unacceptable. The definition needs to be made by the legislature, signed by the executive and subjected to scrutiny by the judiciary.

Not by appointees.

Not by bureaucrats.

Some of the other things I cited are not normally considered "metadata." Nevertheless, they are being illegally gathered. Because everything is being gathered. And if you think it isn't, or that any of it isn't being looked at, you're naïve and mistaken.

What is most shocking is that there is no need to collect it. Paul missed a golden opportunity the other night by getting into a childish shouting match with an oaf instead of pointing how exactly how good the targeting technology is, and how it doesn't have to be aimed at US citizens.

9 posted on 08/09/2015 10:23:08 AM PDT by FredZarguna ( "I pulled the lever on the machine, but the Clark Bar didn't COME OUT!!!")
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