Posted on 06/12/2013 5:00:39 PM PDT by PieterCasparzen
The government has sought to “reassure” us that it is only tracking “metadata” such as the time and place of the calls, and not the actual content of the calls.
But technology experts say that “metadata” can be more revealing than the content of your actual phone calls.
...
What [government officials] are trying to say is that disclosure of metadata—the details about phone calls, without the actual voice—isn’t a big deal, not something for Americans to get upset about if the government knows. Let’s take a closer look at what they are saying:
They know you rang a phone sex service at 2:24 am and spoke for 18 minutes. But they don’t know what you talked about.
They know you called the suicide prevention hotline from the Golden Gate Bridge. But the topic of the call remains a secret.
They know you spoke with an HIV testing service, then your doctor, then your health insurance company in the same hour. But they don’t know what was discussed.
They know you received a call from the local NRA office while it was having a campaign against gun legislation, and then called your senators and congressional representatives immediately after. But the content of those calls remains safe from government intrusion.
They know you called a gynecologist, spoke for a half hour, and then called the local Planned Parenthood’s number later that day. But nobody knows what you spoke about.
Sorry, your phone records—oops, “so-called metadata”—can reveal a lot more about the content of your calls than the government is implying. Metadata provides enough context to know some of the most intimate details of your lives. And the government has given no assurances that this data will never be correlated with other easily obtained data.
(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...
New York Magazine explains:
“When you take all those records of who’s communicating with who, you can build social networks and communities for everyone in the world,” mathematician and NSA whistle-blower William Binney — “one of the best analysts in history,” who left the agency in 2001 amid privacy concerns — told Daily Intelligencer. “And when you marry it up with the content,” which he is convinced the NSA is collecting as well, “you have leverage against everybody in the country.”
“You are unique in the world,” Binney explained, based on the identifying attributes of the machines you use. “If I want to know who’s in the tea party, I can put together the metadata and see who’s communicating with who. I can construct the network of the tea party. If I want to pass that data to the IRS, then I can do that. That’s the danger here.”
At The New Yorker, Jane Mayer quoted mathematician and engineer Susan Landau’s hypothetical: “For example, she said, in the world of business, a pattern of phone calls from key executives can reveal impending corporate takeovers. Personal phone calls can also reveal sensitive medical information: ‘You can see a call to a gynecologist, and then a call to an oncologist, and then a call to close family members.’”
“There’s a lot you can infer,” Binney continued. “If you’re calling a physician and he’s a heart specialist, you can infer someone is having heart problems. It’s all in the databases.” The data, he said, is “all compiled by code. The software does it all from the beginning — they have dossiers of everyone in the country. That’s done automatically. When you want to investigate or target somebody, a human becomes involved.”
...
Nevertheless, they want the content of your phone calls, and emails, and text messages, and facebook posts, and tweets, and ...
...medical records.
In the face of the absolutely staggering amount of data generated just by phone companies for the purpose of computing telephone service billings, our best computer technology is about as useful as a stone hatchet ~ sure, eventually it'll get there, but it'll really be messy.
At this point in time nobody is matching everybody up with everybody else to see who is doing what with which.
LOL Mark Levin is reading your article right now. Went right from the zerohedge article to your NY Mag comment
Virtually everything that communicates with or by computer creates metadata. My digital camera creates metadata, my meter reader says my digital meter communicates with his handheld recorder with metadata.
American government doesn’t exist to ‘keep us safe’, but to keep our liberty safe. That’s a big difference.
I’m listening now.
Say it Mark - This is A PHONE BILL.
You would not allow the gov’t to come to your house and take a copy of your monthly bills.
Within a decade, the cost of of the necessary computer power will decline by about 99%. That stone hatchet will become a fine steel stiletto.
Actually that would be less info. I don’t get a record of calls to me and I only get a record of toll calls for those that I make.
So you wouldn't even need to be making phone calls and they could tell approximately where you (or technically your cell phone) were at any given time.
How do you know? Ever hear of datamining software? This isn’t the era of punchcards and green eyeshades...
Still looking for more news on that super duper miniature battery University of Illinois developed last month. I need some of them!
I’ve heard of datamining software and been involved in its use. There are still limits.
They know that I have problems with my credit cards because of all the calls I get from “Rachel” of “Card Services” who promises to lower my interest rate.
We used to have to deal with the porn industry folks ~ they mail that stuff and there are some laws, and they have business needs. BTW, business comes first with everybody, but the porn industry reps have only FIRST NAMES!
Bttt.
bkmk
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