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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAbout that "Meta Data Collection"....It's worse than you Think
Whats the Matter with Metadata?
Posted by Jane Mayer
The answer, according to the mathematician and former Sun Microsystems engineer Susan Landau, whom I interviewed while reporting on the plight of the former N.S.A. whistleblower Thomas Drake and who is also the author of Surveillance or Security?, is that its worse than many might think.
The public doesnt understand, she told me, speaking about so-called metadata. Its much more intrusive than content. She explained that the government can learn immense amounts of proprietary information by studying who you call, and who they call. If you can track that, you know exactly what is happeningyou dont need the content.
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. And information from cell-phone towers can reveal the callers location. Metadata, she pointed out, can be so revelatory about whom reporters talk to in order to get sensitive stories that it can make more traditional tools in leak investigations, like search warrants and subpoenas, look quaint. You can see the sources, she said. When the F.B.I. obtains such records from news agencies, the Attorney General is required to sign off on each invasion of privacy. When the N.S.A. sweeps up millions of records a minute, its unclear if any such brakes are applied.
Metadata, Landau noted, can also reveal sensitive political information, showing, for instance, if opposition leaders are meeting, who is involved, where they gather, and for how long. Such data can reveal, too, who is romantically involved with whom, by tracking the locations of cell phones at night.
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It was exactly these concerns that motivated the mathematician William Binney, a former N.S.A. official who spoke to me for the Drake story, to retire rather than keep working for an agency he suspected had begun to violate Americans fundamental privacy rights. After 9/11, Binney told me, as I reported in the piece, General Michael Hayden, who was then director of the N.S.A., reassured everyone that the N.S.A. didnt put out dragnets, and that was true. It had no needit was getting every fish in the sea.
As he told me at the time, wiretap surveillance requires trained human operators, but data mining is an automated process, which means that the entire country can be watched. Conceivably, the government could monitor the Tea Party, or reporters, whatever group or organization you want to target, he said. Its exactly what the Founding Fathers never wanted.
MORE AT......
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/06/verizon-nsa-metadata-surveillance-problem.html
Skittles
(153,298 posts)Prosense has already assured us this is simply "ridiculous spin"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2971223
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)MNBrewer
(8,462 posts)Metadata are STILL data, "meta" or not.
Luminous Animal
(27,310 posts)SlimJimmy
(3,184 posts)graham4anything
(11,464 posts)Anyone who buys an airline ticket is known and has been for decades and decades.
I personally don't know anyone who doesn't have a SS# that is an American citizen.
therefore, everyone is known
(Not to mention, the US Post office knows where to deliver any persons piece of mail, same as a computer knows where to send your email to.)
I am shocked! SHOCKED! (no I am not).
HipChick
(25,485 posts)your travel information is kept on you...
I couldn't remember all my trips out of the country in the last decade...but a govt agency had them..
Dragonfli
(10,622 posts)I sure as hell didn't know my SS# revealed all the people I called when investigating a story, amazing technology held within a number, I am in awe.
donnasgirl
(656 posts)I respect your view but there is a limit to what people will take and it is my belief that this will hurt the democrats more than Republicans, I am tired of working for politicians who do just the opposite of what they claim and by what I am reading all over the news sites everybody is totally disgusted.
graham4anything
(11,464 posts)Ralph Nader would be happy.
So happy that maybe he will sell more copies of the book he is hawking this week in NYC.
I heard not many people actually paid money to get him to sign the book.
BTW, everybody in the news is PAID to be totally disgusted.
That is their pseudo jobs, they are entertainers after all.
donnasgirl
(656 posts)No thanks, I couldn't stand any of the bushes and for this individual I am becoming very Leary of the same families over and over again., as much as I like Bill Clinton I will no longer vote for another one.
graham4anything
(11,464 posts)Me, I am lookingforward for Michelle 46 or 47
If Hillary doesn't run, a Booker/Michelle ticket would be a wonderful thing.
donnasgirl
(656 posts)A JFK Democrat even though I am a registered Independent, I have only voted for one Republican in my life and regretted that.
wandy
(3,539 posts)What is the matter with us. How did we manage to sleep through this outrage. Why did we just wake up when a conservative news source had a 'breaking leak' just at the beginning of scandal season.
I'm not saying that this ill-conceived mess of data collection, TIA, patriot act et all should be forgotten about.
I am saying that we also need to keep our eye on the sparrow.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)Cant say I am surprised.
snagglepuss
(12,704 posts)olddots
(10,237 posts)Convenience is inconvenient get used to it or do something about it and right now our options don't look too good.
We are on or off the grid and even if we use no technology we are in camera and sound distance ,how we can remain free is to not be fools with our needs for material and fads .This will piss many people off here but it also pisses me off because we are all on this communication grid.
Dragonfli
(10,622 posts)cascadiance
(19,537 posts)There have been concerns since the U.S. started embedding RFID chips that can be scanned at a distance in your passport that a terrorist in some public location like a bus station could use the number of Americans in his presence (determined by the quantity of American passport RFID chips he scans) could be used to tell him the optimal time to set off a bomb to maximize the number of Americans he kills.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/072910-black-hat-rfid-passports.html
Advice from some is to get a passport cover with a newer passport with a perhaps some lead covering to prevent this scan (though perhaps hopefully lead that doesn't trigger cancer or the like)...
Katashi_itto
(10,175 posts)SlimJimmy
(3,184 posts)It stops that from happening.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)okaawhatever
(9,478 posts)information isn't kept. They have no names to associate with this info. Also, everything that has been revealed supports the notion that these are all calls that either originate overseas or start here and terminate overseas. We don't have the right to privacy once our calls/emails/letters leave our shores. If you don't think our gov't should take the info, they can get another gov't to give it to them. Yes, they've admitted that a few American citizens info gets caught up in that, but it seems very rare.
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)cascadiance
(19,537 posts)I used to work at Sun as well like the person interviewed here...
If those building the facility in Utah are finding that just global keyword searching (or facial recognition of video stream data they have from so many surveillance cameras) is not enough for them to put together arbitrary streams and sources of data, then this metadata is very useful to bringing so much up to the surface when they aren't "targeting" individuals in the process of just exhaustively and selectively looking for information for one person.
Now this meta data helps when tracking individuals, but usually court orders, and other legal inquiries get access to the meta data when they are focusing investigations on certain sets of individuals. What metadata does allows them to sift down masses of data (that typically is done when they are NOT targeting individuals) but fishing for individuals that they want to find doing something they don't want, whether its legal or not.
Now, perhaps this is needed at some times when they are trying to track down dangerous lawbreakers, etc. but, the rules on how to use this sort of information are to avoid them helping fishing expeditions is just as important as rules on looking at the detailed information itself.
Metadata should be treated and protected as much as original data. There needs to be safeguards and oversight in how it is being used.
KoKo
(84,711 posts)I worry there is "cross data collection" between Commercial Data Collection by Businesses and the Government. The article talks about MIT and others doing "Predictive Analysis" experiments and that fits well with information collection that the Government is Outsourcing to Non-Government contractors.
Also, that wrong assessments can cause citizens to be profiled who have nothing to do with who the Government "suspects" as a target. And Drones come to mind in how quick we are to "take out suspects" without them having a chance to surrender and have a trial before their peers.
It has become Orwellian and the young today will never remember when they weren't being watched, data mined and profiled.
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How Companies Learn Your Secrets, NYT
By CHARLES DUHIGG
Published: February 16, 2012
Almost every major retailer, from grocery chains to investment banks to the U.S. Postal Service, has a predictive analytics department devoted to understanding not just consumers shopping habits but also their personal habits, so as to more efficiently market to them. But Target has always been one of the smartest at this, says Eric Siegel, a consultant and the chairman of a conference called Predictive Analytics World. Were living through a golden age of behavioral research. Its amazing how much we can figure out about how people think now.
The reason Target can snoop on our shopping habits is that, over the past two decades, the science of habit formation has become a major field of research in neurology and psychology departments at hundreds of major medical centers and universities, as well as inside extremely well financed corporate labs. Its like an arms race to hire statisticians nowadays, said Andreas Weigend, the former chief scientist at Amazon.com. Mathematicians are suddenly sexy. As the ability to analyze data has grown more and more fine-grained, the push to understand how daily habits influence our decisions has become one of the most exciting topics in clinical research, even though most of us are hardly aware those patterns exist. One study from Duke University estimated that habits, rather than conscious decision-making, shape 45 percent of the choices we make every day, and recent discoveries have begun to change everything from the way we think about dieting to how doctors conceive treatments for anxiety, depression and addictions.
This research is also transforming our understanding of how habits function across organizations and societies. A football coach named Tony Dungy propelled one of the worst teams in the N.F.L. to the Super Bowl by focusing on how his players habitually reacted to on-field cues. Before he became Treasury secretary, Paul ONeill overhauled a stumbling conglomerate, Alcoa, and turned it into a top performer in the Dow Jones by relentlessly attacking one habit a specific approach to worker safety which in turn caused a companywide transformation. The Obama campaign has hired a habit specialist as its chief scientist to figure out how to trigger new voting patterns among different constituencies.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&hp&
cascadiance
(19,537 posts)... for the past few days, that IS data mining at work here...
KoKo
(84,711 posts)when I posted something in the DU States Forum...and started getting ads for companies and attractions in my state. Then I started getting ads for Political Candidates in my state. I felt that my posting in my state for going to a Peace Demonstration (which I have posted much about through the years on DU) could now be used to target me by linking to anything having to do with "Anti-War" activities. But, what to do about it?
And think how your posting about Turkey and getting tagged could be be datamined given what's going on in that country right now. What if you Googled Turkey and were looking for a town and a Wiki came up or another site with maps. What if you said on DU that you were demonstrating in sympathy with Turkey in the DC Mall or elsewhere. What if you said you were born in Turkey and that's why you were protesting in sympathy. Seems that any enterprise looking might use that info to sell or target for ads or additional monitoring if they choose to.
Most of us who've been here a long time figured there would be others here who would be interesting in our activities...(our jokes about Agent Mike) but the newest targeting is by Google Ads and others that DU needs to support the website since it doesn't need to rely on the readers and users anymore
It still makes me uncomfortable, though.
nineteen50
(1,187 posts)meta-data mining? So the power elite can decide intentions and react to protect their interests. Just what was done to occupy.
Roland99
(53,342 posts)oh wait....
-p
BlueStreak
(8,377 posts)People who minimize this are simply not very plugged into what has been happening with "big data" for the past 20 years. I posted this on another thread. There is no speculation in any of this. This is the technology that is available today, and there should be no doubt whatsoever that the government is working to do this, just as Equifax, Google and many other ostensibly non-government enterprises have been doing for years. That other posting:
Just look at the credit reporting companies for example. They have far less access to information than the Federal Government, yet they have a dossier on nearly every adult in this country that has some 400 descriptive statistics that tell them everything anybody would ever want to know about your financial life.
Look at what Google has been able to do just with their access to gmail content.
Let me paint a picture for anybody who really hasn't been paying any attention for the past 20 years. Here is how it would work. If this isn't already in place, it will be.
They can correlate the cell phone numbers with your identity. They know whom the numbers belong to. If they don't already have access to all that information that Equifax maintains on you, they can get it with a FISA warrant -- just have to find a friendly judge. Now they correlate your spending habits with your phone patterns. They can correlate that with any police activity. Ever been arrested at a protest, for example? That can go into your "National security score". And now let's look at your online fingerprints. Do you engage in any political discussion, and is any of that hostile to the government? If so, maybe you are a threat. Correlation isn't automatic because most people use handles. But a small amount of investigation can make those connections.
And so on. The data is endless. Oh, and now they are getting location information from your personal obedience devices (aka cell phones). Were you near Boston around the time of the marathon? Oh, that could be bad for your "national security score".
OK. Next you "Googleize" those profiles. Some people will naturally have very high "National security scores" indicating they may be, how shall we say, "un-American". So we look at their circle of friends. If you have ever received a phone call from one of these suspects, that hurts your own score, and that in turn hurts the scores of everyone else in your circle of friends. So if you know somebody who knows somebody who knows the shoe bomber, that's very bad for your score. How do you like them apples, Kevin Bacon?
Have you ever been surprised by something on your credit report -- maybe identity theft, or a merchant got some information wrong? It is easy to get bad data into the database, and very hard to get it out. And that is when you have the right to look at the reports. Ladies and gentlemen, you have no right to look at your "national security score". That would only help the terrorists.
Is this description plain enough? Is there anybody who does not believe this is exactly where that data is headed?
The automated "Big Data" collection is not mutually exclusive with human surveillance -- obviously. In fact, they go hand in hand. Expect those with the "most un-American" national Security Score to attract human surveillance. And this could include the whole gamut of techniques include wire-tapping. And because the Big Data shows you might just be un-American, it would be easy to get a FISA court to authorize a surveillance warrant -- and because of the Patriot Act, you don't get any notice of that.
I challenge any of the deniers to identify one word of this post that is not plausible, or even slightly unlikely.
KoKo
(84,711 posts)Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)and the friendship of informants with all kinds of "wild plans".
leveymg
(36,418 posts)RobinA
(9,903 posts)But, but, but... I read on the other thread that none of that is really happening.
Babel_17
(5,400 posts)I'll worry about the mountains of data the government collects on the day some whiz-kid in a laboratory develops a doohickey that can make some kind of sense out of it.
That's if all those punch cards don't get moldy or burn in a fire first!