An Ode to H.G. Wells

[William Fenn]

  _____  

From: Norm 
Sent: Friday, June 21, 2013 5:42 AM
To: Norm 
Subject: Fw: 

 

 

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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/06/20/194505/government-could-use-metadata.h
tml#.UcP1ar2APCY

Government could use metadata to map your every move

WASHINGTON - If you tweet a picture from your living room using your 
smartphone, you're sharing far more than your new hairdo or the color of 
the wallpaper. You're potentially revealing the exact coordinates of 
your house to anyone on the Internet.

The GPS location information embedded in a digital photo is an example 
of so-called metadata, a once-obscure technical term that's become one 
of Washington's hottest new buzzwords.

The word first sprang from the lips of pundits and politicians earlier 
this month, after reports disclosed that the government has been 
secretly accessing the telephone metadata of Verizon customers, as well 
as online videos, emails, photos and other data collected by nine 
Internet companies. President Barack Obama hastened to reassure 
Americans that "nobody is listening to your phone calls," while other 
government officials likened the collection of metadata to reading 
information on the outside of an envelope, which doesn't require a warrant.

But privacy experts warn that to those who know how to mine it, metadata 
discloses much more about us and our daily lives than the content of our 
communications.

So what is metadata? Simply put, it's data about data. An early example 
is the Dewey Decimal System card catalogs that libraries use to organize 
books by title, author, genre and other information. In the digital age, 
metadata is coded into our electronic transmissions.

"Metadata is information about what communications you send and receive, 
who you talk to, where you are when you talk to them, the lengths of 
your conversations, what kind of device you were using and potentially 
other information, like the subject line of your emails," said Peter 
Eckersley, the technology projects director at the Electronic Frontier 
Foundation, a digital civil liberties group.

Powerful computer algorithms can analyze the metadata to expose patterns 
and to profile individuals and their associates, Eckersley said.

"Metadata is the perfect place to start if you want to troll through 
millions of people's communications to find patterns and to single out 
smaller groups for closer scrutiny," he said. "It will tell you which 
groups of people go to political meetings together, which groups of 
people go to church together, which groups of people go to nightclubs 
together or sleep with each other."

Metadata records of search terms and webpage visits also can reveal a 
log of your thoughts by documenting what you've been reading and 
researching, Eckersley said.

"That's certainly enough to know if you're pregnant or not, what 
diseases you have, whether you're looking for a new job, whether you're 
trying to figure out if the NSA is watching you or not," he said, 
referring to the National Security Agency. Such information provides "a 
deeply intimate window into a person's psyche," he added.

The more Americans rely on their smartphones and the Internet, the more 
metadata is generated

Metadata with GPS locations, for example, can trace a teenage girl to an 
abortion clinic or a patient to a psychiatrist's office, said Karen 
Reilly, the development director for The Tor Project, a U.S.-based 
nonprofit that produces technology to provide online anonymity and 
circumvent censorship.

Metadata can even identify a likely gun owner, she said.

"Never mind background checks, if you bring your cellphone to the gun 
range you probably have a gun," Reilly said.

"People don't realize all the information that they're giving out," she 
said. "You can try to secure it - you can use some tech tools, you can 
try to be a black hole online - but if you try to live your life the way 
people are expecting it, it's really difficult to control the amount of 
data that you're leaking all over the place."


A former senior official of the National Security Agency said the 
government's massive collection of metadata allowed the agency to 
construct "maps" of an individual's daily movements, social connections, 
travel habits and other personal information.

"This is blanket. There is no constraint. No probable cause. No 
reasonable suspicion," said Thomas Drake, who worked unsuccessfully for 
years to report privacy violations and massive waste at the agency to 
his superiors and Congress.


Metadata "is more useful than (the) content" of a telephone call, email 
or Internet search, Drake said in an interview. "It gets you a map over 
time. I get to map movements, connections, communities of interest. It's 
also a tracking mechanism."

The NSA "can easily associate" a phone number with an identity, he 
added. "All location information comes from a (cellular) tower. There 
are tower records. They are doing this every single day. It's basically 
a data tap on metadata, and I can build a profile (of an individual) 
instantly."

The agency has programs that also can mine the metadata of emails and 
other electronic information, Drake said.


With advances in data storage, he continued, the NSA is able to maintain 
massive amounts of metadata for as long as it wants. "This stuff is 
trivial to store," he said.

Drake added that U.S. telecommunications companies are prohibited from 
publicly disclosing arrangements with the NSA and are protected under 
the Patriot Act from lawsuits. "They literally have the protection of 
the U.S. government from any, any lawsuit. The United States is 
literally turning into a surveillance state," he said. "This is the new 
normal."

At a hearing Wednesday on Capitol Hill, FBI Director Robert Mueller said 
metadata obtained under Section 215 of the Patriot Act had helped 
authorities "connect the dots" in investigations that had prevented 10 
or 12 terrorist plots in recent years. Mueller defended the collection 
of metadata, saying there were plenty of safeguards in place that 
protect Americans' privacy. He warned against restricting or ending the 
program.

"What concerns me is you never know which dot is going to be key," 
Mueller said. "What you want is as many dots as we can (get). If you 
close down a program like this, you are removing dots from the playing 
field."

Read more here: 
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/06/20/194505/government-could-use-metadata.h
tml#storylink=cpy



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