Schneier: Metadata Equals Surveillance 191
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Bruce Schneier writes that lots of people discount the seriousness of the NSA's actions by saying that it's just metadata — after all the NSA isn't really listening in on everybody's calls — they're just keeping track of who you call. 'Imagine you hired a detective to eavesdrop on someone,' writes Schneier. 'He might plant a bug in their office. He might tap their phone.' That's the data. 'Now imagine you hired that same detective to surveil that person. The result would be details of what he did: where he went, who he talked to, what he looked at, what he purchased — how he spent his day. That's all metadata.' When the government collects metadata on the entire country, they put everyone under surveillance says Schneier. 'Metadata equals surveillance; it's that simple.'"
Metadata (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Metadata is the most important data (Score:5, Informative)
The details are of no interest to anyone in power, but patterns are.
It has already been made public that huge volumes of email, actual phone conversations are recorded.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57589495-38/nsa-spying-flap-extends-to-contents-of-u.s-phone-calls/ [cnet.com]
http://reason.com/blog/2013/06/15/yes-actually-the-nsa-says-they-can-eaves [reason.com]
http://www.dailyfinance.com/on/irs-audit-emails-warrant-aclu/ [dailyfinance.com]
And further, the NSA leaks content to local and state law enforcement.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130805 [reuters.com]
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/10/the_nsa_dea_police_state_tango/ [salon.com]
So the this whole discussion about meta-data is moot. When you can archive, transcribe and catalog content, who needs metadata?
Re:Give people time... (Score:5, Informative)
Heck just 5 years ago if you made the statement 'the goverment is spying on all of us'. You'd get some sort of response involving tinfoil and hats
I read this all the time and it's just not true.
In 2006, the front page of the New York Times detailed how the NSA was copying basically all internet traffic right from the backbone. At the time it was seen as a confirmation of what basically everyone had suspected for decades. Obviously if they were gathering all of that data, they were doing something with it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
the social graph colours all nodes (Score:4, Informative)
The primary filter has always been traffic analysis. It constructs the social graph [wikipedia.org]. I've heard that's worth something. An otherwise valueless company seems to trade on it.
Traffic analysis is what one can do effectively on a perversive scale. It puts the "focus" into focused intelligence, which would otherwise amount to extracting needles from haystacks concerning the detection of novel threats. Indeed, often the forest is worth more than the trees. The bits of business of an individual life are often less easy to read than a person's extended social footprint.
Fu..hrermore, in an electronic society where six degrees of separation is an overestimate by half, is there anyone in the population less secluded than a junior wife in a Mormon splinter town who couldn't be painted as a threat for having crossed digital paths with at least three shady characters over three decades of normal living?
The social graph colours all nodes. Does anyone think that members of the judicial oversight committee are required to bone up on Turing's use of log probability to establish meaningful discrimination thresholds?
Consider the four principal categories of metadata:
* who
* what
* when
* where
Looks harmless to me. What goes under "why"? Anything their little minds decide to write down.
Who: public school teacher
What: google search for "pressure cooker"
When: yesterday
What: google search for "backpack"
When: day before yesterday
Where: domestic residence, Springfield
Yet again, the metadata paints a compelling picture: moral turpitude. What could be more obvious among a law enforcement community prone to the syllogism that "I don't like the look on your face" equates to "disturbing the peace".
Checks and balances? Guess what? Metadata signs all cheques.
Re:Metadata is the most important data (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, when it comes to metadata, you could make a First Amendment case: freedom of association.
Indeed, and, in fact, this is the major argument being made by the ACLU acting on its own behalf in its lawsuit against the NSA over the collection of metadata. It allows the government to determine who its clients are, who are its members, etc. Numerous Supreme Court rulings from the civil rights era make it clear that the First Amendment guarantees the right to associate anonymously. It should also be noted that the First Amendment freedoms are the most protected by the courts. When the government feels the need to do so it MUST MUST MUST as little as possible and only to satisfy its legitimate needs and no farther. The courts call the application of this "strict scrutiny". Because this is a geeky forum, most people here know a way this collection of metadata can be done that protects the identity of the parties. Because this exists, the NSA's collection of meta data is unconstitutional on its face.
There is no point in arguing that the NSA has a legitimate need to collect metadata from phone companies and ISPs. We don't like it but It has that need, it can demonstrate the validity of that need, and the courts are going to recognize it. But there is a less restrictive way of doing it that would accomplish the same thing and they didn't use it.
Re:Not just the NSA (Score:4, Informative)
Communism is also authoritarian. It's the authoritarian/libertarian axis that you're interested in here.
Communism isn't authoritarian, Authoritarianism is. On paper, communism couldn't be authoritarian - it's arguably closer to democracy than even the ideal American state was. But that's on paper - in reality it's used by those desiring power to implement something completely different.
There's many schools of 'libertarian' (which should really be stated as Anarchism) communism, such as anarcho-communism. Marx was, ultimately, and Anarchist/Libertarian.
Re:Metadata is the most important data (Score:3, Informative)
The Supreme Court ruling you are looking for is National Association for the Advancement of Colored people v. Alabama [wikipedia.org]
Re:Metadata is the most important data (Score:4, Informative)
Came across this interesting link yesterday, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism [wikipedia.org]