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.'"
Big Data (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
And with big data hitting the databases of Amazon (and every other retailer you shop), Google, credit cards, banks, credit bureaus, medical information bureau, IRS, .... they can find out just about anything they want about you.
When you turn off Ghostery, NoScript and AdBlock, it's pretty fucking eerie the ads that are placed on pages - and that's JUST the marketing people. Just image what the NSA can do!
Yep! Made fun of the Tin Foil hat wearers all those years and we're RIGHT!
The USSC has said otherwise (Score:4, Interesting)
In 1979, the US Supreme Court ruled that collection of this metadata did not contitute a search.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_v._Maryland
Not just the NSA (Score:5, Interesting)
People seem to be losing sight of the fact that it isn't only the NSA that is doing this tracking. Europe and China are both huge on tracking, they just haven't had this kind of public leak. So, while the question of which US Constitutional Amendment has been breached is a good question, it doesn't address the larger picture question: Where do we, as citizens of whichever country, draw the line and force our governments to stop?
Re:The USSC has said otherwise (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Metadata is the most important data (Score:5, Interesting)
If you don't guarantee the general privacy of the masses you don't have freedom of association. In my mind freedom of association is suppose to be that guarantee. Unfortunately the government uses assumptions / suspicions that are not founded on hard evidence to target groups of people. As an example they targeted everybody who accessed services / web sites hosted by Freedom Hosting. If you ask me that was illegal. The same thing can be said about monitoring a group organizing publicly. There is a huge difference between policing a general population and targeting population with surveillance even if many of its members are involved in criminal acts, and then targeting those within, when those within are not themselves necessarily committing illegal acts. You should not assume / suspect me of committing an illegal act simply because I'm associating with a group whose individual members are known to be committing crimes. A few good examples of this would be KKK groups, communist groups, civil rights groups, various African American groups like the Black Panther Party, LGBT groups, pedophilia groups, free software groups (yes, they were targets of the IRS under the Obama administration), etc.
Re:Metadata is the most important data (Score:5, Interesting)
But if you had bothered to even give those links a cursory look, you would find that they DO CARE what you said, and if the NSA doesn't personally care, they know agencies that do, and they freely share what they learn.
The story is fairly straightforward [policymic.com]. A unit of the DEA known as the Special Operations Division has been receiving and distributing vast levels of intelligence from agencies such as the NSA, CIA, and Department of Homeland Security. Upon receiving information about a particular transaction or meeting place, DEA agents go make arrests, using traffic stops as pretext.
There is nothing "beneath them". In order to hold that view, you have to subscriber to the whole "Defenders of America" flag wrapping nonsense. These agencies have ceased working for YOU.
You can't worry about the consequences will have on the people, and ignore the fact that some how, somewhere along the line, this government has taken it upon itself to vet every communication, be party to ever conversation, and monitor every action, and watch every person. Where did that idea of government EVER come from?
Re:The USSC has said otherwise (Score:4, Interesting)
The police do not need a search warrant to follow you around.
They don't need a warrant, but they DO need a reason.
while they did say that collecting metadata did not constitute a search
No, that's not what they said. Nowhere was the phrase "metadata" used. What they said was that you did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in regards to the numbers you dialed, because you told the phone company by dialing them. The term "metadata" is not defined legally anywhere, which is why the politicians keep using it.
You're also ignoring the fact that there are laws specifically dealing with information collected by Telcos. Search the FCC page for "CPNI" if you want specifics, but put simply the phone company is not allowed to disclose your call details to anybody other than you without a warrant or court order.
Re:Metadata is the most important data (Score:2, Interesting)
Yep, I have a similar story.
A decades long friend of mine was recently visited by four law enforcement officers - he was under suspicion of being a pedophile ... the same man who has baby-sat my kids quite a few times.
He got onto a list because they now deem that the 60s version of "Lord of the Flies" is sufficient grounds to judge you as a suspect, in other words 1+1=3.
These agencies are really fucked up. When you have four officers appear at your house with guns at 9pm at night, who take all of your computing equipment - including backups (regardless that it's all of your business data and is essential to keep your business running) ... just in case you might be a questionable suspect because you bought a "legal" video off Amazon.
I've really lost faith in the system.
Re:Metadata is the most important data (Score:4, Interesting)
The modern day equivalent to Bread and Circuses, Cheezeburgers and Movies/TV perhaps?
Consumers get focused on consuming, poor people get focused on where the rent is coming from and can they afford to eat. Neither gets involved in Politics, particularly when everyone knows that politicians do not have the interests of the people at heart, are actively accepting bribes (in the form of campaign contributions) and that the system is rigged to ensure that one of two candidates who are mostly the same will be elected no matter how they choose to vote, plus of course the rich are running it all.
Wrong response mind you but its easy to see how it happens.
This won't be popular (Score:4, Interesting)
This won't be a popular perspective, but I agree that metadata is not data.
It's like collecting the "from" addresses on the mail delivered to your door without opening the envelopes. They're not steaming open your letters, so it's legal.
The problem is that "legal" isn't necessarily moral. Especially given the sheer volume of meta data generated by the average internet-connected humanoid in modern times.
For one thing, I keep in touch with far more people and places using email than I ever did using snail mail. I used to get maybe 3-4 letters a year, a few magazines, and anonymous junk mail when I relied on snail mail for communications. In the electronic age, I keep in touch with several dozen friends, get newsletters from vendors and sometimes click on the links to read the articles they've published or subscribe to the online training they've offered, I broadcast emails to groups of friends (something I couldn't do with snail mail at all), and generally am far more connected via email alone than I ever was by snail mail or phone calls.
Add in the browsing meta data, and you start to get a painfully clear picture of my likes, dislikes, interests, and associations without ever diving into the details. When you consider that the NSA, CSEC, GCHQ, and others track not only my direct interests but n levels of indirection, and I end up associated with all kinds of distasteful figures that I'd never willingly associate with in real life, much less send a snail-mail letter to.
The only saving grace is the needle-in-a-haystack problem. The more meta data they collect, the bigger the haystack and the harder it is to find the needles buried within.
And the number of mass shootings and bombings in the US and around the world just proves that point. I've not seen it broadcast that they arrested anyone other than the VIA train plotters in Canada to date.
One instance where surveillance did what it should. Versus dozens of instances where it failed abysmally.
Re:Big Data (Score:5, Interesting)
I recently opted out of Google targeted ads because of the interests it thought I liked. Among them: Women's Issues, Defense and Aerospace, Arts and Crafts, etc. I'm interested in Men's Issues (90%+ workplace deaths are males, 80%+ homeless are men, 40%+ of domestic abuse victims are male, and women are as violent or more so than men [csulb.edu] yet there are only "battered womens' shelters" no men's shelters), I don't really care about Defense just Space (why these are linked in their interests might be to fuzz defense nuts as possible space nuts? Maybe cryptography = defense?), I make inde games as a hobby but could give a fuck less about arts and cratfs... The list goes on and on -- over 20 interests, 5 were half right, the rest were just WAY off base.
The shit they know is WRONG. And if this is any indication of the power of "big data" (a new buzword for Analytics) then I'm even more wary of what the NSA thinks they can glean from their aggregate bullshit. With the things I research for my fictional writing & game plots, and my outspoken stance on government accountability, anti-war posts, and patent/copyright reform, etc. they probably think I'm a terrorist, when in reality, I would sooner die than kill another sentient being.
The road to despotism is paved with absolutist notions. Do not try to create absolute security, that is impossible. This complete intolerance for risk is ridiculous and destructive. You have more risk of heart attack or automobile accident than terrorist attack.... The funding should be in tastier health food, not killing brown people and spying on every citizen. Of course the message to the people is one of protection from drummed up threat. The reality is that those doing the spying know their ends can't fit the means; They have completely other set of agendas, and practically have to manufacture offenders to prove they're protecting you. Only thing you could really do with the data on that scale is controlling the world's financial markets. Protip: the CIA and other black-ops are funded not by tax money primarily, but by investments via shell corps...
You don't have anything to fear, citizen, unless you use uncontrollable currencies, like bitcoins, or develop new cryptographic ciphers, or use untrackable data transfers. [deaddrops.com]
Truth is, I live not in fear of terrorists, but in fear of being hit by a bus or disappeared by a black van... I refuse to NOT post things online that could be taken the wrong way. Fuck 'em. Live free or Die, I say, like an American of braver times.
Additionally, my websites know when you're using Ghostery, NoScript, and AdBlock, or user agent spoofers, fingerprint normalizers, etc. Your use of these damn near perfectly profiles the kind of user you are... I just use the data to serve you the page for a downloadable game instead of the WebGL or flash version, but others could do much more...
Re:Not just the NSA (Score:2, Interesting)
In most democratic states, there are two forms of decisions: the ones made by elected officials, and the ones made by corporate leaders. Ideally, democratic elections should ensure that the first kind of decision is in line with what the people want; while the second kind of decision is usually dominated by a rich and powerful individuals. In theory, the point of communism is to move power from the second group to the first group, and therefore transfer power from the minority to the majority. How is this authoritarianism?
However, I agree that in practice, nobody has been able to create this non-authoritarian communist state, and I'm not convinced that there will ever be such a state. Lenin himself believed that the authoritarian state was a necessary transition phase on the road to the ideal state, but like every other communist state, the Soviet union got stuck in this "temporary" phase... I like this quotation about communism: "the right idea, but the wrong species."
Re:Not just the NSA (Score:4, Interesting)
In most democratic states, there are two forms of decisions: the ones made by elected officials, and the ones made by corporate leaders. Ideally, democratic elections should ensure that the first kind of decision is in line with what the people want; while the second kind of decision is usually dominated by a rich and powerful individuals.
That's a bit of a double standard, isn't it? The reasonable way to put it would either be "ideally, democratic elections should ensure that the first kind of decision is in line with what the majority wants, while market forces should ensure that the second kind is in line with what the individual wants" or "usually, the first kind of decision is dominated by powerful individuals, while the second kind is dominated by rich individuals". The first example also highlights how communism becomes authoritarian: While it is fine for the majority to decide that murder it not OK, it becomes authoritarian for the majority to decide whether people are allowed to eat cereal for breakfast.