Matt Blaze Examines Communications Privacy 44
altjira writes "Matt Blaze analyzes the implications of a recent Newsweek story on the Bush administration's use of the NSA for domestic spying on communications, and questions whether the lower legal threshold for the collection of communications metadata is giving away too much to the government: 'As electronic communication pervades more of our daily lives, transaction records — metadata — can reveal quite a bit about us, indeed often much more than a few out-of-context conversations might. Aggregated into databases with other people's records (or perhaps everyone's records) and analyzed by powerful software, metadata by itself can paint a remarkably detailed picture of connections, relationships, and other patterns that could never be recovered simply from listening to the conversations themselves.'"
Re:Indeed ... (Score:5, Informative)
An real world example of the power of metadata is Google. Basicly, the ranking works because of metadata, originating as metadata or derived from the content of the page.
While probably correct, there really isn't much substance to your comment, so I decided to add some links to one of the best examples of exploiting metadata: network analysis (or applied graph theory, depending on your bent). It's been applied to webpages, phone call records (using just who calls whom), scientific collaboration networks, social networks, and a whole bunch more. The following links make for some interesting reading about the scope and power of exploiting metadata (at least the introductions):
PageRank, HITS: rank webpages as authoritative based on the links between them (i.e. assume that good pages link to good pages, etc.) PageRank [tugraz.at] Analyzing the web [dcg.ethz.ch] web communities based on link structure [intelligence.tuc.gr] analyzing scientific collaborations based only on patterns of co-authorship and co-citation [cornell.edu] another one like the previous [arxiv.org] (although as a computer scientist, i don't think much of mark newman, he writes well).
Remember kids, it's popular because it works!
Link analysis (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Too late (Score:5, Informative)
It depends on what definition of "terrorist" you use.
The Maryland State Police classified 53 nonviolent activists as terrorists and entered their names and personal information into state and federal databases that track terrorism suspects, the state police chief acknowledged yesterday.
source [washingtonpost.com]