What Does Six Months of Meta-Data Look Like? 60
SpicyBrownMustard sends in a fascinating data visualization at Zeit Online showing what information about a person's life can be gleaned from cellphone metadata. Quoting:
"Green party politician Malte Spitz sued to have German telecoms giant Deutsche Telekom hand over six months of his phone data that he then made available to ZEIT ONLINE. We combined this geolocation data with information relating to his life as a politician, such as Twitter feeds, blog entries and websites, all of which is all freely available on the internet. By pushing the play button, you will set off on a trip through Malte Spitz's life. The speed controller allows you to adjust how fast you travel, the pause button will let you stop at interesting points. In addition, a calendar at the bottom shows when he was in a particular location and can be used to jump to a specific time period. Each column corresponds to one day."
This is years old (Score:2, Informative)
This was years ago. I think it was even on Slashdot.
Re:This is years old (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is years old (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the subject from 2011, however i believe the visualizations is the news this time around. http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/03/26/179257/german-politician-demonstrates-extent-of-cellphone-location-tracking [slashdot.org]
Reply to that article:
This would never happen in the USA (Score:4, Insightful)
Saturday March 26, 2011 @03:54PM
No phone company could ever be forced to divulge those sort of records simply because a customer demanded it.
We have very strong privacy protections in this country - for the telcos
As Max Smart ("Get Smart" TV series) would say "Missed it by that much".