Stanford's MetaPhone Project: Crowdsourcing Metadata To Challenge the NSA 96
An anonymous reader writes "'When the first NSA surveillance story broke in June,' writes Dennis Fisher at Threatpost, 'most people likely had never heard the word metadata before. Even some security and privacy experts weren't sure what the term encompassed.' The NSA and its supporters have, of course, emphasized that phone records collection is 'not surveillance.' Researchers at Stanford are now crowdsourcing data to incontrovertibly establish just how much the NSA knows. 'Phone metadata is inherently revealing,' says a study author. 'We want to rigorously prove it—for the public, for Congress, and for the courts.' If you have an Android phone and a Facebook account, you can grab the MetaPhone app on Google Play."
Re:If you were paranoid about the NSA having it (Score:3, Interesting)
And decades of horrible precedent have distorted the meaning of "legal" so that the 4th Amendment is able to be ignored by anyone in gov't who wishes to do so. It's time to start over.
I don't think it's necessary to start over, as The Constitution does provide a great framework.
Perhaps what is needed is an Article V Convention [wikipedia.org] to iron out a few of the problems. An amendment to entirely disband the NSA and prohibit the creation of any agency with a similar purpose might be a good start. Follow up with an amendment to absolutely prohibit all trade with any country having a local equivalent to the NSA.
Don't be fooled, it won't be the end of spying. The roaches exposed with these amendments will simply flee to darker shadows and try to keep it even more secret. That's just part of fighting the good fight.
Re:Stanford Researcher - Glad to Answer Questions (Score:1, Interesting)
Are you guys looking to just target a certain android platform or will this study reach iOS users as well?
The study is presently Android only. We would like to support iOS, but the telephony APIs do not include phone metadata.
Also from the information I've read thus far the data is being used in conjunction to a court case regarding NSA collections;
While we hope our research results will have a public impact, the MetaPhone project is not affiliated with litigation against the National Security Agency.
This in mind how long will the study hold the metadata and when/how will it be destroyed?
The pace of the study will be largely dictated by user response. We anticipate completing our work by Spring Quarter at Stanford, but the project may take longer.