Researchers Connect 91% of Numbers With Names In Metadata Probe 84
Trailrunner7 writes "One of the key tenets of the argument that the National Security Agency and some lawmakers have constructed to justify the agency's collection of phone metadata is that the information it's collecting, such as phone numbers and length of call, can't be tied to the callers' names. However, some quick investigation by some researchers at Stanford University who have been collecting information voluntarily from Android users found that they could correlate numbers to names with very little effort. The Stanford researchers recently started a program called Metaphone that gathers data from volunteers with Android phones. They collect data such as recent phone calls and text messages and social network information. The goal of the project, which is the work of the Stanford Security Lab, is to draw some lines connecting metadata and surveillance. As part of the project, the researchers decided to select a random set of 5,000 numbers from their data and see whether they could connect any of them to subscriber names using just freely available Web tools. The result: They found names for 27 percent of the numbers using just Google, Yelp, Facebook and Google Places. Using some other online tools, they connected 91 of 100 numbers with names."
No shit (Score:4, Informative)
Wha'? (Score:4, Informative)
One of the key tenets of the argument that the National Security Agency and some lawmakers have constructed to justify the agency's collection of phone metadata is that the information it's collecting, such as phone numbers and length of call, can't be tied to the callers' names.
I don't believe I've heard anyone, in the government or not, make that claim. What possible good would metadata be to them if they couldn't associate it with an individual?
What I've mainly heard them say is "you shouldn't care, since we're not listening to the actual call". That's still garbage.
Re:No shit (Score:5, Informative)
Phone numbers are listed in things like telephone books. NSA (and other intelligence agencies; let's not forget about the rest of them) have been ingesting telephone directories, business cards, public records, FB pages, ad nauseum into massive databases for many years so that a new name/number/address/email etc can be matched to known correlates.
Even metadata consisting only of Cell numbers are available to the NSA because they have access to all the carriers records [aclu.org] as well.
Even a "Burner" [gigaom.com] phone is traceable in the US.
There is no such thing as "metadata", and there hasn't been for a long time.
Re:Wha'? (Score:5, Informative)