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."
This is my shocked face (Score:4, Insightful)
With what accuracy (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because you've connected 123.233.266.41 with "Bob Smith", doesn't mean you've actually connected to the right person. We've already seen cases where RIAA supoena's to ISP's have gotten the addresses of grandmothers who can barely use email much less file-sharing... so how do we know there "connections" are accurate.
In related news ... (Score:5, Insightful)
the NSA automatically identifies telemarketers, and does nothing.