[governance] FW: [Dewayne-Net] "Metadata" Can Tell the Government More About You Than the Content of Your Phonecalls

[michael gurstein]

-----Original Message-----
From: dewayne-net at warpspeed.com [mailto:dewayne-net at warpspeed.com] On Behalf
Of Dewayne Hendricks
Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2013 6:48 AM
To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] "Metadata" Can Tell the Government More About You
Than the Content of Your Phonecalls

[Note:  This item comes from friend Steve Schear.  DLH]

"Metadata" Can Tell the Government More About You Than the Content of Your
Phonecalls June 12 2013
<http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-06-12/"metadata"-can-tell-governm
ent-more-about-you-content-your-phonecalls>

The government has sought to "reassure" us that it is only tracking
"metadata" such as the time and place of the calls, and not the actual
content of the calls.

But technology experts say that "metadata" can be more revealing than the
content of your actual phone calls.

For example, the ACLU notes:

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology study a few years back foundthat
reviewing people's social networking contacts alone was sufficient to
determine their sexual orientation. Consider, metadata from email
communications was sufficient to identify the mistress of then-CIA Director
David Petraeus and then  drive him out of office.

The "who," "when" and "how frequently" of communications are oftenmore
revealing than what is said or written. Calls between a reporter and a
government whistleblower, for example, may reveal a relationship that can be
incriminating all on its own.

Repeated calls to Alcoholics Anonymous, hotlines for gay teens, abortion
clinics or a gambling bookie may tell you all you need to know about a
person's problems. If a politician were revealed to have repeatedly called a
phone sex hotline after 2:00 a.m., no one would need to know what was said
on the call before drawing conclusions. In addition sophisticated
data-mining technologies have compounded the privacy implications by
allowing the government to analyze terabytes of metadata and reveal far more
details about a person's life than ever before.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation points out:

What [government officials] are trying to say is that disclosure of
metadata-the details about phone calls, without the actual voice-isn't a big
deal, not something for Americans to get upset about if the government
knows. Let's take a closer look at what they are saying:

	. They know you rang a phone sex service at 2:24 am and spoke for 18
minutes. But they don't know what you talked about.
	. They know you called the suicide prevention hotline from the
Golden Gate Bridge. But the topic of the call remains a secret.
	. They know you spoke with an HIV testing service, then your doctor,
then your health insurance company in the same hour. But they don't know
what was discussed.
	. They know you received a call from the local NRA office while it
was having a campaign against gun legislation, and then called your senators
and congressional representatives immediately after. But the content of
those calls remains safe from government intrusion.
	. They know you called a gynecologist, spoke for a half hour, and
then called the local Planned Parenthood's number later that day. But nobody
knows what you spoke about.

Sorry, your phone records-oops, "so-called metadata"-can reveal a lot more
about the content of your calls than the government is implying. Metadata
provides enough context to know some of the most intimate details of your
lives.  And the government has given no assurances that this data will never
be correlated with other easily obtained data.

[snip]

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