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

[Roland Perry]

In message <1b8e01ce682a$0b86c5a0$229450e0$@gmail.com>, at 07:34:51 on 
Thu, 13 Jun 2013, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> writes
>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.

This is as unsurprising a revelation as the defecation habits of bears.

It's been recognised in UK surveillance law for over a decade now, with 
the acknowledgement that while you can't fail to identify which website 
someone went to (as traffic data) ISPs should not identify which page of 
the website was accessed. [I helped draft the paragraph concerned, maybe 
the first time a justice department minister has hosted a meeting for 
someone clutching an rfc].

So, for example, the authorities could tell (by making appropriate 
requests) that I went to a garden shop's website, but aren't supposed to 
be told if I looked at fertilizer (some of which can be used to make 
bombs) or geraniums (which can't).

This (the restriction) might be of more practical importance if I went 
to a search engine site, where the results of the search should be out 
of bounds, but not any subsequent access of a site (and just the site, 
not the page) the search engine found.
-- 
Roland Perry

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