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

[michael gurstein]

Re: the Economist article, as with the ISOC statement the question is, once
having had this insight/knowledge what if anything is one to do... Is one
simply to trust governments/companies/techies with that
knowledge/information or is it possible to establish constaints on how that
information can be used (or collected)?

The argument of course, is that there are currently (US) legal constraints
on the data/information collection but the problem with that is that there
seems to be no effective transparent oversight mechanism concerning the
application of US law and absolutely no protection/oversight or constraint
on what information might be collected from or how it might be used as per
the rest of us.

M

-----Original Message-----
From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org
[mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] On Behalf Of McTim
Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2013 11:04 AM
To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org; Roland Perry
Subject: Re: [governance] FW: [Dewayne-Net] "Metadata" Can Tell the
Government More About You Than the Content of Your Phonecalls

On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 10:58 AM, Roland Perry
<roland at internetpolicyagency.com> wrote:
> 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.


on a related note, this useful article in the Economist:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/m2eghts


--
Cheers,

McTim
"A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A route
indicates how we get there."  Jon Postel



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