{"id":9436,"date":"2013-07-09T12:30:53","date_gmt":"2013-07-09T19:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=9436"},"modified":"2019-12-23T16:00:44","modified_gmt":"2019-12-24T00:00:44","slug":"no-such-thing-as-just-metadata","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2013\/07\/09\/no-such-thing-as-just-metadata\/","title":{"rendered":"No such thing as &#8220;just metadata&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:2873,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/en.wikipedia.org\\\/wiki\\\/PRISM_(surveillance_program)&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260306070059\\\/https:\\\/\\\/en.wikipedia.org\\\/wiki\\\/PRISM_(surveillance_program)&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/en.wikipedia.org\\\/wiki\\\/PRISM_(surveillance_program)&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-20 12:57:03&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-30 02:43:01&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-03 07:28:36&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-03 07:28:36&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:2874,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.techdirt.com\\\/articles\\\/20130708\\\/01453123733\\\/anyone-brushing-off-nsa-surveillance-because-its-just-metadata-doesnt-know-what-metadata-is.shtml&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20220224035038\\\/https:\\\/\\\/www.techdirt.com\\\/articles\\\/20130708\\\/01453123733\\\/anyone-brushing-off-nsa-surveillance-because-its-just-metadata-doesnt-know-what-metadata-is.shtml&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-06 06:58:26&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-20 12:57:08&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-30 02:43:03&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-30 02:43:03&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:2875,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.techweekeurope.co.uk\\\/comment\\\/nsa-prism-surveillance-mit-immersion-121202&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20140927001423\\\/http:\\\/\\\/www.techweekeurope.co.uk\\\/comment\\\/nsa-prism-surveillance-mit-immersion-121202&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-06 06:58:35&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-20 12:57:12&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-30 02:43:00&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403}],&quot;broken&quot;:true,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-30 02:43:00&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:2876,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/immersion.media.mit.edu&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20210306012618\\\/https:\\\/\\\/immersion.media.mit.edu\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-06 06:58:40&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:503},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-20 12:57:06&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-30 02:43:07&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-30 02:43:07&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>With all the recent news concerning the NSA&#8217;s surveillance programs (<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/PRISM_(surveillance_program)\" title=\"Wikipedia: PRISM (surveillance program)\">Prism<\/a> et al.), one of the common defenses has been that for at least some of these programs (though not all), the government is &#8220;just&#8221; collecting metadata. For example, should the government access your email records, they might not have access to the <em>content<\/em> of the email, merely the associated data &#8212; like who you communicate with, when, how often, who else is included in the messages, and so on.<\/p>\n<p>Techdirt has a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techdirt.com\/articles\/20130708\/01453123733\/anyone-brushing-off-nsa-surveillance-because-its-just-metadata-doesnt-know-what-metadata-is.shtml\" title=\"Techdirt: Anyone Brushing Off NSA Surveillance Because It's 'Just Metadata' Doesn't Know What Metadata Is\">good overview<\/a> of why the &#8220;it&#8217;s just metadata&#8221; argument is a foolish argument to make &#8212; basically, there is a <em>lot<\/em> of information that can be derived from &#8220;just metadata&#8221; &#8212; but there&#8217;s also an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techweekeurope.co.uk\/comment\/nsa-prism-surveillance-mit-immersion-121202\" title=\"TechWeek Europe: MIT Project Reveals What PRISM Knows About You\">MIT project<\/a> called <a href=\"https:\/\/immersion.media.mit.edu\/\" title=\"Immersion\">&#8220;Immersion&#8221;<\/a> (noted in the TechDirt article, though I found it elsewhere) that gives a good visualization of what can be learned from a relatively limited dataset.<\/p>\n<p>Immersion scans your Gmail account (with your explicit permission, of course), and then runs an analysis on the metadata &#8212; <em>not<\/em> the content &#8212; of your email history to create a diagram showing you you communicate with and the connections among them.<\/p>\n<p>As an example, here&#8217;s my result (with names removed). This is an analysis of almost 52 thousand messages over nearly nine years among 201 separate contacts. Each dot is a single contact, the size of the dot is a measure of how often I&#8217;ve communicated with them, and the lines between them show existing relationships between those people (based on messages with multiple recipients).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/immersion.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-9437\" src=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/immersion-500x472.png\" alt=\"Immersion Contact Map\" width=\"500\" height=\"472\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In that image, there are two obvious constellations: the blue grouping at the top right are my family and long-time friends; the orange\/green\/red\/brown grouping to the left are my Norwescon contacts. The scattering of purples and yellows are contacts that fall outside of those two primary groups. While there&#8217;s not much here of great surprise or import for me, I did already learn one thing of interest &#8212; apparently one of my old high school friends has had some amount of contact with one of my Norwescon friends (that&#8217;s the single line connecting the two constellations). Now, I have no idea what sort of relationship exists between them &#8212; it could be nothing more than my sending a group email that included one and accidentally including the other as part of the group &#8212; but <em>some<\/em> sort of relationship does, and that&#8217;s information I didn&#8217;t have before.<\/p>\n<p>Now, my metadata is fairly innocuous. But for argument&#8217;s sake, suppose I was involved not with Norwescon, but with some other group of people that, for whatever reason, I wanted to keep quiet about. Maybe I&#8217;m involved in the local kink scene, and could face repercussions at my job or in my personal life if this became known. Maybe I&#8217;m having a gender identity crisis that I&#8217;m not comfortable publicly discussing, but have a strong internet-based support group. Maybe I&#8217;m part of Anonymous or some similar group, discussing ways to cause mischief. Maybe I&#8217;m a whistleblower, and these are my contacts. Maybe I&#8217;m a news reporter who has guaranteed anonymity for my sources &#8212; but suddenly, this metadata exposes not only who I communicate with, but when and how often, and if there&#8217;s a sudden ramp in communication between me and certain contacts in the weeks or months before I break a big story with a lot of anonymous sources, suddenly they&#8217;re not so anonymous any more. And, yes, of course, because no list like this would be complete without the modern boogeyman that is the government&#8217;s excuse for <em>why<\/em> this surveillance is necessary &#8212; maybe I&#8217;m a terrorist. (For the record, I&#8217;m none of the above-mentioned things.)<\/p>\n<p>However, of that list of possibilities, terrorism (or, less broadly, investigation of known or suspected crimes) is the <em>only<\/em> one that the government should really have any interest in, and that&#8217;s exactly the kind of investigation that they should be getting warrants for. If they suspect someone, get a warrant, analyze their data, and build a case from there. But analyzing <em>everyone&#8217;s<\/em> data, <em>all<\/em> the time, <em>without<\/em> specific need, <em>without<\/em> specific justification, and <em>without<\/em> warrants? And then holding on to the data indefinitely, allowing them to troll through it at any time for any reason, whether or not a crime is suspected?<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a very good reason why terms like &#8220;Orwellian&#8221;, &#8220;Big Brother&#8221;, and &#8220;1984&#8221; keep coming up in these conversations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s an MIT project called &#8216;Immersion&#8217; that gives a good visualization of what can be learned from a relatively limited dataset.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2043,2042,2038],"tags":[14,65],"class_list":["post-9436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-politics","category-tech","tag-politics","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}