But It's Only Metadata

[mindwalker_i]

We Kill People Based On Metadata

Supporters of the National Security Agency inevitably defend its sweeping collection of phone and Internet records on the ground that it is only collecting so-called “metadata”—who you call, when you call, how long you talk. Since this does not include the actual content of the communications, the threat to privacy is said to be negligible. That argument is profoundly misleading.

Of course knowing the content of a call can be crucial to establishing a particular threat. But metadata alone can provide an extremely detailed picture of a person’s most intimate associations and interests, and it’s actually much easier as a technological matter to search huge amounts of metadata than to listen to millions of phone calls. As NSA General Counsel Stewart Baker has said, “metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody’s life. If you have enough metadata, you don’t really need content.” When I quoted Baker at a recent debate at Johns Hopkins University, my opponent, General Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and the CIA, called Baker’s comment “absolutely correct,” and raised him one, asserting, “We kill people based on metadata.”

It is precisely this power to collect our metadata that has prompted one of Congress’s most bipartisan initiatives in recent years. On May 7, the House Judiciary Committee voted 32-0 to adopt an amended form of the USA Freedom Act, a bill to rein in NSA spying on Americans, initially proposed by Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy and Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner. On May 8, the House Intelligence Committee, which has until now opposed any real reform of the NSA, also unanimously approved the same bill. And the Obama administration has welcomed the development.

snip

But, but, but it's only metadata!

[JDPriestly]

1. It isn't enough, but it is a good start. Then we can see what problems arise.

I don't think the US should be able to get data from other countries on American citizens that it could not obtain without a warrant in the US. That's one thing.

Another is that "terrorism" and the associated concepts of aiding and supporting terrorism, etc. need to be better defined. Seems to me that there are right-wing groups that have used arms to intimidate the police or the federal officers but aren't officially viewed as terrorists. Then there are individuals who buy supplies that could be used to make a bomb maybe, but they are viewed as terrorists. Someone actually shoots a congresswoman and members of her audience in a shopping mall but he is apparently from what little I know not considered a terrorist.

There are a lot of questions to be answered about how terrorist is defined. It seems like a term that would lend itself to an arbitrary definition depending on the government in authority and its political leanings.

In my view, peaceful protests are not terrorism. But what if an agent provocateur or a mentally ill person turns a peaceful protest into a violent one? Did the people who organized the event with peaceable assembly in mind assist the violence? Are the people who organized the event with no intention that it become some sort of act of terrorism to be called to answer under laws that deal with terrorism? I'm not stating this clearly but a lot of questions need to be answered with regard to the definitions in the Patriot Act.

I don't know how you define terrorism so as to narrow it in a useful and fair way.

[nikto]

2. Terrorists are anyone who scares Republicans

[JDPriestly]

10. That is about it.

[mindwalker_i]

7. The definition, or lack thereof, of terrorism

and the way it's applied or not applied is extremely telling evidence as to what this "war on terror" is really about, or isn't about. That it's so riddled with inconsistencies shows that the real purpose is very different than the stated one, and I believe the real purpose is control over us, the citizens. That control is to keep us from objecting to the way money is spent, like how so much goes to military, or that a lot goes to well-connected contractors.

[Electric Monk]

8. How do you wage war on an abstract noun? It's rather like bombing murder.

Why Grammar is the First Casualty of War

[mindwalker_i]

9. Well it sounds good, and people go for it

Then the govt can do all sorts of stuff that it wouldn't be able to get away with otherwise. TSA?

[Pholus]

3. Say it ain't so! I've been told by those who know that metadata is harmless!

Mr. Baker, General Hayden; welcome to "under the bus."

[L0oniX]

6. Metadata is to be consumed daily for a consistent easy data bowel movement.

We need metadata as an alternative to

[Pholus]

11. Well only indirectly. Apparently metadata attracts Hellfire missiles and they

remove any blockages....

[nashville_brook]

4. k and r

[L0oniX]

5. Where's the results? How many terrorists has it caught? How can we believe them?