Snowden: Metadata Mining More Intrusive Than Eavesdropping

TruthisScary

Former NSA contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden boosts business at online security firms every time he opens his mouth. But his latest revelations highlight government spying activities that are worse than eavesdropping on live phone calls and reading emails.

A March Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 51 percent of Americans are concerned about Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Twitter overstepping privacy boundaries. Those five companies combine to create a de-facto database of demographic information and intimate details about anyone who regularly uses them. It’s the information many Americans don’t give a second thought about that enables government to paint a portrait of their entire existences.

Snowden, via video teleconference, and former U.K. Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald, spoke at an April 5 Amnesty International event in Chicago about the government’s collection of metadata. The two told a crowd of about 1,000 people that metadata is far more intrusive than eavesdropping on emails and phone calls, and gives government precise records about everything in your private life.

Photo of Edward Snowden by McZusatz via Wikimedia Commons

What Is Metadata?

Metadata, in the simplest of terms, is data about other data. In this case, metadata is the time phone calls were placed, the location they were placed from, the number that was called, and how long the conversations lasted. The sum of this data can identify the most intimate details of your life and even secrets you don’t want anybody knowing.

A Stanford University study published in March positively identified a cannabis grower, a person with multiple sclerosis and a woman visiting an abortion clinic from nothing more than the time and destination of their phone calls. The study had 546 volunteers install an app on their Android phones that passes along data regarding their calls to the Stanford Security Laboratory. Researchers positively identified 18 percent of the 33,688 phone numbers dialed by the participants through simple Yelp and Google searches.

They correctly determined that a woman visited an abortion clinic after she had a long morning call with her sister, then placed several calls to Planned Parenthood a couple days later. The cannabis grower, over a span of three weeks, contacted a head shop, a home improvement store and a hydroponics store.

If people want to protect personal information, security services like Lifelock can stop most personal information theft, but the government can still collect metadata even with the best privacy protection. Metadata is so sensitive that the New York Bar Association deemed it an unethical practice for attorneys in the state to view metadata if opposing counsel failed to remove it before exchanging files. Metadata in electronic documents includes, among other things, the date it was created, who created it, and revisions that have been done to it. This data can also be manually manipulated to deceive.

White House Responds To Criticism

The Obama Administration announced in late March that it plans to stop bulk collection of metadata, but much of the proposal would require Congressional approval. Privacy groups dismissed the plan as lip service, while House Speaker John Boehner prefers a plan that does not require court approval before the government can compel communications companies to release metadata. Regardless, it would be the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court that makes the decisions, not a U.S. District Court.

Snowden’s asylum in Russia was scheduled to end in June, but Alexy Pushkov of Russia’s Foreign Affairs Committee, announced in January that the expiration date would be extended. Snowden faces charges of espionage and theft of government property if he returns to the United States.