SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Think Metadata Isn't Intrusive? Read This
MIT Students Show the Enormously Intrusive Nature of Metadata
Jan 08, 2014
You've probably heard politicians or pundits say that "metadata doesn't matter." They argue that police and intelligence agencies shouldn't need probable cause warrants to collect information about our communications. Metadata isn't all that revealing, they say, it's just numbers.
But the digital metadata trails you leave behind every day say more about you than you can imagine. Now, thanks to two MIT students, you don't have to imagine--at least with respect to your email.
Deepak Jagdish and Daniel Smilkov's Immersion program maps your life, using your email account. After you give the researchers access to your email metadata--not the content, just the time and date stamps, and "To" and "Cc" fields--they'll return to you a series of maps and graphs that will blow your mind. The program will remind you of former loves, illustrate the changing dynamics of your professional and personal networks over time, mark deaths and transitions in your life, and more. You'll probably learn something new about yourself, if you study it closely enough. (The students say they delete your data on your command.)
Whether or not you grant the program access to your data, watch the video embedded below to see Jagdish and Smilkov show illustrations from Immersion and talk about what they discerned about themselves from looking at their own metadata maps. While you're watching, remember that while the NSA and FBI are collecting our phone records in bulk, and using advanced computer algorithms to make meaning from them, state and local government officials can often also get this information without a warrant.
The Power of Metadata: Deepak Jagdish and Daniel Smilkov at TEDxCambridge 2013MIT Media Lab graduate students Deepak Jagdish and Daniel Smilkov share some surprising insights from Immersion, a tool they ...
When President Obama said that the phone surveillance program "isn't about" "listening to your telephone calls," he was deflecting attention from the terrifying fact that there's nothing currently stopping the government from amassing and data-mining every scrap of metadata in the world about us. He made it sound like metadata spying isn't a big deal, when it's pretty much the golden ticket.
Metadata surveillance is extremely powerful, and we are all subject to it, constantly. If you want to see something resembling what the NSA sees when it looks at your data, give Jagdish and Smilkov's program a try. Then tell the government: get a warrant.
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Kade Crockford
Kade Crockford is director of the technology for liberty project at the ACLU of Massachusetts, where she edits and writes for the Privacy Matters blog
You've probably heard politicians or pundits say that "metadata doesn't matter." They argue that police and intelligence agencies shouldn't need probable cause warrants to collect information about our communications. Metadata isn't all that revealing, they say, it's just numbers.
But the digital metadata trails you leave behind every day say more about you than you can imagine. Now, thanks to two MIT students, you don't have to imagine--at least with respect to your email.
Deepak Jagdish and Daniel Smilkov's Immersion program maps your life, using your email account. After you give the researchers access to your email metadata--not the content, just the time and date stamps, and "To" and "Cc" fields--they'll return to you a series of maps and graphs that will blow your mind. The program will remind you of former loves, illustrate the changing dynamics of your professional and personal networks over time, mark deaths and transitions in your life, and more. You'll probably learn something new about yourself, if you study it closely enough. (The students say they delete your data on your command.)
Whether or not you grant the program access to your data, watch the video embedded below to see Jagdish and Smilkov show illustrations from Immersion and talk about what they discerned about themselves from looking at their own metadata maps. While you're watching, remember that while the NSA and FBI are collecting our phone records in bulk, and using advanced computer algorithms to make meaning from them, state and local government officials can often also get this information without a warrant.
The Power of Metadata: Deepak Jagdish and Daniel Smilkov at TEDxCambridge 2013MIT Media Lab graduate students Deepak Jagdish and Daniel Smilkov share some surprising insights from Immersion, a tool they ...
When President Obama said that the phone surveillance program "isn't about" "listening to your telephone calls," he was deflecting attention from the terrifying fact that there's nothing currently stopping the government from amassing and data-mining every scrap of metadata in the world about us. He made it sound like metadata spying isn't a big deal, when it's pretty much the golden ticket.
Metadata surveillance is extremely powerful, and we are all subject to it, constantly. If you want to see something resembling what the NSA sees when it looks at your data, give Jagdish and Smilkov's program a try. Then tell the government: get a warrant.
Kade Crockford
Kade Crockford is director of the technology for liberty project at the ACLU of Massachusetts, where she edits and writes for the Privacy Matters blog
You've probably heard politicians or pundits say that "metadata doesn't matter." They argue that police and intelligence agencies shouldn't need probable cause warrants to collect information about our communications. Metadata isn't all that revealing, they say, it's just numbers.
But the digital metadata trails you leave behind every day say more about you than you can imagine. Now, thanks to two MIT students, you don't have to imagine--at least with respect to your email.
Deepak Jagdish and Daniel Smilkov's Immersion program maps your life, using your email account. After you give the researchers access to your email metadata--not the content, just the time and date stamps, and "To" and "Cc" fields--they'll return to you a series of maps and graphs that will blow your mind. The program will remind you of former loves, illustrate the changing dynamics of your professional and personal networks over time, mark deaths and transitions in your life, and more. You'll probably learn something new about yourself, if you study it closely enough. (The students say they delete your data on your command.)
Whether or not you grant the program access to your data, watch the video embedded below to see Jagdish and Smilkov show illustrations from Immersion and talk about what they discerned about themselves from looking at their own metadata maps. While you're watching, remember that while the NSA and FBI are collecting our phone records in bulk, and using advanced computer algorithms to make meaning from them, state and local government officials can often also get this information without a warrant.
The Power of Metadata: Deepak Jagdish and Daniel Smilkov at TEDxCambridge 2013MIT Media Lab graduate students Deepak Jagdish and Daniel Smilkov share some surprising insights from Immersion, a tool they ...
When President Obama said that the phone surveillance program "isn't about" "listening to your telephone calls," he was deflecting attention from the terrifying fact that there's nothing currently stopping the government from amassing and data-mining every scrap of metadata in the world about us. He made it sound like metadata spying isn't a big deal, when it's pretty much the golden ticket.
Metadata surveillance is extremely powerful, and we are all subject to it, constantly. If you want to see something resembling what the NSA sees when it looks at your data, give Jagdish and Smilkov's program a try. Then tell the government: get a warrant.
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.