[Vision2020] A quick rant about the term "metadata"

Joe Campbell philosopher.joe at gmail.com
Fri Jul 5 12:17:29 PDT 2013 

Two points.

1/ Generating distrust of government is a Republican campaign strategy.

2/ I don't see a see a substantive drop in crime as a result of increased security measures. 

The idea that people are by nature evil and will go crazy unless you have prohibitive sanctions seems a little like the idea that increased acceptance of gays and lesbians will lead to an increase in sexual depravity. I'm not sure why people commit crimes but it isn't just because they can; likewise wrt being gay.

On Jul 5, 2013, at 11:32 AM, Scott Dredge

> Obviously it's unwise to trust the government or corporations or unions or churches or any other hierarchical structure of people where leaders motivated by their own self-interest have their minions carry out the dirty work.
> 
> I agree that there needs to be oversight to prevent / prosecute abuses, but there also needs to be some level of non-disclosure regarding methods of tracking criminal activity otherwise the criminals will find a way around it.  It's not an easy problem to solve.  It's like trying to keep guns out the hands of the crazies without infringing on the rights of the responsible.
> 
> -Scott
> 
> Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2013 10:55:30 -0700
> From: godshatter at yahoo.com
> To: thansen at moscow.com
> CC: scooterd408 at hotmail.com; vision2020 at moscow.com
> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] A quick rant about the term "metadata"
> 
> 
> The more we learn about what the government is doing, the more reason we find not to trust them.  Secret letters to corporations they can't even talk about forcing them to give us so much data, secret courts to determine if secret gathering of data is legitimate.  Secret documents describing their secret justifications for these secret data grabs.
> 
> Do you trust our government?  Are you OK with the sweeping gathering of data that we have recently heard about in the news?
> 
> Do you trust corporations?  Are you OK with them selling our data to advertisers and who knows who else?
> 
> In my opinion, it's better to be distrustful of a group of people who hide behind secrecy even now than it is to be blissfully naive.
> 
> Paul
> 
> On 07/04/2013 07:22 PM, Tom Hansen wrote:
> “To the man who is afraid everything rustles.” - Sophocles
> 
> Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .
> 
> "Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)
> http://www.MoscowCares.com
>   
> Tom Hansen
> Moscow, Idaho
> 
> "There's room at the top they are telling you still 
> But first you must learn how to smile as you kill 
> If you want to be like the folks on the hill."
> 
> - John Lennon
>  
> 
> 
> On Jul 4, 2013, at 7:00 PM, Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> It does bug me.  And it's pointless for them anyway, since I run AdBlock Plus and NoScript on Firefox and hence never see the ads anyway.  I also mitigate it by popping my email to my home machine.  I'm sure they scan it coming in, but I doubt they keep a copy of every email that I delete for very long.  It wouldn't make business sense to have to have that             amount of extra storage on hand.  I've been aware of these kinds of things for a long time, and have in the past brought things like this up on the list.  I figure it's not gotten so bad that I need to go to the trouble of setting up a mail server and changing every account I've opened on the net over to it.  Not yet, anyway.  I'm sure it will get there someday.
> 
> The fact that corporations do sell my data in certain cases doesn't mean I approve of it in the slightest.
> 
> Paul
> 
> On 07/04/2013 03:12 PM, Scott Dredge wrote:
> Companies having been selling data for eons to anyone willing to pay for it.  And lots of times these companies will allow you to pay a premium to keep your data more secure.    For instance, for $5 per month, you can get an unlisted Verizon phone number:
> http://hothardware.com/News/Verizon-Claims-5-Monthly-Fee-Necessary-For-Unlisted-Number/
> 
> One question I have for you is that since Yahoo a full month ago started scanning & analyzing emails for ad targeting, why aren't you bugged by that?  Is it because               it's a free service and if you were concerned about them rooting through your emails, you'd switch and pay for a premium account that doesn't do that sort of thing?
> 
> I'll concede that ad targeting is less disconcerting than the thought of the big, bad, dangerous almighty government tracking you and the lines for limiting their power are (or will be) drawn for them by lawmakers and the Constitution (or whatever tatters are left of it as Sunil points out).
> 
> -Scott
> 
> Date: Thu, 4 Jul 2013 12:33:20 -0700
> From: godshatter at yahoo.com
> To: scooterd408 at hotmail.com
> CC: vision2020 at moscow.com
> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] A quick rant about the term "metadata"
> 
> 
> It's OK if they pay for it, but not if they force them to give it over?  Are you OK with all the companies we do business with selling all our data to the government, or do you draw a line somewhere?
> 
> Paul
> 
> On 07/04/2013 10:08 AM, Scott Dredge wrote:
> The term 'metadata' bugs you.  What bugs me is that this 'valuable data' is being sucked
> up by the NSA 'wholesale' instead of the telcos charging them a pretty penny for it.
> The whole mess seems to be creating a lot of bugging.
> 
> -Scott
> 
> 
> Paul wrote:
> 
> As a computer science guy, this bugs me.
>  
> I've seen the term "metadata" abused in the news media and online often 
> in relation to phone data the NSA is sucking up wholesale.
>  
> "Metadata", as the media is using the term, *is* data.  Things like 
> phone numbers, dates, times, duration of calls, cell phone tower 
> identifiers, etc *is* data.
>  
> The term "metadata" has a specific meaning, it's data about data. For 
> example, metadata on the data that Verizon was forced to give over would 
> look something like this:
>  
> Field                     Data Type  Size  Comment
> Originating Phone Number  NUMBER     10
> Called Number             NUMBER     10
> Call Duration             NUMBER     4      Length of call in seconds
> Date of Call              CHAR       10     Date format: MM/DD/YYYY
> Time of Call              CHAR       12     Time format: HH24:MI:SS.nnn
> ...
>  
> And so on.  I couldn't care less if they grabbed the metadata from all 
> the phone carriers.  It would be a bunch of database table descriptions.
>  
> Don't kid yourself, what they grabbed from the telcos was actual data, 
> and valuable data at that.
>  
> Paul
>  
> 
> 
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