[Vision2020] A quick rant about the term "metadata"
Joe Campbell
philosopher.joe at gmail.com
Fri Jul 5 15:59:35 PDT 2013
I understand your criticisms of Obama. I only said that getting folks not
to vote was a Republican campaign strategy, which is true. Democrats
benefit (in general) when more people vote, Republicans when fewer people
vote. That was my only point. Joe
On Jul 5, 2013, at 12:40 PM, Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com> wrote:
The Democrat in office has only continued with the programs he reviled as a
Senator when the Republicans did them. Hell, if anything, he has increased
them.
It's not Republicans vs. Democrats any more, it's Those In Power vs. The
Rest of Us.
Paul
------------------------------
*From:* Joe Campbell <philosopher.joe at gmail.com>
*To:* Scott Dredge <scooterd408 at hotmail.com>
*Cc:* Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com>; Tom Hansen <thansen at moscow.com>;
viz <vision2020 at moscow.com>
*Sent:* Friday, July 5, 2013 12:17 PM
*Subject:* Re: [Vision2020] A quick rant about the term "metadata"
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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