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<body class='hmmessage'><div dir='ltr'><pre>The term 'metadata' bugs you. What bugs me is that this 'valuable data' is being sucked<br>up by the NSA 'wholesale' instead of the telcos charging them a pretty penny for it.<br>The whole mess seems to be creating a lot of bugging.<br><br>-Scott<br><br><br>Paul wrote:<br><br>As a computer science guy, this bugs me.<br> <br>I've seen the term "metadata" abused in the news media and online often <br>in relation to phone data the NSA is sucking up wholesale.<br> <br>"Metadata", as the media is using the term, *is* data. Things like <br>phone numbers, dates, times, duration of calls, cell phone tower <br>identifiers, etc *is* data.<br> <br>The term "metadata" has a specific meaning, it's data about data. For <br>example, metadata on the data that Verizon was forced to give over would <br>look something like this:<br> <br>Field Data Type Size Comment<br>Originating Phone Number NUMBER 10<br>Called Number NUMBER 10<br>Call Duration NUMBER 4 Length of call in seconds<br>Date of Call CHAR 10 Date format: MM/DD/YYYY<br>Time of Call CHAR 12 Time format: HH24:MI:SS.nnn<br>...<br> <br>And so on. I couldn't care less if they grabbed the metadata from all <br>the phone carriers. It would be a bunch of database table descriptions.<br> <br>Don't kid yourself, what they grabbed from the telcos was actual data, <br>and valuable data at that.<br> <br>Paul<br> </pre> </div></body>
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