Is the US the NSA is collecting metadata. Should anyone be unclear, the difference between metadata and data is that metadata is generally data about data.
So many hours of recorded phone conversations would be 'raw data'.
Lists of which numbers were called, when and for how long would be metadata.
If you have both that is a complete data set.
Verizon have been caught giving up their data far too easily.
There are a whole bunch of major internet companies which have been cooperating with Federal requests to see data. Cooperating rather than challenging and certainly not resisting, requests fro data.
Obama has said that you have to sacrifice some level of privacy for security, and I think here is a trade off. But the fact this has been done in secret indicates at some level the authorities knew it was inappropriate. When did a politician ever hide vote winning policies?
Another defence, that it is all OK because it is only non Americans being spied on isn't that great. Firstly, if a conversation between an American and a foreigner is spied on, an American necessarily IS spied upon. Secondly I do not believe the assertion that only foreigners are targeted. Why would court orders that the Internet companies say they insisted on be needed if this were so? Thirdly, is the US federal government admitting it's actions are inappropriate for US citizens? So the rest of us should be worried, right?
Now the leaker has outed himself. Edward Snowden an ex CIA employee working at the NSA for contractors BoozAllen. He clearly planned this over some time. Taking piles of data over a period of time.
He had access to vast amounts of data because he was an IT specialist. And other people in the environment he worked in were clueless. I am a software developer. So far as I can see, the world splits into around three groups. There are the IT specialists. there are those that fear IT, and there are those that worship IT.
It specialists are aware that IT is just a tool. Very few non IT people seem to think that way. Hopefully that will change for younger generations. Anyhow, this guy was managing to earn $200k with little by the way of formal qualifications. In IT, you don't need much to make that happen in a capital city. Security clearance was this guy's thing. Not easy to get. Anyone who had been an activist as a student would have been denied. Half the users of facebook would have left a data trail which would have precluded them.
So Mr Snowden has leaked his leak, and run away to Hong Kong. Citing the great respect for civil liberties that exists there. Apparently while maintaining a straight face. To be clear, Hong Kong is many things, but neither under British nor Chinese rule has I been a beacon of any sort of freedom, other than the economic variety.
So I am confused. I object to this intrusive monitoring of my private life, and my own government's spineless acquiescence along with its connivance. But Mr Snowden, in running to America's great rival, rather than Switzerland, or some neutral country, is looking something like a defector. It is either ill thought through or he has been working with the Chinese for some time. Strange that a guy would have been so meticulous in his leaking but not thought through his escape route. But there you have it.
More importantly it provides us a glimpse into the world of the future. We already have remote controlled robots fighting wars for us. Soon targets will be flagged up by data mining algorithm. Are we heading to a world where a big over arching networked machine will identify, track and eliminate targets without any human intervention?
Will it be possible to assassinate someone on the other side of the world just by updating a database?
Robots may not kill for emotional, vengeful reasons. Neither do they question orders. God help us if they did. They make Hitler's SS look moral.
Is there anyone of the whole earth who can withstand this sort of scrutiny? Surely we all have something to hide. We all have something to be ashamed of.
For those of us in IT, this is not really news. But hopefully the rest of you will now wake up to the surveillance society we have become. This is not democratising. Whoever controls the data will control which data is released. There will soon be enough data on everyone to destroy them.
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