Using metadata to identify Paul Revere

[thewayne]

Metadata is what is being collected by PRISM, the NSA, et al. It shows who you called and how long you talked to them, and maybe your and their location, I don't know if they've revealed what the specifics of what metadata are being collected. As far as we know they are not collecting actual call contents, and considering what a flood of information that would be, it's unlikely. If they need that info, they can execute specific taps, whether or not they have a warrant for that, I won't bother exploring.

This article shows how by taking a person's name and what social clubs or organizations that they belong to that you can identify a likely suspect, just by looking at metadata. Using the names of 254 people and their potential memberships in seven different organizations, Revere pops to the top using different sorts of mathematical analysis.

This is a technique called Social Network Analysis and it's used by Google and Facebook, and probably LiveJournal, to try to target advertising. If most of my LJ friends are science fiction fans as indicated in our profiles, it could be extrapolated that all of my friends are fans of SF/F. And they would probably be mostly right. But not 100% correct, which leads to some weird ads popping up occasionally.

http://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metadata-to-find-paul-revere/