An Australian news reporter released his cell phone metadata to the public

[thewayne]

It was only his outbound calls and texts, still, the public was able to piece together a remarkably accurate profile of his life. They figured out where his parents live, when he left the country for foreign travel, when the drawbridge went up on his route to work, and when he moved to a new house to be closer to work. They produced heat maps of the area showing the most calls that were quite interesting.

They also made some wildly inaccurate guesses. This was just one half of the data: if they'd had access to more metadata, they would have made a much more exhaustive map. The article links to the original release of data which apparently you can still download and play with.

Australia law allows you to download your metadata from your cell provider.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-24/metadata-what-you-found-will-ockenden/6703626


This is security expert Bruce Schneier's take on the data with some good comments from his reading faithful.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/09/what_can_you_le.html

Comments

[silveradept]

If amateurs with incomplete information can still pick out important things about your life, then it seems pretty obvious to me that this sort of data needs to be protected by the law and require warrants to obtain on Fourth Amendment grounds (for the US) and any appropriate data protection laws from the EU.