‘We Kill People Based on Metadata’ by David Cole.
From the post:
Supporters of the National Security Agency inevitably defend its sweeping collection of phone and Internet records on the ground that it is only collecting so-called “metadata”—who you call, when you call, how long you talk. Since this does not include the actual content of the communications, the threat to privacy is said to be negligible. That argument is profoundly misleading.
Of course knowing the content of a call can be crucial to establishing a particular threat. But metadata alone can provide an extremely detailed picture of a person’s most intimate associations and interests, and it’s actually much easier as a technological matter to search huge amounts of metadata than to listen to millions of phone calls. As NSA General Counsel Stewart Baker has said, “metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody’s life. If you have enough metadata, you don’t really need content.” When I quoted Baker at a recent debate at Johns Hopkins University, my opponent, General Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and the CIA, called Baker’s comment “absolutely correct,” and raised him one, asserting, “We kill people based on metadata.”
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I am sympathetic to many of David’s points, such as the illegitimacy of distinguishing between citizens of the United States and “others,” his suspicions about the USA Freedom Act and its shortcomings.
However, given the readiness of the NSA to break existing laws and then to lie to Congress about having done so, gives me little faith in “reform” type legislation.
Moreover, the debate should not be on the proper limits of government surveillance of its citizens and the citizens of other countries to combat terrorism.
Once the debate is framed to presume some legitimate reason for surveillance, such as terrorism, those who oppose government surveillance have already lost the war. They may win some minor points to support future fund raising but government surveillance will controlled only by those using it. Not a good outcome in my view.
Before reaching the debate on government surveillance, our representatives should be challenging the talisman of terrorism which is offered to justify anti-terrorism measures. How many people died from terrorism last year in the United States? How many similar deaths will be prevented by program X? We may well decide that deaths at lower than the Atlanta metro area traffic accident rate aren’t worth government surveillance.
Sounds to me like we need more metadata about government surveillance programs and their details, not glowing summaries by those most interested in them continuing.