Around the world, governments are planning, or have already begun, collecting data about their citizens’ use of mobile communications & the Internet. In most cases, they do not plan to capture the content of phone calls, emails or web pages: merely metadata. E.g. calls who, where from, who sends emails to whom, addresses of web pages visited. This metadata will be available to authorities without a warrant.
“It’s only metadata,” is commonly heard.
This raises two questions:
1. If metadata is of no importance, why do authorities wish to collect it?
2. Just what information can be gleaned from metadata?
In Australia, metadata collection & retention for two years, became compulsory on 13 October 2015. An employee of the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) acquired a copy of his metadata from his mobile carrier & made it available to the public to see what they could find out about him. This is what they found:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-16/metadata-retention-privacy-phone-will-ockenden/6694152
What is metadata, & is it important?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-17/metadata-data-retention-what-is-it/6324962 / your phone tracks your every move digital age how much of your life is actually private ABC reporter Will Ockenden access metadata data looks like many of our actions leave behind electronic footprint collects data critical questions modern society Australia's new data retention laws phone internet companies save information two years every time you call someone where you call them from which cell tower your phone pings connects internet what data might reveal ABC reporter Will Ockenden surveillance selfie access metadata individual Australian's metadata tracking device critics Australia's data retention law mass surveillance metadata track where people go Attorney-General Department map shows every time phone communicated cell mobile tower outgoing call text message internet connection markers locations cell towers phone contacted direction of travel route time of connections daily routine mandatory data retention Federal Government security agencies nothing to worry about metadata content of communications Prime Minister Tony Abbott data system generates metadata dataset contained year outgoing call SMS records six months data sessions records kept phone connected internet cellular mobile network simple data request 13,000 individual records 1,500 outgoing phone calls SMS 11,200 records data sessions time date phone connected mobile network cell tower connected to smartphone Will carrying tracking device logged roughly where he was every 20 minutes Government departments police security agencies all the data more without the need for a warrant pattern recognition follow daily movements collate visualise data patterns heatmaps phone communicated different cell towers patterns ping pings journeys filter heatmaps patterns emerge time slices intimate portrait aspects life tools explore metadata conclusions where you live how gets to and from work when he leaves town where he goes social network metadata show information about an individual connections to other people organisations major main most important top 10 contacts people communicates with most often contact how and when communicated with them preserve their privacy relationships concealed contacts' identities patterns data showed scarily accurate provided analysis metadata many insights about life revealed data dataset mobile cell provider Telstra who he called texted dataset phone numbers how long each phone call lasted time of the communication location of the cell tower contacted outgoing calls were initiated location cell tower contacted SMS Internet connections data kept by telcos Internet providers data retention laws not included in the dataset details of incoming phone calls time date size recipients emails sent ISP's email service webmail services Gmail Yahoo Hotmail file type size attachments sent received emails using ISP's email service internet usage how much bandwidth internet service provides /
