Stanford researchers tested the U.S. government's claim that data the NSA collected in its vast wiretapping operation didn't reveal private data and found the claims to be false. You may have heard that the NSA collected so-called “metadata” gleaned from hundreds of millions of intercepted phone calls. The term “metadata” refers to information such as the time, duration and location of phone calls and not the content itself, and the Obama administration said the privacy of callers is essentially safe. But according to Stanford University researchers, that may not be true. “Reasonable minds can disagree about the policy and legal constraints that should be imposed on those databases. The science, however, is clear: phone metadata is highly sensitive,” wrote researchers Jonathan Mayer and Patrick Mutchler in a blog post explaining their work. They used data from calls made by 546 volunteers to assess the extent to which information about who they had called and when revealed sensitive information. They were able to deduce that one of the volunteers suffered from multiple sclerosis; another might have been planning to plant an indoor marijuana patch; and the sister of a third was likely going to have an abortion. That sounds to me like “highly sensitive information,” and it’s far removed from the dry-sounding “metadata” the agency is ostensibly collecting. The Stanford researchers said they were surprised by how easy it was to connect the dots between multiple phone calls and the private activities of the volunteers. “Participants had calls with Alcoholics Anonymous, gun stores, NARAL Pro-Choice, labor unions, divorce lawyers, sexually transmitted disease clinics, a Canadian import pharmacy, strip clubs, and much more. This was not a hypothetical parade of horribles. These were simple inferences, about real phone users, that could trivially be made on a large scale,” they wrote. Even a caller’s religion could be deduced. Mayer and Mutchler correctly guessed the religious preferences of a number of volunteers by noting that they had made calls to an organization associated with one faith or another. The volunteers providing the data installed an app called “MetaPhone” on their Android phones, which passed information about who they had called, as well as what was on their public Facebook profiles, to Mayer and other researchers at the Stanford Security Laboratory. On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that the Obama administration is preparing to unveil a legislative proposal that would end its systematic collection of data about the calling habits of Americans. The NSA’s program was secret for years but was revealed when Edward Snowden leaked a vast trove of internal documents he had downloaded from agency computers. Let’s hope The Times report is accurate and that Obama really does dial the program back – way back. Image: Presstv Related content brandpost Sponsored by FPT Software Time for New Partnership Paradigms to Be Future-fit By Veronica Lew Dec 06, 2023 5 mins Vendors and Providers brandpost Sponsored by BMC Why CIOs should prioritize AIOps in 2024 AIOps empowers IT to manage services by incorporating AI/ML into operations. By Jeff Miller Dec 06, 2023 3 mins IT Leadership opinion Generative AI in enterprises: LLM orchestration holds the key to success In the dynamic landscape of AI, LLMs represent a pivotal breakthrough. Unlike traditional AI, which demands frequent data updates, LLMs possess the ability to learn and adapt in real-time. This mirrors human learning and positions LLMs as essential f By Shail Khiyara Dec 06, 2023 10 mins Generative AI Artificial Intelligence brandpost Sponsored by Freshworks How gen AI is joining the holiday shopping season One year after the launch of ChatGPT, the retail industry is embracing generative AI to deliver a variety of benefits By Elliot Markowitz Dec 06, 2023 4 mins Generative AI Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe