Metadata... content... how much do you have to look at before it's too much...

[tk2kewl]

...all of that is nonsense!

What algorithm is deciding whose behavior is suspect?

If we are willing to give that power over to secret proprietary-for-profit algorithms, what next?

Jury duty is such a hassle. Why not have the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt algorithm take care of that for me?

[tk2kewl]

1. the rise of the machines has surely begun

[randome]

2. What would you have them do? Advertise the algorithm so it can be avoided?

Do you micro-manage everything law enforcement does?

Do you want the power to decide when undercover agents do their jobs?

And only Snowden has said he had access and even that's in dispute.

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[font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font]
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[tk2kewl]

3. open source it, i guess

otherwise IMO you would have to make the code and/or developers available to the defense at trial as per the Confrontation Clause of the 6th Amendment

but, hey, we can throw that one out too i guess

[backscatter712]

4. You want to know what metadata can do? Look at Google.

Google and NSA are two entities that are doing roughly the same thing - spending billions of dollars on computers and software to index and search oceans of data to find useful information.

Google does it with web pages and other information that's publicly available on the web. That's what we get to play with in civilian-land.

The NSA does it with everything publicly available that Google already indexes, PLUS your phone call records, your Internet traffic, your credit card transactions, your airline travel records, your arrest records, court records, your email headers, etc. etc. etc.

They're spidering our entire lives.

PRISM is Google for spooks - it's an incredibly scary tool.

[tk2kewl]

5. metadata doesn't DO anything

it is the software that analyzes the data that does the DOING

and the software is secret...

[backscatter712]

6. If you want a taste of what the NSA's secret software is doing, play with Google.

Both the NSA and Google have built billions of dollars of IT infrastructure, designed to search and index oceans of data, especially by using or creating metadata, so people searching can get useful information.

Google does it in the public, with web sites.

The NSA does the same thing in secret.