A Surveillance Primer: What Exactly Are We Talking About Regarding the NSA?
By Bob Cesca of the Daily Banter
One of the reasons why there’s so much hysterical blindness in reaction to NSA “bombshells” issued by Edward Snowden is that very few reporters and writers have adequately explained what’s going on.
So I’d like to take some time to explain in general terms the NSA program that everyone is screaming about.
By the way, I fully realize that the paranoid pro-Snowden crowd will insist that I’m lying or shilling for the government or both. Clearly there’s no way to respond to conspiracy theories other than to demand hard evidence. Beyond that, I can only concur with Charles Johnson who tweeted that many of the pro-Snowden people are deliberately misunderstanding what’s going on to suit their own agenda. I don’t intend to convince any of those people as they’re nestled within their own epistemic cocoons. But I think the summary below will be helpful to the rest of us who aren’t necessarily surveillance experts.
Let’s begin by defining metadata.
Phone metadata: This includes the “call pairs” — the two phone numbers on a call, plus the date, length and duration of the call.
http://thedailybanter.com/2013/07/a-stellar-wind-primer-what-exactly-are-we-talking-about-regarding-the-nsa/
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