{"id":15105,"date":"2013-06-12T11:27:49","date_gmt":"2013-06-12T18:27:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intego.com\/mac-security-blog\/?p=15105"},"modified":"2013-08-16T13:13:17","modified_gmt":"2013-08-16T20:13:17","slug":"unpacking-the-nsa-scandal-what-is-metadata","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intego.com\/mac-security-blog\/unpacking-the-nsa-scandal-what-is-metadata\/","title":{"rendered":"Unpacking the NSA Scandal: What is Metadata?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"metadata\"<\/a><\/p>\n

First of all, let me say that this is not intended as commentary or opinion on the current scandal. My goal in posting this is to simply educate you as to how to interpret the discussion so that you can come to your own informed opinion.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve been reading the ample coverage about the recent NSA scandal, there\u2019s one thing that I see again and again that a lot of people are apparently misunderstanding. The current issue isn\u2019t about whether the government is tapping people\u2019s phones and reading people\u2019s emails, per se. The whole trope of listening for code words is more \u201cECHELON<\/a>\u201d than \u201cPRISM<\/a>,\u201d and the recent scandal is about the latter.<\/p>\n

So, what\u2019s the difference? In the case of ECHELON, the idea was that the government was parsing the content of communications to look for certain specific keywords relating to drugs and terrorism. Given the unbelievably massive amount of data that would need to be parsed, and the popularity of strong encryption methods among people that know they\u2019re doing something illicit, this could be considerably more trouble than it\u2019s worth.<\/p>\n

For better or worse, the content of communications themselves is not the only way to get meaningful information. Advertisers have been doing this too, which is why \u201cDo Not Track\u201d<\/a> is such a big deal. The idea with PRISM is that it\u2019s not dealing with voice or text content that can be encrypted, but with the data about the call itself<\/i>. This is what we call meta-data: data about data.<\/p>\n

What sort of data can be gleaned about our communications? Here\u2019s a short list of the most common questions that metadata answers:<\/p>\n