http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-12/what-if-the-redcoat-nsa-had-access-to-paul-reveres-metadata
http://www.ibtimes.com/spying-celebrities-nyc-taxi-metadata-exposes-celeb-locations-strip-club-clients-1696744
I was directed to this very interesting article from another about NYC taxi metadata exposing personal information about celebrities. The article featured in Bloomberg Businessweek technology section also relates to metadata and people’s personal privacy. Although it may seen more abstract than actually hacking and reading emails, the collection of metadata is almost equally invasive. Meta data is comprised of five categories that help to describe the types of metadata. These categories are administrative metadata, descriptive metadata, preservation metadata, technical metadata, and use meta data. All of this information about a certain set of data can help someone reveal the big picture about the data without actually being given the data. Large amounts of metadata can be easily processed through computer algorithms and then analyzed. Because so much data can be put into these large computers, there is essentially no limit to what the data can uncover.
Although this can seem alarming, other people argue that there should not be concern with all of this data being available to the government. Many people believe that if the government does their job and doesn’t overstep their boundaries, it will truly be in place just to protect us. Also other people argue that the only people that have to be concerned with being monitored if they are doing something illegal. I disagree with this, basing my opinion off of all of the hacking I have seen recently in the media. Although I know that hacking pictures from celebrities is very different from gathering legally obtained metadata, there is still a certain sense of creepiness associated with anyone being able to learn information you might not want to be public.
The use of metadata in one of the articles about Jessica Alba and Bradley Cooper to show that they did not tip their cab drivers exposes something they have done that they did not think people would find out about and are probably not proud of. Although I don’t think I would be someone that would be of particular interest when it comes to collecting data, it does make me think twice about how much information is known about my calls, messages, and other phone habits. My cellphone is the devise I use most in my day to day life and access to metadata about its usage would tell a lot about what I do and where I go. This information will not seriously affect my actions in my day to day life, but will make me think twice about not doing anything I wouldn’t want to be tracked and linked to me.