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May 12, 2006
Traffic analysis is no big deal, huh?
As we all know now, NSA has been compiling a database of people's phone call records. Among the explanations of why this is OK you'll hear are:
The records only contain phone numbers, not names.
Unfortunately for this argument it's absolutely trivial
to map from people's phone numbers to their names. Try
it yourself.
It's not an invasion of your privacy because it doesn't contain
any of the actual voice
Well, maybe. Consider whether you want
it publicly known you called that phone sex line. Similarly, many an affair
has been undone by looking at people's cell phone logs.
Moreover, it's pretty disingenuous of the Bush Administration to argue that this
kind of traffic analysis isn't secret when they've fought not to
disclose records of how often
Jack Abramoff visited the White House and who he met with. The truth
is that this kind of who-contacted-who information is incredibly
revealing, which is why people want to keep it sensitive. Of course,
it's possible you have absolutely nothing you don't want anyone else
to know about, but I doubt that on reflection most people really do.
It's necessary for the security of the US
So little is really known about the NSA's surveillance activities in
this are that it's pretty difficult to say anything definitively here
one way or the other. But given all the various intrusions that are
justified in the name of security which are in fact
nothing of the sort (with airport security screening being exhibit A),
I'm not exactly inclined to take that argument very seriously.
The government could of course commission a study on the importance
of this kind of surveillance, but given that on related issues
they've chosen to
stonewall...
Posted by ekr at May 12, 2006 4:42 PM | Filed under: