Using Metadata to Find Paul Revere

[Lauren Johnson]

Here is an article dated from 1772 on how the American Revolution could have been prevented if only it had Prism. Read the whole thing!

London, 1772.
...
So, there you have it. From a table of membership in different groups we have gotten a picture of a kind of social network between individuals, a sense of the degree of connection between organizations, and some strong hints of who the key players are in this world. And all thisall of it!from the merest sliver of metadata about a single modality of relationship between people. I do not wish to overstep the remit of my memorandum but I must ask you to imagine what might be possible if we were but able to collect information on very many more people, and also synthesize information from different kinds of ties between people! For the simple methods I have described are quite generalizable in these ways, and their capability only becomes more apparent as the size and scope of the information they are given increases. We would not need to know what was being whispered between individuals, only that they were connected in various ways. The analytical engine would do the rest! I daresay the shape of the real structure of social relations would emerge from our calculations gradually, first in outline only, but eventually with ever-increasing clarity and, at last, in beautiful detaillike a great, silent ship coming out of the gray New England fog.

I admit that, in addition to the possibilities for finding something interesting, there may also be the prospect of discovering suggestive but ultimately incorrect or misleading patterns. But I feel this problem would surely be greatly ameliorated by more and better metadata. At the present time, alas, the technology required to automatically collect the required information is beyond our capacity. But I say again, if a mere scribe such as Ione who knows nearly nothingcan use the very simplest of these methods to pick the name of a traitor like Paul Revere from those of two hundred and fifty four other men, using nothing but a list of memberships and a portable calculating engine, then just think what weapons we might wield in the defense of liberty one or two centuries from now.
http://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/201...ul-revere/

[Magda Hassan]

Maybe they can make it retroactive?

[Peter Lemkin]

Very clever example of how it is done.....now by parallel banks of super-computers. The NSA has its own power station [both for security and because for several years they were using more electricity than the local electric company could supply]. The metadata acts as the 'index' and the full data [they collect it all...though to date they have fudged to lied on if they do!] is there once they determine 'targets' from the metadata. Humans play only a small role in all this now...at the very front and back end of the system. Humans still choose the items they might be looking for in the 'index' [metadata] and after the processing there are transcripts of conversations, emails, location, contacts, etc. that an analyst will get after the computer system has made a few runs on its 'relevance' based on various computer algorithms. The Paul Revere article showed a simplified and enlightening example. But, now add to it [today] the computer system would pull up his mobile phone calls [to/from/time/location], emails, banking and ALL other records, movements of his horse from 'plates' [who was his blacksmith what did the horseshoeing], surveillance cameras with face recognition capabilities, and on and on and on.
Big Brother isn't coming...he's here! :wavey: Think you've done no 'wrong', broken no laws, so need not worry?! Ha!

[Jan Klimkowski]

America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American non-dream is precisely a move to wipe the dream out of existence. The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set up by the non-dreamers.

William S Burroughs

[Lauren Johnson]

Big Brother isn't coming...he's here! :wavey: Think you've done no 'wrong', broken no laws, so need not worry?! Ha!

Amen to that.

The stunning thing about this little article is that it shows why metadata analysis is by far the bigger story over spying on individuals -- which is bad enough. Metadata analysis allows for the the identification ofundesirable groups of individuals and their leaders before any person in authority knows they exist!! It knows about Paul Revere before even Paul Revere knows his own significance. The groups can then be swiftly neutralized be whatever means are deemed most effective.

Metadata analysis is like a instantaneous read out of the social fabric of the planet. Cue the droan dwarms programmed to carry out "signature strikes."

America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American non-dream is precisely a move to wipe the dream out of existence. The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set up by the non-dreamers.

Wow.