Chiefly the terrorist attacks on 9/11, but subsequently the Bali bombings, London and Madrid attacks, Boston Marathon bombings and school and cinema shootings in the United States (to name a few) have shaken the public out of its belief that they are safe from harm from nefarious folk. The answer, perhaps unsurprisingly, is fear and paranoia in the wake of increasing violations of security. Liberty and security exist on a sliding scale: the more liberty one possesses, the more one exposes oneself to risk of attack. The primary issues at stake here, however, are those of privacy and individual liberty, and it's worth appreciating the social climate that has enabled surveillance on this level to become a matter of public debate when previously the right to keep information private from the government was a sine qua non privilege of members of democratic societies. Metadata collection casts a wide net and naturally pulls up a lot of tin cans and old boots alongside the occasional fish. Reports leaked by Edward Snowden from PRISM indicated about 90 per cent of those whose information was collected was done so by accident. One issue is that the processes for determining who is a threat and who is not have not, historically, been particularly discriminating. Security services don't care about your occasional dalliance on RedTube, but if you're in regular correspondence with people who are national security threats or known associates of threats, there's a good chance that a security analyst will learn about your sexual interests as well.
It's only when a certain level of risk is detected that human eyes are obligated to look at your metadata, investigate further, and possibly determine whether more information - such as actual content - is required (although collecting content isn't always possible). Algorithms are run across data to identify patterns like those I've just described. In the initial stages, metadata "mining", as it is known, is done entirely by machine. This makes it easier to collect and analyse metadata for certain patterns of behaviour (websites visited, email patterns, and - depending on how one defines metadata - Facebook groups liked, Twitter followers, etc.) to identify "high risk" personnel. The government would like to require companies to retain metadata for a set period of time in the interests of security and surveillance. Security and law enforcement do not, at present, require a warrant to access your metadata so it's fairly easy to obtain, but it still needs to be asked for, and is dependent on the metadata having been stored and retained, which is an expensive process for telecommunication companies. If you're on parole and have been emailing and texting former criminal associates, the Government wants to know before you've potentially re-offended. The Government proposes that telecommunications companies be required to store and record that information in the interests of fighting crime. When we send data online, it is labelled and organised to reach its destination quickly and effectively.
However, it is not clear whether the government is using the term metadata in this traditional way, or referring to a broader definition of metadata that includes the actual content of emails, Google searches, and the like. It is the digital equivalent of the address and return to sender address on a postal letter. This doesn't make it acceptable practice, however, and the Government's new measures seem to propose metadata recording on an unprecedented scale within Australia, so privacy and liberty activists are rightly concerned about the implications of metadata recording.įor those who don't know, metadata is typically understood to refer to information about information: where did it come from, who was it sent by? It doesn't tell us anything about the actual content of the communication, it just tells us about the message itself. Although it is tempting to understand this move in the context of the United States' controversial PRISM scheme, the reality is that measures like this have been under consideration since 2012, and metadata collection is already happening. Yesterday, news broke that the Federal Government plans to require telecommunications companies to retain the metadata of their customers for two years. The crux of the privacy concerns over mandatory data retention is this: knowing that someone might be watching makes us act as if someone is watching, writes Matthew Beard.
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