For all those who think collecting Metadata is no biggie

To whom? The "reaction" from the government has been that the type and amount of data being collected and retained is a high-level top secret. Selling the data would reveal what is supposedly secret.

It seems this data would be valuable to private industry for targeted advertising.

I really do not understand how this data is stored. Who has access and what could they do with it.

Is is random bytes in a giant sea of data or is it a lot more specific?

I am not as tech savvy as you guys...

whyamIhere
It seems this data would be valuable to private industry for targeted advertising.

Online ad networks wouldn't be able to cross-reference the data to their cookies... at least not in any way that would be cost-effective.

reply to post by coop039


I did not notice that. But the information I posted from it is true.

And I also find this to be very interesting. A software company who has created a operating system to crawl all clouds and just look at the people running it.

LEADERSHIP
www.lonocloud.com...

And I find Dr. Hossein Eslambolchi to be very interesting and a key player in all of this around the world.

www.lonocloud.com...

loud Federation PaaS+ LonoCloud is a Cloud Operating System (PaaS+) to federate multi-vendor clouds with greater control of security, fault tolerance, cloud scale, performance for migrating mission‐critical apps to the Intercloud. The LonoCloud Federation PaaS+ operates at a higher layer in the stack enabling ease of workload mobility across private, public, hybrid clouds including other PaaS layers. The cloud OS mesh fabric coupled with an automated policy system federates a set of distributed application nodes and accelerates the migration of SOA apps to the cloud.

Originally posted by Archie
Yes, it's all good to know.

I just wanted to add that that article and your post illustrate brilliantly why there needs to be much greater accountability surrounding these programs when it comes to the private metadata/data of private citizens which is why as many people as possible should try to get to their nearest Restore the Fourth rally and press TPTB to take notice. Turning away and saying "It's unstoppable, we're all screwed" is not really an option.

So, and this is a serious question, when you see some sites you go on (ahem, hint) seem to have ads pushed at you that may be to do with 'looking for love', 'looking for sex', 'looking for guns', 'looking for a bug out bag', 'looking for a new diet' or whatever, do you not stop and think why you are seeing different ads to the next person? Does it not worry you that sites you have visited in the past are helping ad sites build up an idea of what they should be pushing onto your screen?

It still comes under the definition of meta data for all intents and purposes, but I don't think I saw any comment about you 'restoring the fourth' so that the sites in question don't allow advertising companies to do this. Interesting. When government does it under a banner of protection you seem to have an issue. When commercial sites do something similar in concept if not execution - after all, they are just after your money - it doesn't concern you?

reply to post by coop039

Im not sure this is a real gov site.

Your assumption is correct...
This is to be found at the bottom of that page:

This is a parody of nsa.gov and has not been approved, endorsed, or authorized by the National Security Agency or by any other U.S. Government agency. Much of this content was derived from news media, privacy groups, and government websites. Links to these sites are posted on the left-sidebars of each page.

Originally posted by uncommitted

Originally posted by Archie
Yes, it's all good to know.

I just wanted to add that that article and your post illustrate brilliantly why there needs to be much greater accountability surrounding these programs when it comes to the private metadata/data of private citizens which is why as many people as possible should try to get to their nearest Restore the Fourth rally and press TPTB to take notice. Turning away and saying "It's unstoppable, we're all screwed" is not really an option.

So, and this is a serious question, when you see some sites you go on (ahem, hint) seem to have ads pushed at you that may be to do with 'looking for love', 'looking for sex', 'looking for guns', 'looking for a bug out bag', 'looking for a new diet' or whatever, do you not stop and think why you are seeing different ads to the next person? Does it not worry you that sites you have visited in the past are helping ad sites build up an idea of what they should be pushing onto your screen?

It still comes under the definition of meta data for all intents and purposes, but I don't think I saw any comment about you 'restoring the fourth' so that the sites in question don't allow advertising companies to do this. Interesting. When government does it under a banner of protection you seem to have an issue. When commercial sites do something similar in concept if not execution - after all, they are just after your money - it doesn't concern you?

deleted. I misunderstood this reply.

reply to post by Archie
this has been going on from the first Credit card was issued to keep track of what where and how often you buy a item, now it has been linked up with NSA to see what you buy that might be used as a threat to the System, in large amounts ie foods, ammo, guns, boots, battery's, tools and other things gold stocks, bonds, vehicles, and land. if I was to list all the stuff they look for it would be 20 pages long, and not itemized. Two words sum's it all up BIG BROTHER and is watching you, tracking you, reading you seeing you, and hearing you 24/7 welcome to the NWO and the 21st century, for it is not just the US doing it any more.

Think you can doge this by buying with cash, think again for if you receive a check of any kind, or pay and have a bank account, they will know what you bought and where.

uncommitted
When government does it under a banner of protection you seem to have an issue. When commercial sites do something similar in concept if not execution - after all, they are just after your money - it doesn't concern you?

Online advertisers use non-itentifying data that associates activity on the computer with a number of things to organize the delivery of ads. The most important being frequency management, followed by targeting. For example, right now I'm seeing ads from the women's clothing store Caché on ATS. Most likely because I built their first website long ago, and recently went there to see what they're doing lately.

The government, oh the other hand, knows who the metadata belongs to, and can dig deep to learn many things you rather they (or anyone) not know.

Originally posted by Archie
reply to post by tridentblue

 

that's utter babbling nonsense and you know it. troll someone else.

Oh, Didn't realize that you were math impaired. What I said, in simpler terms, is that as the amount of information sources available are proportional to the amount of information you can get from choosing one of them. If there are 26 web sights in the world, labeled (a-z) you can get one "letter" of information which you choose to visit. If there are 26*26 websites in the world labelled (aa-zz), you get two "letters" of information. So I was saying that as the amount of sites grows and diversifies, the amount of information you can get from metadata grows.

en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by tridentblue


Information theory isn't reliable in a big-data world: en.wikipedia.org... The concepts, when applied to very large datasets, attempt to predict the probabilities of the value of missing data. In normal quantitative analysis and other applications, this can be effective -- but not in the world of pattern-matching, extraction, and unstructured data of big-data analysis.

For example, if the NSA wants to determine if the activity of your cell phone matches the activity patterns of cellphones used by terrorists, they need all the data, from everywhere, in order to know the full spectrum of activity patterns. Information theory doesn't provide the accuracy, which is why PRISM was created.

Originally posted by SkepticOverlord
reply to post by tridentblue

 

Information theory isn't reliable in a big-data world: en.wikipedia.org... The concepts, when applied to very large datasets, attempt to predict the probabilities of the value of missing data. In normal quantitative analysis and other applications, this can be effective -- but not in the world of pattern-matching, extraction, and unstructured data of big-data analysis.

For example, if the NSA wants to determine if the activity of your cell phone matches the activity patterns of cellphones used by terrorists, they need all the data, from everywhere, in order to know the full spectrum of activity patterns. Information theory doesn't provide the accuracy, which is why PRISM was created.

But the core principles still apply. The bottom line is this: If you have a suspect gets all his information from one source, and makes all his phone calls to one person, than you have remarkably less metadata on that person than you have on someone who say, visits a vast amount of different sites at different times, and calls a whole lot of different people. Back in the days when we all got a few channels on TV, there was little value in figuring out which 1 of 3 channels we were watching. But now with the Internet, they can learn a lot about us from which several of billions of sites we seek out. That's why the value of metadata, which sources we connect to has grown so much. And I think information theory still relevant in that.

reply to post by JBA2848


Zeta- bytes? As in Zeta Reticuli? Greys? Draconids? Anybodies tinfoil hat getting all tingly yet?

reply to post by HUMBLEONE


Lono as in Hawaiian God? Lonogroup LLC ran by a Chris Lesperance reservist and tied to NYESGR. ESGR is ran by this guy. Paul E. Mock, Major General (Retired)

www.esgr.mil...

www.esgr.mil...

Mr. Mock received his commission in 1972 through the ROTC program at Claremont Men’s College. He served as an Infantry Officer, Special Forces Officer, Psychological Operations Officer and Quartermaster Corps Officer. In July 1996, he was mobilized for Operation Joint Endeavorto support operations in Bosnia. Mr. Mock had numerous leadership assignments throughout his distinguished military career. Noteworthy assignments included command of the 311th Support Command (Corps) beginning in October 2002. Six months later he was mobilized to I Corps, Fort Lewis, Washington, with the focus on developing the echelon above brigade logistics support package for the Army’s first Stryker Brigade. In August 2004, Mr. Mock was mobilized as the Commanding General, 377th Theater Support Command, Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, for Operation Iraqi Freedom. As the commander, he was responsible for more than 28,000 soldiers, civilians and contractors in Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Qatar, Bahrain and the Horn of Africa. Upon his return, Mr. Mock assumed command of the 63d Regional Readiness Command, Los Alamitos, California in August 2005. Mr. Mock retired from the United States Army Reserve, December 31, 2008. Mr. Mock retired from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) after 25 years of service. His last assignment at the LAPD was Lieutenant, Officer in Charge, Tactics Training Section, providing training for 8,000 sworn police officers and 1,500 civilian employees

I think this guy is placing people where the military wants them for spying, training and so on. Part of the 2020 initiative. Which is covert name to say the least. It is not a date as we all have been told. It is part of the code names.

Looking glass
Fire eye
Prism = curved piece of glass for focusing
2020 = perfect eye sight

This does seem to be very big the more pieces start to come out.

Oh and what are those round things at Camp Arifjan where this guy was at?

goo.gl...

Originally posted by SkepticOverlord

uncommitted
When government does it under a banner of protection you seem to have an issue. When commercial sites do something similar in concept if not execution - after all, they are just after your money - it doesn't concern you?

Online advertisers use non-itentifying data that associates activity on the computer with a number of things to organize the delivery of ads. The most important being frequency management, followed by targeting. For example, right now I'm seeing ads from the women's clothing store Caché on ATS. Most likely because I built their first website long ago, and recently went there to see what they're doing lately.

The government, oh the other hand, knows who the metadata belongs to, and can dig deep to learn many things you rather they (or anyone) not know.

Hi there,

Point taken in that it's not identifying data (or not that any of us know of) at the moment, not sure if that principle fully stands though.

A lot of people on here may not see where the boundary lies on this - let me give you an example...

You and your partner both use ATS. Your partner looks on their page when she/he is logged in and sees adverts for weight loss, they smile as they know they have been looking at dieting. They then look over your shoulder while you are logged in and sees adverts for unattached men/women in your area......... The system is (probably) working, but is giving people more information than you may have wanted them to see - perhaps they may see this as an invasion of their privacy?

All hypothetical of course, I just used to get ads for new miracle weight loss programs.

reply to post by tridentblue


In terms of applying divergence, yes. But transinformation and entropy don't apply to the highly-structured metadata used in PRISM. Such data has no inherent entropy, and instead, becomes more normalized the more we have.

Originally posted by SkepticOverlord
reply to post by tridentblue

 

In terms of applying divergence, yes. But transinformation and entropy don't apply to the highly-structured metadata used in PRISM. Such data has no inherent entropy, and instead, becomes more normalized the more we have.

I dunno much about the inside of Prism, but I like information theory because you can find ways to apply it to everything. Think of a website with 32 stories on its front page. A spy is monitoring traffic to the site, and observes that users will click on each story with equal probability. Now Alice comes in from behind a proxy, clicks a story. The spy knows nothing about her. But the odds of her clicking that one particular story was 1/32, so now the spy has log2(32/1) =5 bits (base two logarithm of the reciprocal of the odds) of information on Alice, and her interests. If the site didn't have 32 options but rather 2, the spy would have less info, just one bit.

So the more options, the more interactive networks become, 1) the better user experience 2) the more information the user reveals about themselves in using it. That's just the law of things: The more choices a user is allowed, the more information we share about ourselves in making those choices. And the modern Internet gives us a lot of choices, as does any good site.

Can I just point out that while it's fascinating to work through possibilities and logistics of the system in place and hypothesise about how it works can we just remember that it is still illegal and a breach of your Constitution and human rights to use such a system on private citizens anywhere in the world?

Let's not forget the only reason you are ABLE to discuss it is because Edward Snowden thought it best you know and provided you with proof positive that it is happening.

Your government, meanwhile, would have preferred you remained ignorant and gave up all your secrets unwittingly.

So geek on but don't forget, the public-private partnership that is Intelligence USA Inc. is an enterprise that needs to be drastically curtailed and you have a part to play in that if you don't want to live a behaviouraly modified life.

Originally posted by NoSoul
One day they'll kill people for being "potential terrorists"

That has already happened...

…The most controversial drone strike took place on Oct. 14, 2011, when 16-year-old Abdulrahman was killed by U.S. forces. Family of the Denver-born teenager say he had no ties to terrorist organizations and was unjustly targeted because of his father.

Abdulrahman al-Awlaki wasn't on an American kill list. Nor was he a member of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninusla. Nor was he "an inspiration," as his father styled himself, for those determined to draw American blood; nor had he gone "operational," as American authorities said his father had, in drawing up plots against Americans and American interests. He was a boy who hadn't seen his father in two years, since his father had gone into hiding. He was a boy who knew his father was on an American kill list and who snuck out of his family's home in the early morning hours of September 4, 2011, to try to find him. He was a boy who was still searching for his father when his father was killed, and who, on the night he himself was killed, was saying goodbye to the second cousin with whom he'd lived while on his search, and the friends he'd made. He was a boy among boys, then; a boy among boys eating dinner by an open fire along the side of a road when an American drone came out of the sky and fired the missiles that killed them all.

www.theatlantic.com...

Originally posted by SkepticOverlord

whyamIhere My questions SO., are how long until our cash strapped government is selling this information

To whom?

Is Mass Spying Being Used to Make Some People Rich? - large companies spend huge sums of money to conduct industrial espionage on their rivals, information gained through spying could be invaluable. Especially since the NSA closely spies on the European Union, the European Parliament, Germany, the G20 summit and Chinese universities.

Originally posted by DestroyDestroyDestroy
reply to post by jude11

 

Ironically, doing "nothing wrong" is about the wrongest thing you can do these days.

Yes, it is my worry that all this data collection and such seems to be viewed as infallible, so what happens if me, Mr never-committed-any-crimes-nor-have-anything-to-hide, gets fingered incorrectly as a 'bad guy', what possible hope does one have to escape - look at Snowden, he upset the US gov and now is no longer a citizen, at the push of a button. Do you think 'they' would hesitate for someone NOT in the public eye?

Admit to a mistake, or push another button to make it go away?

Ive disliked marketing research for ever, many boffins sitting around getting paid far too much to make you want things, crave things and need things you couldn't live without. Prism and general mega-data collection centers crunching the numbers and finding patterns, is like marketing a product - only its not a product, its a country that is the consumer and YOU are the product.