Metadata may be only basis for killing people - ex-director of CIA and NSA
13 May 2014, 10:11 -- The former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden confirmed that metadata is used as the basis for killing people in the course of the recent discussion regarding the National Security Agency's surveillance programs. He declared that during a debate at Johns Hopkins University.
Professor David Cole revealed that the American government can obtain necessary information just by collecting metadata.
Despite the fact that NSA defenders often say that collecting such metadata is acceptable taking into account that the content of the call remains a private case, David Cole believes that this doesn't correspond to reality. The matter is that the ex-general counsel of the NSA, Stewart Baker, has already confirmed that even only metadata collection alone provides more than enough information to reveal large amounts of the private information of a person.
In the New York Review of Books Cole wrote that knowing the content of a call can be decisive for establishing a particular threat. Nevertheless, even metadata alone 'can provide an extremely detailed picture of a person's most intimate associations and interests, and it's actually much easier as a technological matter to search huge amounts of metadata than to listen to millions of phone calls.'
As NSA general counsel Stewart Baker stated, enough amount of metadata makes content of your calls absolutely not necessary.
Former director of the NSA and CIA General Michael Hayden confirmed that metadata could become a legal basis for killing people adding that it is referring to the information collected from American citizens.
As it was revealed in the beginning of the year, the US is already using metadata to select targets for drone strikes around the world.
According to a report for the Intercept, an unnamed drone operator said that the NSA analyzes metadata as well as mobile-tracking technology to determine targets. The system is absolutely automatic and no human intelligence is involved in order to confirm a suspect's identity. This information was backed up by document leaked by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
According to Professor Cole, understanding the fact that the NSA is collecting such data amount has made the US lawmakers from both parties concerned. Recently, two committees in the House of Representatives unanimously voted in favor of adopting the USA Freedom Act, which is aimed at prohibition of collecting metadata of all Americans. Therefore only after proving the fact that there is enough reasons for suspicion to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the telecommunications companies could share metadata with the agency.
However Cole noted that this bill doesn't resolve all the issues connected to the NSA's surveillance program. The Freedom Act only applies to American citizens, not foreigners who are also under surveillance. In addition it doesn't address the NSA's 'guerilla-like tactics of inserting vulnerabilities into computer software and drivers, to be exploited later to surreptitiously intercept private communications,' he said.
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