The U.S. government "kill[s] people based on metadata," but it doesn't do that with the trove of information collected on American communications, according to former head of the National Security Agency Gen. Michael Hayden.Hayden made the remark after saying he agreed with the idea that metadata - the information collected by the NSA about phone calls and other communications that does not include content - can tell the government "everything" about anyone it's targeting for surveillance, often making the actual content of the communication unnecessary.[...]"We cannot discount the risk, in light of the lessons of our own history, that at some point in the future, high-level government officials will decide that this massive database of extraordinarily sensitive private information is there for the plucking," the President's Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies said in a 300-page report.The next month, Obama complied, announcing the metadata will no longer be collected by the government, but will still be stored by another entity and could be subject to government review.[...]
Old but gold. Best part:
We cannot discount the risk [...] that at some point in the future, high-level government officials will decide that this massive database of extraordinarily sensitive private information is there for the plucking [...]Obama complied, announcing the metadata will no longer be collected by the government, but [...] could be subject to government review.
Another good part for me is that I heard this quote ("we kill people based on metadata") from Michael Hayden for the first time in a lecture about privacy-enhancing technologies.
I think the term based was never more fitting for a lecture.