Erstellt am: 26. 2. 2011 - 11:19 Uhr
Today's Webtip: Vorratsdaten
You may have heard of the whole Vorratsdatenspeicherung thing. And you might have thought to yourself, "Hey, what's the big deal. It's just a bunch of useless information."
And you would have been pretty wrong. One of the best examples of that has been visualized in an article here.
Green Politician Malte Spitz requested six months worth of data from the German Telekom. Using that information, it was then cross referenced with his publicly available online postings, and turned into a rather interesting little animation that shows just how much you can find out about someone with a little help from our friends.
It's eye opening.
And if you are curious about just how that type of information could be put to any practical use against any law abiding citizen, you might want to check out the story of James Risen. He is a journalist for the New York Times who wrote an article about a messed up C.I.A. mission. An article that was made possible by leaked information from an ex C.I.A. man. An article that made the U.S. government really want to find out which ex C.I.A. man. Although Risen refused to name his source, a little crossreferencing of data eventually did the job.
The present feels a lot like looking through the wrong side of a two way mirror.