Metadata Quotes

“Most people, even today, tend to think of mass surveillance in terms of content - the actual words they use when they make a phone call or write an email. The unfortunate truth, however, is that the content of our communications is rarely as revealing as its other elements - the unwritten, unspoken information that can expose the broader context and patterns of behavior.”
― Edward Snowden, Permanent Record

“Exfiltrated metadata from internet service providers and social media platforms can be plugged into big data analytics and once the right algorithm is applied, can allow an adversary surgically precise psychographic targeting of critical infrastructure executives with elevated privileges. Why is no one talking about this?”
― James Scott, Senior Fellow, Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology

“Dragnet surveillance capitalists such as Facebook, Comcast, AT&T and Google, unfortunately, supply these manipulating forces with an endless supply of metadata for this information war against the American and European public.”
― James Scott, Senior Fellow, Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology

“Based on his experience, he has come to believe that the drone program amounts to little more than death by unreliable metadata. "People get hung up that there's a targeted list of people," he said. "It's really like we're targeting a cell phone. We're not going after people – we're going after their phones, in the hopes that the person on the other end of that missile is the bad guy.”
― Jeremy Scahill, The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government's Secret Drone Warfare Program

“You can keep the Office of Personnel Management records, I don't need Electronic Health Records, give me the metadata, big data analytics and a custom tailored algorithm and a budget and during election time, I can cut to the psychological core of any population, period!”
― James Scott, Senior Fellow, Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology

“For Nation States, and the adversaries within America's boarders (special interest groups, cyber caliphate, Muslim brotherhood, Antifa etc), metadata is "THE" silent weapon in this quiet information war.”
― James Scott, co-founder, Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology

“Any system is only as good as the metadata that it ingests.”
― Chris Bulock