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Comment by comrade_ogilvy | Hacker News Reader

>Maybe it's just a matter of opinion, but I'm very comfortable characterizing this reply as "discounting because it's just metadata."

Perhaps. But keep in the mind the context: "nobody’s listening to the content of people’s phone calls"

The president spells out a specific concern that people are saying out loud. Is it "discounting" to disprove a specific concern by accurately characterizing the activity as something other than "listening to the content of people’s phone calls"? That he so happens to use "metadata" does not make his argument wrong or misleading. What word should he use?

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Well, if we get really pedantic and nit-picky, the alarming news that the president was responding to was actually that a tremendous percentage of phone calls are being recorded, IIRC. Strictly speaking, it's actually impossible for NSA employees/contractors to "listen to" more than a tiny fraction of them, there simply aren't enough human-hours to do that. Nobody seriously thought that the NSA actually had a human being snooping on every phone call.

So the people say "You're recording our calls!" And the official answer is "Well we're not actually listening to them. We analyze the crap out of the metadata, though."

I'm still OK with calling that "discounting."

I don't think Schneier's intention was to call President Obama a liar. Rather, I think he intended to say that, even if we accept President Obama's factual claims, we should still take issue with the government's actions.

In other words, Schneier's not disputing the facts, but suggesting we ascribe different value to them.

So when you say "That he so happens to use 'metadata' does not make his argument wrong or misleading," you're correct. But that also doesn't make Schneier incorrect. (Not that you said he was.)

In other words, Schneier's not disputing the facts, but suggesting we ascribe different value to them.

I've seen arguments like the president's called "true lies." A technical truth that obscures the larger more relevant issue.

In this case, the real issue that people care about is that the government knows stuff about them that they expect to be private information. Whether they got that information via eavesdropping, metadata analysis or some other technique is largely irrelevant to the issue that makes people uncomfortable with the current state of affairs.

Calling it a "true lie" implies that there is some intentional misdirection. But we could just as easily conclude that the President genuinely holds a different opinion as to the relative value of phone call audio vs metadata. Suppose the President feels collection of metadata is not intrusive. In that case, his comments are merely a legitimate and accurate statement of his personal opinion, rather than a deliberate attempt to obscure the issue.

None of this is to say that I personally consider metadata harmless. I'm actually rather protective of my data privacy. I'm merely pointing out that the President's stated valuation of metadata isn't an inherently dishonest rhetorical tactic.

I don't think there's a consensus on what the more relevant issue is here. Based on my discussions with people I'm acquainted with, I'd bet a lot more are concerned about the legality issue: is the government making a good faith effort to stay within the bounds of the law.

What they have declared legal is obviously the least of anyone's concerns. We care what they are actually doing. I'm not sure how one could think that people are just fine with being violated as long as there is a law that permits it.

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