Stanford researchers conducting study to find out what metadata can show NSA about your personal lifeMadison Ruppert The NSA has collected metadata on millions of Americans and others around the world. Documents revealed in June of this year that Verizon was ordered to hand over all records for U.S. customers to the NSA. Since then, reports of the NSAs ability to create complex pattern of life profiles for millions of people have also emerged, among many other related reports. In order to show just how revealing the metadata can be, researchers Jonathan Mayer and Patrick Mutchler created the Android app MetaPhone. The app collects a persons metadata including call logs and basic data from Facebook accounts in order to build a profile based on data similar to what the NSA gathers. Mayer points out that some say the NSA program has little impact on privacy and is not really surveillance since it just collects metadata. Like many computer scientists, we strongly disagree, Mayer wrote. Phone metadata is inherently revealing. We want to rigorously prove itfor the public, for Congress, and for the courts. Device data will include records about your recent calls and text messages, the researchers said, according to WorldNetDaily. Social network data will include your profile, connections and recent activity. The data will be stored and analyzed at Stanford, then deleted at the end of the study. Research staff will take reasonable precautions to secure the data in transit, storage, analysis, and destruction. After just two weeks of conducting the study, the researchers have already shown that they can automatically predict a participants relationship status using metadata. Even though only one in four subjects had their Facebook account configured to display relationship status to a stranger, the researchers still found out about their targets relationships. Their current system, however, has a bit of a tradeoff. If they want to get relatively few singles wrong, they can correctly guess around 60 percent of individuals with significant others. If they accept getting 33 percent of singles wrong, they can get over 80 percent of individuals with significant others right. These are, to emphasize, preliminary results. We will have more, better, and higher confidence findings as additional users (like you!) participate, the researchers wrote, noting that it is just a first step towards confirming just how important metadata is. Mayer told MIT Technology Review that they believe metadata can reveal a great deal of private information about a persons personal life. Our hypothesis is that phone metadata is packed with meaning, he said. MIT Technology Review notes that this research could make waves outside of just debates around policy and legal concerns about domestic surveillance. They point out that private industry has joined the datamining frenzy, with some telecommunications companies monetizing their own customers metadata. Just how much personal information can be obtained through this type of metadata analysis remains to be seen and the researchers have not revealed how long they will be collecting data. Yet if what was accomplished after just two weeks is any indicator, they might be able to find out quite a bit indeed. Id love to hear your opinion, take a look at your story tips and even your original writing if you would like to get it published. I am also available for interviews on radio, television or any other format. Please email me at Admin@EndtheLie.com Please support our work and help us start to pay contributors by doing your shopping through our Amazon link or check out some must-have products at our store. This article first appeared at End the Lie. 