But just as scary is what can be done with the metadata alone. Especially in densely populated areas, cell phone towers are so close together, you can reconstruct exactly what a person did. German parliamentarian Malte Spitz requisitioned his phone records from the telephone company and created a map of what the metadata showed. Apparently it works even when the GPS is off.
More information from Die Zeit (in English) here.
So… why haven’t we been seeing this on ABC/NBC/CBS?
… and I wonder at what point the wingers are going to start seeing Russia as a sort of paradise, a bastion of virtue in a sea of socialism, effeminacy, and environmentalism (did I mention Russia’s status as an unabashed petro-state, and its utter disdain for greenness?).
Oh, and I almost forgot Russia’s flat tax, which led Gerard Depardieu to give up his French citizenship, to the delight of the right.
Considering that the Koch brothers would be gas station attendants if not for Joe Stalin’s making their daddy Fred a very rich man, it seems rather ironic.