I would think the dishonesty is in the assumption that data and metadata are disjoint. Metadata is simply a kind of data--but it's still data. It's just a kind

I would think the dishonesty is in the assumption that data and metadata are disjoint. Metadata is simply a kind of data--but it's still data. It's just a kind of data that is particularly difficult to hide--but that obviously has no bearing whatsoever on whether it contains important information.