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Someone please edit the title - extremely misleading! Here's what the article states: "In fact, in a dataset where the location of an individual is specified h

Someone please edit the title - extremely misleading! Here's what the article states: "In fact, in a dataset where the location of an individual is specified hourly, and with a spatial resolution equal to that given by the carrier's antennas, four spatio-temporal points are enough to uniquely identify 95% of the individuals." In other words, they need the location from which you made the call. This data is not available in a normal CDR (call detail record) that carriers routinely use for billing. This is the same data you see on your phone bill. All it has is the date/time, to/from, duration and outcome. As for the location, there were a number of papers floated in the past that specified that anywhere from 3-5 destinations identified a person uniquely. In fact, a persons daily commute is enough to identify most people. (Don't have a link to paper that found this.)

e3pi 13y ago
Correction: Unique in the Crowd: The surveillance bounds of human mobility
lemming 13y ago
That's true, but according to the Guardian here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-record... Verizon handed over location data to the NSA (the original court order states "comprehensive communications routing information" and "trunk identifiers" should be handed over). It's reasonable to assume that the NSA will have that information, which makes their defence that "we don't get your name" pretty laughable since they can almost certainly just derive it.
- yva 13y ago
  According the Washington Post and other outlets, they do have approximate location data: "So the NSA is collecting information about my location as well as who I’ve called? It appears so. Cellphones make calls using the closest tower. So if the NSA knows you made a call using a specific tower, they can safely assume you were near that tower at the time of the call." http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/06/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-nsa-scandal/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/06/e...

e3pi 13y ago

Correction: Unique in the Crowd: The surveillance bounds of human mobility

lemming 13y ago

That's true, but according to the Guardian here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-record... Verizon handed over location data to the NSA (the original court order states "comprehensive communications routing information" and "trunk identifiers" should be handed over). It's reasonable to assume that the NSA will have that information, which makes their defence that "we don't get your name" pretty laughable since they can almost certainly just derive it.

yva 13y ago
According the Washington Post and other outlets, they do have approximate location data: "So the NSA is collecting information about my location as well as who I’ve called? It appears so. Cellphones make calls using the closest tower. So if the NSA knows you made a call using a specific tower, they can safely assume you were near that tower at the time of the call." http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/06/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-nsa-scandal/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/06/e...