In MetaPhone: The Sensitivity of Telephone Metadata a pair of Stanford researchers recruited test-subjects who were willing to install spyware on their phones that logged the same “metadata” that the NSA harvests — and that the NSA and President Obama claims is not sensitive or privacy-invading. The researchers applied basic analytics to the data and uncovered — surprise! — incredibly compromising information about the personal lives, health, and finances of their subjects, just by looking at metadata. What’s more, harvesting the subjects’ metadata also revealed sensitive information about the subjects’ contacts’ lives. (via Techdirt)