A clever, and slightly scary, writeup from Kieran Healy puts a revolutionary-spin on the current NSA PRISM debacle, showing how even all this “useless metadata” can be collected into scary and telling pieces of information. Specifically, how the membership rosters of 7 social clubs could be used to find the central traitor in the midst, Paul Revere.
He seems to bridge several groups in an unusual (though perhaps not unique) way. His name is Paul Revere.
Once again, I remind you that I know nothing of Mr Revere, or his conversations, or his habits or beliefs, his writings (if he has any) or his personal life. All I know is this bit of metadata, based on membership in some organizations. And yet my analytical engine, on the basis of absolutely the most elementary of operations in Social Networke Analysis, seems to have picked him out of our 254 names as being of unusual interest.
