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David Speers, George Brandis and that pesky concept of metadata

Video: Technical guff is a bit of a challenge for some in this clueless Live TV interview.

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It was Mike Willesee who undid John Hewson’s push for the GST when trying to ascertain the price of a birthday cake many years ago.

Yesterday on SKY News, David Speers may have just unravelled the government’s push to retain metadata, after this pearler of an interview with Attorney General George Brandis.

Good to know nobody is confused about the interwebs, eh?

8 Responses

  1. @Craig – unfortunately, your analogy of metadata just being the envelope is only relevant for telephone calls. For internet usage it is a little simplistic.

    Metadata can contain a *lot* more information than just originating and destination addresses, and the time of the access. The distinction between metadata and content is not clear and distinct (and the govt certainly hasn’t a clue). It can also permit certain types of content to be reconstructed or inferred.

    If David will allow, the pic linked below is a graphical representation of the metadata in a single Tweet. It’s 4 years old and the amount of metadata in a Tweet has increased to nearly double what it was then! (I couldn’t quickly locate a suitable update).

    online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/TweetMetadata.pdf

  2. Thanks for that David.

    Just had a thought, the government the other day said studios should pay to sue those pirating content, not the ISPs. So maybe the Government should pay the ISPs to store meta data if they want it kept, that’s only fair IMO.

    For those struggling with it meta is basically like the envelope, they know who you sent the letter to, where and when but they don’t know what you wrote in the letter inside.

    Problem is meta data is only set to increase as people access more sites and do more online in the coming years. It may cost companies millions to store it.

  3. @Jason He seems way past retirement age. Those people who don’t keep up with technology or trends will become ‘geriatric’ before their time. 😛

  4. I’m meant to be going to George Brandis’s house tonight for a spot of websurfing, but Google Maps can’t seem to tell me how to get to 1997.

  5. @J Bar- So 57 is the new “geriatric”? Malcolm Turnbull, the founder of Ozemail, is 60. Guess he doesn’t know anything about “that internet thingy” either, under that criteria.
    Welcome to 1984. George Orwell’s predictions have arrived. Surveilance cameras on every street corner and building, government knowing who, when and how you spoke with someone, what you read, your personal orientations, Opal travel cards so we know who travelled where and when, credit cards recording that was bought, where and when, etc.

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