8 February 2014 - NSA metadata

What do intelligence agencies mean when they say they only collect “metadata” and not “content”? The term “metadata” is used loosely nowadays, but the NSA has two precise meanings in mind, a technical meaning and a practical meaning. The technical sense is “data that’s easy for us to process”, as in “I never metadata I didn’t like.” The practical sense is “data that we care about.” For example, if you make a phone call they don’t care what you say, that’s content. The metadata is what you think.