All over the world, governments are intruding into our private lives in the name of safety and anti-terrorism. They talk about ‘metadata’ to make out that the information they are collecting isn’t that important. This ‘metadata’ will be collected, held for a long time and accessible by government agencies without a warrant or judicial oversight.
No wonder many people aren’t buying it.
At Office Watch we find all this strangely familiar. Using technical terms to downplay the importance or harm is an old trick from the Microsoft playbook.
Microsoft talked about ‘metadata’ back when concerns were raised about the hidden information in Office documents. Many users didn’t realize that vital details where being sent out in documents. Details like who had made or edited the document (politicians got caught sending press releases written almost entirely by lobbyists), when it was created (maybe before the sender had admitted knowing something) or revisions and comments (like price changes in a negotiation).
Microsoft’s response to this was typical. At first they downplayed the whole problem saying it happened to a small number of people and wasn’t really important. They also threw out the term ‘metadata’ a lot knowing that most people would not understand and dismiss the whole thing as some technical detail. These stalling tactics worked until, lo and behold, Microsoft came out with its own tool for removing hidden details from documents. When the tool was released, suddenly Microsoft ‘did a 180’ and hidden document details was an important issue.
These days, Office has ‘metadata’ removal tools included at File | Info | Inspect Document | Check for Issues.
This wasn’t the first time the Office team had done this trick. Back in the early days of Office Watch there was a lot of concern about Office document macros being used to hack into computers. Microsoft retaliated not by working to add security into Office, instead they dismissed the whole issue as trivial and talked about ‘prank macros’. ‘Prank macros’ made it seem like malicious code was just a bit of harmless fun and nothing to worry about.
Now we have governments doing the same thing. Talking about ‘metadata’ and hoping to confuse the public so much that we’ll ignore the whole thing.
What is Metadata
Everyone else has had a crack at this, so we might as well join in.
Metadata isn’t the message or content, it’s the details about that content. Who sent it, who received it, when, the size etc.
Letter
The simplest example of metadata is a letter (remember those?). Metadata for a letter is on the envelope; the recipient’s name and address, senders details on the back, date and place of posting (postmark), cost of postage, even the thickness of the envelope (a long or short letter).
All those details, combined with other details or a log of letter metadata can tell you a surprising amount about someone. This example isn’t theoretical, postal authorities around the world (notably the USA) can and do track letters and pass that info to law enforcement.
Web Browsing
Metadata for your web browsing is even more detailed. When you access a web site, the metadata is the exact web link, date/time accessed, length of time on the page, which links you clicked on that page, which computer you used (IP address), operating system, browser etc.
Apologists for this kind of tracking argue that they don’t collect the content on the page you read, just the web address. But that’s just silly, if you know the web page link, it’s simply enough to revisit that link and see what’s on the page.
Office Documents
For Microsoft Office documents there are two levels of metadata – the basic file information and then the hidden details within the document but not printed out.
The basic file information is important because it is reported to the US government and perhaps other governments whenever a document is emailed or saved in cloud storage like OneDrive.
A document saved on OneDrive, DropBox, Google Drive etc is automatically included in a log/report to the US government. Details like the file name, file type, size, date/time plus who saved the file (account details), where it was saved from (IP address, computer type, browser). If the document is edited by multiple people, all their details will also be passed along.
And that’s just the first stage. Get a copy of the Office document and you can see not only the document but all the hidden details, as explained by Microsoft on the Info screen in Word 2013
Whether it’s Microsoft, governments or law enforcement, using the technical term ‘metadata’ is just a way to obfuscate an intrusion into our privacy.
Personally, we have no problem with details being accessed under proper legal and judicial oversight. After all, phone call logs (another example of metadata) have been used by police for decades, usually after getting a warrant. It’s the wholesale and secret handing over data that’s a serious concern.
