On 5 June 2013 the Guardian newspaper published an exclusive article, based on information leaked to them by Edward Snowden, that revealed a largescale effort by the United States National Security Agency to collect domestic email and telephone metadata from the US telecommunications company Verizon. In the following days it would emerge that this was part of a more widespread and systematic programme, named Prism, which allowed the Agency to gain access from nine Internet companies to a wide range of digital information on foreign targets operating outside the United States. The NSA defended itself against allegations that its activities contravened the Fourth Amendment by arguing the difference between data and metadata: that the contents of the phone calls, emails and other communications remained private. Citing a Supreme Court ruling from 1979, however, they maintained that Americans had no reasonable expectation that the metadata produced by their telephone and Internet communications – the names of those making and receiving such communications, the times and dates when they were made, and the geo-location of each party – should remain private. Now, in the era of the Trump administration, there is renewed unease. Trump’s appointment to head the CIA, Mike Pompeo, has previously stated that ‘Congress should pass a law re-establishing collection of all metadata, and combining it with publicly available financial and lifestyle information into a comprehensive, searchable database’. To a layperson it is perhaps unclear why this should be of concern. How much can metadata really reveal? This essay seeks to show that surprisingly deep insights can be gleaned from metadata by applying a range of easily available network analysis algorithms to a body of metadata collected by another government. Our source is the State Papers held at the British National Archives, specifically the correspondence held in this archive dating from the accession of Henry VIII in 1509 until the death of

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元数据，监视和Tudor状态

《卫报》于2013年6月5日根据爱德华·斯诺登泄露给他们的信息发表了一篇独家文章，该文章揭示了美国国家安全局为收集美国电信公司Verizon的国内电子邮件和电话元数据所做的巨大努力。在接下来的几天里，这似乎是名为Prism的更广泛和系统的计划的一部分，该计划使原子能机构能够从九家互联网公司获得有关在美国以外运行的外国目标的广泛数字信息。NSA辩称自己的活动违反了第四修正案，辩护说数据和元数据之间的区别：电话，电子邮件和其他通信的内容是私人的，从而为自己辩护。但是，他们援引最高法院1979年的裁决，认为美国人没有合理的期望，他们的电话和互联网通讯产生的元数据-进行和接收此类通讯的人的姓名，进行通讯的时间和日期以及各方的地理位置-应该保持私密性。现在，在特朗普政府时代，人们再次感到不安。特朗普被任命为中央情报局局长的任命是迈克·庞培（Mike Pompeo），他此前曾表示：“国会应该通过一项法律，重新建立所有元数据的收集，并将其与公开可用的财务和生活方式信息相结合，形成一个全面的可搜索数据库”。对于一个外行来说，也许不清楚为什么这值得关注。元数据可以真正显示多少？本文试图表明，通过将一系列易于使用的网络分析算法应用于另一政府收集的大量元数据，可以从元数据中获得令人惊讶的深刻见解。我们的资料来源是在英国国家档案馆举行的国家文件，特别是该档案馆中的信件，从1509年亨利八世加入世世直至去世。