Using Metadata to Find Paul Revere

What stood out to me in David Brooks' amateur psychologizing about NSA leaker Edward Snowden on Monday was his claim that Snowden "has not been able to point to any specific abuses." Brooks' legal skills are even worse than his psychologizing. He didn't notice that the document Snowden leaked was a general warrant. It fails to satisfy the Fourth Amendment's requirements of probable cause and particularity. That's an abuse.

I gather that it's hard to apply the principles of liberty and our nation's founding charter to the new world of data. In aid of your consideration, I offer you the fun essay: "Using Metadata to Find Paul Revere," which recounts how metadata (so-called) reveals relationships and, from the perspective of King George, sedition.

The essay concludes:

[I]f a mere scribe such as I—one who knows nearly nothing—can use the very simplest of these methods to pick the name of a traitor like Paul Revere from those of two hundred and fifty four other men, using nothing but a list of memberships and a portable calculating engine, then just think what weapons we might wield in the defense of liberty one or two centuries from now.

The present-day federal surveillance programs revealed in media reports are "the tip of the iceberg," Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) said Wednesday after being briefed Tuesday.