Your phone can identify you as a gun owner

<img src="http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/2013/06/20/15/25/6iSXE.WiPh2.91.jpg" align="right">The more Americans rely on their smartphones and the Internet, the more metadata is generated

Metadata with GPS locations, for example, can trace a teenage girl to an abortion clinic or a patient to a psychiatrist’s office, said Karen Reilly, the development director for The Tor Project, a U.S.-based nonprofit that produces technology to provide online anonymity and circumvent censorship.

Metadata can even identify a likely gun owner, she said.

“Never mind background checks, if you bring your cellphone to the gun range you probably have a gun,” Reilly said.

“People don’t realize all the information that they’re giving out,” she said. “You can try to secure it – you can use some tech tools, you can try to be a black hole online – but if you try to live your life the way people are expecting it, it’s really difficult to control the amount of data that you’re leaking all over the place.”

A former senior official of the National Security Agency said the government’s massive collection of metadata allowed the agency to construct “maps” of an individual’s daily movements, social connections, travel habits and other personal information.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/06/20/194505/government-could-use-metada...