Metadata: Good, Bad, or all in how you use it?

The subject of metadata has definitely been making its rounds in the news of late, often in a more negative than positive light. Between the collection of personal metadata by governmental agencies, and the theft of metadata that led to the compromising of millions of Target customers' credit card information, we are all more aware of how vital metadata can be to our privacy and security, and the potentially malicious ways in which it can be gathered and utilized. But are these instances enough to cause a shift in the way our metadata is treated, and overshadow the great number of uses for it? Two of my LS 566 classmates have posted recent blogs that have well represented the extremes of the Good/Bad scale that metadata application seems to slide along.

Heather Castle's blog post, Metadata and the Olympics provides links and discussion about metadata collection occurring during the 2014 Sochi Winter Games. Among the less-than-surprising revelations is the disclosure of significant amounts of metadata being collected by the Russian government concerning personal information for users of communication and information networks at the Olympics. Such data includes personally identifiable information, and even payment for products purchased and services rendered. Ostensibly being utilized to ensure security of the Olympic Games, a potentially high-profile target for nefarious or malicious activities, this disclosure still represents the less exciting uses for metadata that we are seeing more and more of on a regular basis.

On the other end of the spectrum, a recent post by Danielle Tinkler discusses the use of metadata in tracking flu activity across the globe. Illustrating information such as the severity (quantity) and dispersion of flu cases, both nationally and internationally, this use of metadata has tremendous potential value in keeping the public aware of the potential for infection, but also in assisting health officials to decide how best to utilize the resources at their disposal.

As with any tool, the threat, or value, of metadata has far more to do with the motivations of the people collecting and presenting it, than it does the data itself. If we seek to curtail the collection of metadata that potentially poses a threat to us, do we run the risk of equally preventing the use of metadata that provides value? Can we have the latter without exposing ourselves to the former?