I just need a confirmation here. At this point we are talking about metadata associated with the phone conversation, not an actual voice trap of the call content? I have a lot fewer problems with metadata collection than actual content. I also agree that even with just metadata (and I know that it’s hardly an insignificant amount of information contained in it) one loses a major ration of privacy.

I recall hearing about something a few weeks back, it may have been called “homogeneous encryption” but I’m a bit fuzzy on that. Basically it was an encryption technique that still allowed data mine and analysis on the metadata, but the data itself was encrypted. The idea was that only when a pattern or other hit was found, then under a court order just that part of the data could be decrypted. An approach like that would make me a bit happier with the situation.

RBS