The summer of 2013 was not a particularly good one for the U.S. National Security Agency (News - Alert) (NSA). Not only were Americans targeted, but it seems that the heads of foreign countries were also on the NSA list.

In June the NSA was empowered by a secret order issued by the foreign intelligence court directing Verizon (News - Alert) Communications to turn over all its call records for a three-month period. This was not geared towards an individuals or groups of people. The order was untargeted, which means that the NSA was able to “snoop” on calls without suspecting anyone of wrongdoing.

The way that it was phrased, the NSA could only gain access to the metadata around calls. That means that the agency had access to when calls were made, what numbers those calls were made to, where they were made from and how long the calls lasted.

The NSA’s justification was that metadata does not reveal content, names or addresses of the calls, so therefore, it is not wiretapping. What exactly is metadata? I guess that the most accurate description is that it is data about data. Metadata describes how and when and by whom a particular set of data was collected, and how the data is formatted.

So, by using the catch phrase, “only looking at metadata” was the NSA able to find out anything about the callers? According to a new study conducted by researchers at Stanford University, it appears that the answer is yes.

The two researchers involved with this project are Jonathan Mayer and Patrick Mutchler. Their research consisted of information that was collected from 546 volunteers. This information gathered falls under the category of just metadata. The criteria were that the participants had to have a Facebook (News - Alert) page and that they install an app called MetaPhone on their Android devices.

Now, keep in mind that all of these people were fully aware that the Stanford study would be trying to find out as much about them as the data would allow. Mayer explained, “During our analysis, we encountered a number of patterns that were highly indicative of sensitive activities or traits. Though most MetaPhone participants consented to having their identity disclosed, we use pseudonyms in this report to protect participant privacy.”

From reading the results of this study, it would appear that a great many number of inferences can be made simply by looking at the metadata. For this article, three instances have been singled out. An examination of the metadata identified a cannabis grower, a woman seeking an abortion and someone suffering from Multiple Sclerosis. There are already several states where the first one is legal and doesn’t matter, but the other two are extremely personal and private matters.

According to sections of the study, one participant “communicated with multiple local neurology groups, a specialty pharmacy, a rare condition management service, and a hotline for a pharmaceutical used solely to treat relapsing multiple sclerosis.”

Another “had a long, early morning call with her sister. Two days later, she placed a series of calls to the local Planned Parenthood location. She placed brief additional calls two weeks later, and made a final call a month after.”

The third had to only call three locations to determine what they were after. Over the span of three weeks calls were made to “contacted a home improvement store, locksmiths, a hydroponics dealer, and a head shop.”

Mayer told the Guardian that the results of this study “are strongly suggestive of the sensitivity in NSA and telecom databases.” He also wanted to inform anyone reading the paper on the team’s research that “the MetaPhone dataset is, to be sure, not statistically representative of the American population. In addition to opting in, participation requires an Android (News - Alert) phone and a Facebook account.”

While there were some limitations on the information, a great number of people have Facebook accounts in which they post their profile. Combining information, which is freely given on sites like Facebook, a single phone call can provide a lot of data.

Although content never came into the equation the study reports that “participants  had calls with Alcoholics Anonymous, gun stores, NARAL Pro-Choice, labor unions, divorce lawyers, sexually transmitted disease clinics, a Canadian import pharmacy, strip clubs, and much more. This was not a hypothetical parade of horribles. These were simple inferences, about real phone users, that could trivially be made on a large scale.”

This clearly demonstrates that many inferences can be made when looking at metadata. How anonymous is Alcoholics Anonymous when people know that you are calling them. If I call a gun store, does that automatically give a negative flag?

There are a lot of questions that have arisen from last year’s NSA “keeping America safe” disclosure. The information that this study was able to see simply from looking at metadata that was gathered from an app and a Facebook account is staggering. Just think about how many more avenues the NSA has other than Facebook!