Curious About Metadata – What Will The Government Collect

“Metadata is understood by government officials to include the following :

Telephone numbers
The time and length of phone calls
The internet protocol addresses (IP addresses) of computers from which messages are received or sent
Location of parties making phone calls
To and from email addresses on emails
Logs of visitors to chat rooms online
Status of chat sites – whether they are active and how many people are participating
Chat aliases or identifiers (the name a person uses in a chat room online)
Start and finish times of internet sessions
The location of an individual involved in communications
The name of the application someone uses online and when, where and for how long used

Metadata is not:

The content of a communication such as a phone call or an email
The subject line of an email
The content of the discussion in a chat room online (what is said)
The content of a mobile phone text message (SMS)
Attachments to emails such as photos or videos
Web camera transmissions
Websites a person visits (i.e. browsing histories)
The name of a website a person visits
The substance of a person’s social media posts”