To bureaucrats there is a huge difference between one arm of the government collecting metadata for all American phone calls overseen by a secret court; and another that monitors web traffic; and another that sends SUVs full of police to investigate households who, apparently, post photos of firecrackers to Facebook; and yet another monitoring social-media activity.
It shelved a controversial plan to force Australian telecommunications companies, internet service providers and sites such as Facebook to collect "metadata" from Australian users and store it for two years.
The chart is a glimpse of what, for example, spies at the National Security Agency could learn about someone simply from collecting metadata from Internet technology companies such as Google Inc.
That seemed obvious over the past week when the government suddenly declassified the secret court order that was the basis for collecting "metadata" on every telephone call made in the United States.
This allows StatusToday to collect metadata and audit information for all essential activity performed by any employee in the system.
Monday's ruling would prevent the NSA from collecting metadata on Klayman, but for the fact that the judge also stayed that ruling, giving the government further opportunity to appeal.
The NSA, for example, collects metadata on every phone call placed in the United States.
In essence, the draft bill gets rid of bulk collection, but makes it easier for government authorities to collect metadata on individuals inside the US suspected of involvement with a foreign power.
For some, surveillance that just collects metadata might seem less alarming, but in Snowden's view, "That metadata is in many cases much more dangerous and much more intrusive, because it can be understood at scale".
Collecting metadata on a family of programs is useful not only for generating statistical data on the programs but also for future re-engineering and reuse purposes.
