"“At the outset of this study, we shared the same hypothesis as our computer science colleagues—we thought phone metadata could be very sensitive,” Jonathan Mayer, a graduate student leading the project, wrote on Wednesday."
Jennifer Granick, the director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society where Mayer is affiliated, concluded that this study “adds important empirical evidence to support what is now a growing consensus. Metadata surveillance endangers privacy.”
Meanwhile, Brian Pascal, who is a non-resident fellow at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, told Ars that it’s surprising that even those who knew they were being monitored appeared to not “skew calling habits towards the bland.”"