I'm not doubting that it's entirely possible to identify a lot about people from their phone metadata. I don't think it takes a huge amount of creative thinking to establish that someone who calls a hydroponics dealer and a headshop is fairly likely to have some connection to drugs, and that tracking their phone calls would allow you to spot that.
But I'm not sure that this article really adds a lot to the discussion with statements like "Owing to the sensitivity of these matters, Mayer explains that the researchers elected not to contact the three participants for confirmation that their inferences were correct"
If they could have correctly identified a drug dealer from a pattern of seemingly innocuous phone calls (and actually validated that they are correct) then this could have been at least vaguely interesting. As it is, the story is "if you've phoned somewhere that deals with MS relapses, we can make a guess that you could have MS". Well thanks, Sherlock.
But I'm not sure that this article really adds a lot to the discussion with statements like "Owing to the sensitivity of these matters, Mayer explains that the researchers elected not to contact the three participants for confirmation that their inferences were correct"
If they could have correctly identified a drug dealer from a pattern of seemingly innocuous phone calls (and actually validated that they are correct) then this could have been at least vaguely interesting. As it is, the story is "if you've phoned somewhere that deals with MS relapses, we can make a guess that you could have MS". Well thanks, Sherlock.