Friday, the president started off his NSA reform speech with a reference to Paul Revere and the Sons of Liberty, saying:


But if the British Redcoats had access to the type of metadata and processing power the NSA does today, Revere probably would have been caught before he could go on his legendary midnight ride. In fact, even without cellphones, just by sifting through  the memberships of social clubs at the time it would have been possible to use relationships to identify the key people involved in groups like the Sons of Liberty -- who surely would have been considered "terrorists" by the British Crown at the time.

Kieran Healy, a sociology professor at Duke University, wrote up an excellent, fictional, narrative version of how this could be done by examining information about memberships in various social clubs -- complete with privacy assurances.


By mapping individuals known to be involved in patriot-cause connected groups, you get this visual representation of the social connections:

(Kieran Healy)

And who is dead in the middle of this?

None other than Revere!

As Healy notes, this map wouldn't have told British intelligence anything about "his conversations, or his habits or beliefs, his writings (if he has any) or his personal life." But it would have surely made them give him a second look, and placed him near the top of their lists of suspected "terrorists."