We all know that the metadata spy agencies collect on us can be hugely revealing. Now this Stanford study underlines just how much of our private lives can be exposed through this government spying. Article by Ian Macleod for the Ottawa Citizen OTTAWA — The kind of “metadata” that can be gleaned from smartphone records — the same type of data targeted by Canadian and American intelligence agencies — can reveal highly sensitive personal information, a new study at Stanford University has revealed. “We were able to infer medical conditions and more, using solely phone metadata,” report Jonathan Mayer and Patrick Mutchler, researchers at Stanford’s Department of Computer Science.