Law enforcement’s next privacy overreach will be the metadata of things

Governments around the world are legislating to collect metadata, usually with the excuse that modern crime-fighting and national security efforts require access to records of citizens’ communications.

In many nations that’s sparked what I call “horizontal” scope-creep, in which, as just one example, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) wants access to metadata in order to identify and discipline doctors who are having affairs with their patients.