For weeks now we have been watching with awe, and dismay as the National Security Administration (NSA) spying program story unfolds. For scientists and practitioners that work with social and organizational network analysis it is especially important for us to be engaged in this topic and to realize that the methods that we spend an uncounted amount time of our professional and academic lives, studying, developing, promoting and practicing are being used as a weapon to spy on fellow American citizens.

What I’ve done in this post is try to explain how “meta data” analysis works for those who are not in the field. I [...]