Comment 2 for bug 1096283

Because Nautilus is compiled with support for Zeitgeist, libzeitgeist is a required dependency. Zeitgeist is simply an activity log manager. If it were transmitting user's activities over the Internet, people would notice and there would be considerable complaining. It does act transparently. Install gnome-activity-journal to see what information is being collected. Or install activity-log-manager and turn "Record Activity" off.

CD burning is a useful feature for a file manager and Brasero is a good choice as it is the GNOME CD burner. Brasero is only a recommends so you can easily uninstall it after installing Nautilus. That being said, perhaps it should be a "suggests" instead of a "recommends"; the main meta-packages already depend on brasero or xfburn any way.