ARTelevision

Get ready for this, it is coming. No doubt about it.
How soon? At the accelerated pace of leading edge technology.
That probably means...yesterday.
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A Spy Machine of DARPA's Dreams
Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,58909,00.html

02:00 AM May. 20, 2003 PT

It's a memory aid! A robotic assistant! An epidemic detector! An all-seeing, ultra-intrusive spying program!

The Pentagon is about to embark on a stunningly ambitious research project designed to gather every conceivable bit of information about a person's life, index all the information and make it searchable.

What national security experts and civil libertarians want to know is, why would the Defense Department want to do such a thing?

The embryonic LifeLog program would dump everything an individual does into a giant database: every e-mail sent or received, every picture taken, every Web page surfed, every phone call made, every TV show watched, every magazine read.

All of this -- and more -- would combine with information gleaned from a variety of sources: a GPS transmitter to keep tabs on where that person went, audio-visual sensors to capture what he or she sees or says, and biomedical monitors to keep track of the individual's health.

This gigantic amalgamation of personal information could then be used to "trace the 'threads' of an individual's life," to see exactly how a relationship or events developed, according to a briefing from the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency, LifeLog's sponsor.

Someone with access to the database could "retrieve a specific thread of past transactions, or recall an experience from a few seconds ago or from many years earlier ... by using a search-engine interface."

On the surface, the project seems like the latest in a long line of DARPA's "blue sky" research efforts, most of which never make it out of the lab. But DARPA is currently asking businesses and universities for research proposals to begin moving LifeLog forward. And some people, such as Steven Aftergood, a defense analyst with the Federation of American Scientists, are worried.

With its controversial Total Information Awareness database project, DARPA already is planning to track all of an individual's "transactional data" -- like what we buy and who gets our e-mail.

While the parameters of the project have not yet been determined, Aftergood said he believes LifeLog could go far beyond TIA's scope, adding physical information (like how we feel) and media data (like what we read) to this transactional data.

"LifeLog has the potential to become something like 'TIA cubed,'" he said.

In the private sector, a number of LifeLog-like efforts already are underway to digitally archive one's life -- to create a "surrogate memory," as minicomputer pioneer Gordon Bell calls it.

Bell, now with Microsoft, scans all his letters and memos, records his conversations, saves all the Web pages he's visited and e-mails he's received and puts them into an electronic storehouse dubbed MyLifeBits.

DARPA's LifeLog would take this concept several steps further by tracking where people go and what they see.

That makes the project similar to the work of University of Toronto professor Steve Mann. Since his teen years in the 1970s, Mann, a self-styled "cyborg," has worn a camera and an array of sensors to record his existence. He claims he's convinced 20 to 30 of his current and former students to do the same. It's all part of an experiment into "existential technology" and "the metaphysics of free will."

DARPA isn't quite so philosophical about LifeLog. But the agency does see some potential battlefield uses for the program.

"The technology could allow the military to develop computerized assistants for war fighters and commanders that can be more effective because they can easily access the user's past experiences," DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker speculated in an e-mail.

It also could allow the military to develop more efficient computerized training systems, she said: Computers could remember how each student learns and interacts with the training system, then tailor the lessons accordingly.

John Pike, director of defense think tank GlobalSecurity.org, said he finds the explanations "hard to believe."

"It looks like an outgrowth of Total Information Awareness and other DARPA homeland security surveillance programs," he added in an e-mail.

Sure, LifeLog could be used to train robotic assistants. But it also could become a way to profile suspected terrorists, said Cory Doctorow, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In other words, Osama bin Laden's agent takes a walk around the block at 10 each morning, buys a bagel and a newspaper at the corner store and then calls his mother. You do the same things -- so maybe you're an al Qaeda member, too!

"The more that an individual's characteristic behavior patterns -- 'routines, relationships and habits' -- can be represented in digital form, the easier it would become to distinguish among different individuals, or to monitor one," Aftergood, the Federation of American Scientists analyst, wrote in an e-mail.

In its LifeLog report, DARPA makes some nods to privacy protection, like when it suggests that "properly anonymized access to LifeLog data might support medical research and the early detection of an emerging epidemic."

But before these grand plans get underway, LifeLog will start small. Right now, DARPA is asking industry and academics to submit proposals for 18-month research efforts, with a possible 24-month extension. (DARPA is not sure yet how much money it will sink into the program.)

The researchers will be the centerpiece of their own study.

Like a game show, winning this DARPA prize eventually will earn the lucky scientists a trip for three to Washington, D.C. Except on this excursion, every participating scientist's e-mail to the travel agent, every padded bar bill and every mad lunge for a cab will be monitored, categorized and later dissected.
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It's OK with me, but I assume it's not OK with you.
Am I correct on this?

Why is it OK with me?
Because it is - and has been - inevitable since the first guy spied on the second guy.

I don't spend a lot of time decrying the inevitable.
I spend my time thinking about how to live with it.

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create evolution

krwlz

This scares me....Plain and simple.

vermin

I'm not too worried about it, this is a government that buys 300 dollar hammers, can't keep the people from finding out about a presidential hummer, basically can't do shit with any degree of efficiency. Remember that the real world is a lot different than what's portrayed in movies and television.

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If puns were sausages, this would be the wurst.

Macheath

I'm interested in Art's idea that it's acceptable so I'll use that as a basis for speculation.

Seems like the main thing wrong with information is who controls that information. I certainly have a problem with someone like John Ashcroft having access to information because I know, despite what he says, he does not have access to ALL information.Remember Rumsfeld's famous "unknown unknowns", they know there are big gaps in their knowledge.

So where information is absent, we humans insert belief - assumptions about how the world works. Belief leads to ideology which leads to ideologues like John Ashcroft, a man who will never have true total information awareness (TIA) because total knowledge might contradict his assumptions and prejudices.

Let's jump forward and assume that society is run by an Intelligence that knows all, an intelligence not governed by prejudice or ideology. Would that society be democratic - our beliefs and wants would be known, would they be acted upon? Would that society be "safe"? Certainly. Would hypocrisy cease to exist? Never again would we see the preacher who protests the building of a strip club and then goes home to rape his teenage daughter. What would happen to religion? Would the omnipotent one see the belief in another omnipotent one as a threat or contradiction?

Perhaps we are on the road to this world, but it is a LONG road. John Ashcroft's so-called TIA is like a stoneage tool in comparison to what I have described. As such, belief in an information utopia does not oblige you to sing the praises of that rat bastard Ashcroft. After all, would you let some caveman perform brain surgery with a rock? Fight PIA.

The road to TIA will lead to social upheaval and so it should. If the DoD records you - record yourself. If they say you were here, prove you were there. If they claim your recording is a fake, put it on the internet for open analysis. If they persist, make the injustice known - this is the basic stuff of democracy. Or as Marge Simpson once said The courts might not work any more, but as long as everybody is videotaping everyone else, justice will be done.

4thTimeLucky

I would love to have a LifeLog for my own persoal use and try to as much as possible. I have a terrible memory and being able to recall letters and notes is great.

The problem is that the level of technology needed for the computer to understand all of these inputs (audio, visual, scanned text) is huge and in reality decades away.

As for its effect on democracy and crime, I don't think it is a good idea. The "evidence" would be used to cut corners and jump to conclusions - many of them incorrect. Those who really want to commit crime will be able to alter their LifeLog, just as people now buy false documentation. As for the government: absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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I've been 4thTimeLucky, you've been great. Goodnight and God bless!

ARTelevision

Macheath,
Yes. It seems to me certain situations are inevitable in human society. Trends that have been trending for centuries will be fulfilled by historical imperative. If that's the case, the only option we have is to make the best of them.

As I've outlined here before, I'm concerned with the quality of people with power. They will be products of the society that nurtured them.

Also, as you may assess, I'm concerned that as we pursue the trajectories laid out in the life-as-entertainment/entertainment-as-life theorems, we are continually degrading our quality as human beings. To continue these trends ensures the future will be held by droll types who lack imagination and sincerity and, instead, are driven by "life-as-sci-fi-action-thriller" or "life-as-sinister-video-game" paradigms.

In the future, life will be the machine we have been creating since the ape jawbone was used as a weapon. My issue with all this is we continue to program the life machine with nonsense and self-and-society-destructive memes.

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create evolution

Glory's Sun

I fail to see how this program will be a benefit to anybody..

Frowning Budah

Jaelin what makes you think Canada is safe?

At this point I don't think they have the technology and the man power to pull this off. The time is coming when it will happen if someone doesn't do something, but I don't know what it will take to stop them.

Vincentt

I guess the reasoning behind such a program is that if 'we' can build it, then someone else could have too. Everything being watched doesn’t matter if you don’t do anything wrong. But otherwise we could be in for one of those sci-fi movies where everyone forces smiles because bad thoughts make them remove parts of your brain.

I'd rather not be watched, but maybe the safety would make it worth it? I would doubt it, as the people doing the most evil would find a way to hide from the program

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mtsgsd

There's always going to be people who want this sort of thing for one reason or another. I'll bet bloggers would be ecstatic. I can't see it being done effectively though. Even if it were, who would go thru the googleplex bytes of data? Heck, the Illinois tollway authority can't even keep up with it's camera's for detecting people who don't pay tolls.

Mr. Mojo

The monitoring technology of the program could be turned against us by <b>Big Brother</b>, but in the Western world we are more likely to be hounded by <b>Big Seller.</b>

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When I jerk off I feel good for about twenty seconds and then WHAM it's right back into suicidal depression

kurty[B]

Yeah, I see this being used as a tool to study people's habits, put it in a database, and determine the best places to have billboards, and advertisements pop up on us. Either way I don't think it is a good thing. Inevitable maybe, but probably a good decade or so before something like this became nationally functional.

HiThereDear

what happens when the day comes that each of us will be carrying around a microcomputer that'll be able to record video of every second of our life?

Daval

Very scary stuff indeed. I'd definately not be ok with it.

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"It is impossible to obtain a conviction for sodomy from an English jury. Half of them don't believe that it can physically be done, and the other half are doing it."
Winston Churchill

DEI37

I can see some positive things about this, but those positives are infinitely out-weighed by the smallest of the negatives. It's a terrible idea, and if they actually approve this crap, I'll move to Canada...I'm serious. The more I live in the U.S., the more I want out.

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Generally speaking, if you were to get what you really deserve, you might be unpleasantly surprised.

The_Dude

patriot act is leading the way for something like this.

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"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - Darrel K Royal

spamfree

Canada's every bit as bad, folks, even if the R&D budget is somewhat smaller.