A Spy Machine of DARPA's Dreams 

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.  

05/21/03: (Wired News) It's a memory aid! A robotic assistant! An 
epidemic detector! An all-seeing, ultra-intrusive spying program!  

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.

                            -==-

Source: Information Clearinghouse ...
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3481.htm


Cheers, Steve..

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