ext: A Spy Machine of DARPA's Dreams

Source: Wired

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.


source: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2003/05/58909

LifeLog


MORE: DARPA's report to Congress on TIA is online here.

THERE'S MORE: The idea of committing everything in your life to a machine is nearly sixty years old. In 1945, Vannevar Bush -- who headed the White House's Office of Scientific Research and Development during World War II -- published a landmark Atlantic Monthly article, "As We May Think." In it, he describes a "memex" -- a "device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility."

Minicomputer visionary Gordon Bell, now working at Microsoft, sees his "MyLifeBits" project as a fulfillment of Bush's vision.

There are other commercial and academic efforts to weave a life into followable threads, including parallel processing prophet David Gelernter's "Scopeware" and "Haystack," from MIT's David Karger.

AND MORE: LifeLog may eventually dwarf Total Information Awareness, DARPA's ultra-invasive database effort. But "TIA" could wind up being pretty damn large on its own, with 50 times more data than the Library of Congress, according to the Associated Press.

AND MORE: Lovers of civil liberties, you now have nothing to fear. Henceforth, the creepy "Total Information Awareness" program will be known as "Terrorism Information Awareness."

Feel better?





wayback. . .


Lifelog ( VeriChip and Darpa)-- Oct. 18, 2004

The objective of this "LifeLog" concept is to be able to trace the "threads" of an individual's life in terms of events, states, and relationships. Functionally, the LifeLog (sub)system consists of three components:

1. data capture and storage,
2. representation and abstraction,
3. and data access and user interface.

LifeLog accepts as input a number of raw physical and transactional data streams.

Through inference and reasoning, LifeLog generates multiple layers of representation at increasing levels of abstraction. The input data streams are abstracted into sequences of events and states, which are aggregated into threads and episodes to produce a timeline that constitutes an "episodic memory" for the individual. Patterns of events in the timeline support the identification of routines, relationships, and habits. Preferences, plans, goals, and other markers of intentionally are at the highest level.

LifeLog is interested in three major data categories:

1. physical data,
2. transactional data,
3. and context or media data. "
Dr. Douglas Gage, Program Manager, DARPA/ITO)

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, ( vocally )
and biomedical monitors to keep track of the individual's health. ( moods, emotions etc.) http://216.239.63.104/search?q=cache: ... y+move+%2B+verichip&hl=en

The Tyranny of Technology

" This country was founded with a specific set of rules that were intended to prevent tyrants from rising and taking over our nation. Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John Adams, James Madison — they set up this country to prevent the government from getting too powerful, to prevent the government's power from eclipsing that of the citizenry.

They knew what would happen at that point: unrestricted tyranny.

The tyranny made possible by technology is a more powerful tyranny than Madison, Jefferson, Washington or Adams ever could have dreamt of.

Total Information Awareness would — probably will — allow the government to know absolutely every detail of your life.

Lifelog and Verichip

The solutions that combine the VeriChip device with Windows-based applications deliver the following

Controlling access to Intellectual Property
Managing and tracking physical and intellectual assets
Providing physical access control solutions
Enabling innovative time and attendance systems
Providing automated data collection and monitoring platforms
VeriChip provides an accurate, real-time and dynamic means to detect, track, control and monitor a variety of items.
http://216.239.63.104/search?q=cache: ... ifelog+%2B+verichip&hl=en

Lifelog added to VeriChip ?

Imagine having your personal information fostered in a national database, alongside common criminals and terrorists – this is the future of Verichip. In addition, "Lifelog," developed by DARPA, is an audiovisual surveillance mini-PC that could be added to the Verichip. As a matter of fact, research is currently underway to further develop and converge this technology. But what does all of this mean?

With technology moving at the speed of light, we are on the brink of total, and now with the Patriot Act, legal scrutiny. Perhaps our daily routines are similar to that of Al Queda members living in the US and abroad … thank God for the Verichip – now we can be tracked like the animals we are and be brought in for swift justice. Yes, we attend the PTA, watch news and science programs on television, and perhaps we patron the local coffee shop that Al Queda members visit – we must be "sleeper cells" too.

Lifelog and DARPA -- Donald Rumsfeld .... an electronic diary
" This new generation of cognitive computers will understand their users and help them manage their affairs more effectively. The research is designed to extend the model of a personal digital assistant (PDA) to one that might eventually become a personal digital partner. "
http://www.darpa.mil/ipto/Programs/lifelog/
http://www.darpa.mil/index.html


DARPA's Dream...."existential technology" and "the metaphysics of free will."

The Pentagon's " 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.
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
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,58909,00.html

DARPA wants to index and search your Life
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/000427.html

Lifelog records your life.....Anywhere, Anytime

VeriChip was originally intended to function in much the same way a medical alert bracelet does by giving medical personnel life-saving information about a patient's history. Its potential use has been extended in recent months, however, and it is now expected to be used for security, as well as medical, purposes.

The US Government and makers of these chips, want you to use the chip willingly. http://www.voiceoffreedom.com/archive ... rityact/lifelogstory.html

Lifelog ...mad biographers: gleaned from whatever documentary detritus [ damaging material ] happens to be available

" The feds seem to be in another of their omniscient moods. The current military fascination with cognitive systems—"systems that know what they're doing," as the Information Processing Technology Office helpfully puts it—is reminiscent, if only in an ontological sort of way, of the CIA's Cold War fascination with the chimera of mind control"
accumulation of conspicuous facts ( "salient")
examining threads and states of disappointment, deceit, self-delusion, compromise, frustration, guilt, regret, and other such research subjects.
http://reason.com/links/links052303.shtml
http://www.strange-loops.com/freelifelog.html

It seems as though the monsters who control our country — as well as most of the rest of the world — won't be satisfied until every last corner of your life has been illuminated with the bright lights of their watchful eyes.

Make no mistake, if you are an American who loves your freedom, you are their enemy. You don't have to do anything but breathe. These people seek to enslave you, and take away your individual liberty, and control you totally and completely — right down to the very thoughts that you think and the words that you speak.

Not content with being able to control minds, now the beasts wish to read them.

Just because you trust your government, doesn't mean your government trusts you.

In order to ensure their success in obtaining their New World Order, they must firmly fasten — or secure — each one of us in our place. They must tie us down under their watchful eyes so that there will be nothing that we can do, without their spotting it.

We could completely do away with the protections built into the American justice system. No longer would we have to worry about an individual being innocent until proven guilty. We'd know that they were guilty. We'd just pull up their file out of the database, and hit "play." There'd be all of the incriminating evidence,
http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/privacy/lifelog.htm

Electronic Diary .... military applications
http://www.rense.com/general57/lifelogprojectrevived.htm

DARPA and TIA ..techno-tyranny
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/05/265024.shtml

and Privacy
http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/print.asp?ArticleID=88768

Big Brother www.cybertime.net/~ajgood/bigbro.html

Tja, det betyder att de redan gör det. Pentagon har exempelvis hela parker med superdatorer och i dom en simulerad värld som en kopia av den riktiga. Syftet är uppenbarligen att de vill köra simuleringar av vad som händer om man gör si eller så.