lifelog

sounds like a performance piece. why has it been that ever since 9/11
I've felt like I've been living in a bad dystopian sci-fi novel?

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Pentagon tool to record a user's every sensation

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By Michael J. Sniffen

June 2, 2003 | WASHINGTON (AP) – Coming to you soon from the
Pentagon: the diary to end all diaries – a multimedia, digital
record of everywhere you go and everything you see, hear, read, say
and touch.

Known as LifeLog, the project has been put out for contractor bids by
the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, the agency
that helped build the Internet and that is now developing the next
generation of anti-terrorism tools.

The agency doesn't consider LifeLog an anti-terrorism system, but
rather a tool to capture "one person's experience in and interactions
with the world" through a camera, microphone and sensors worn by the
user. Everything from heartbeats to travel to Internet chatting would
be recorded.

The goal is to create breakthrough software that helps analyze
behavior, habits and routines, according to Pentagon documents
reviewed by The Associated Press. The products of the unclassified
project would be available to both the private sector and other
government agencies – a concern to privacy advocates.

DARPA's Jan Walker said LifeLog is intended for users who give their
consent to be monitored. It could enhance the memory of military
commanders and improve computerized military training by chronicling
how users learn and then tailoring training accordingly, officials
said.

But John Pike of Global Security.org, a defense analysis group, is
dubious the project has military application.

"I have a much easier time understanding how Big Brother would want
this than how (Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld would use it," Pike
said. "They have not identified a military application."

Steven Aftergood, a Federation of American Scientists defense
analyst, said LifeLog would collect far more information than needed
to improve a general's memory – enough "to measure human experience
on an unprecedentedly specific level." And that, privacy experts say,
raises powerful concerns.

DARPA rejects any notion LifeLog will be used for spying. "The
allegation that this technology would create a machine to spy on
others and invade people's privacy is way off the mark," Walker said.

She said LifeLog is not connected with DARPA's data-mining project,
recently renamed Terrorism Information Awareness. Each LifeLog user
could "decide when to turn the sensors on or off and who would share
the data," she added. "The goal … is to 'see what I see,' rather
than to 'see me."'

One critic sees a silver lining in the government taking the lead.

"If government weren't doing this, it would still be done by
companies and in universities all over the country, but we would have
less say about it," said James X. Dempsey of the Center for Democracy
and Technology, which advocates online privacy. Because the
government is involved, "you can read about it and influence it."

DARPA's Web site says the agency investigates ideas "the traditional
research and development community finds too outlandish or risky."

But in LifeLog's case, some similar technology is already being
funded and researched by well-heeled outfits.

Professor Steve Mann of the University of Toronto has spent 30 years
developing a wearable camera and computer, progressing from intricate
metallic headgear to dark frame eyeglasses and a cellphone-sized belt
attachment. He's working with Samsung on a commercial version.

And Microsoft's Gordon Bell scans his mail and other papers and
records phone, Web, video and voice transactions into a computerized
file called MyLifeBits. The company may include the capability in
upcoming products.

Neither Mann nor Bell intends to bid on DARPA's project. Bell said
DARPA wants to go further than he has into artificial intelligence to
analyze data.

The Pentagon agency plans to award up to four 18-month contracts for
LifeLog beginning this summer. Contracting documents give a sense of
the project's scope.

Cameras and microphones would capture what the user sees or hears;
sensors would record what he or she feels. Global positioning
satellite sensors would log every movement. Biomedical sensors would
monitor vital signs. E-mails, instant messages, Web-based
transactions, telephone calls and voicemails would be stored. Mail
and faxes would be scanned. Links to every radio and television
broadcast heard and every newspaper, magazine, book, Web site or
database seen would be recorded.

Breakthrough software would automatically produce an electronic diary
that organizes the data into "episodes" of the user's life, such as
"I took the 08:30 a.m. flight from Washington's Reagan National
Airport to Boston's Logan Airport," according to the documents.

LifeLog's software also "will be able to find meaningful patterns in
the timetable, to infer the user's routines, habits and relationships
with other people, organizations, places and objects," DARPA told
contractors in an advisory.

Walker said DARPA has no plans to develop software to analyze
multiple LifeLogs. But DARPA advised contractors that ultimately,
with proper anonymity, data from many LifeLogs could facilitate
"early detection of an emerging epidemic."

Dempsey, the privacy advocate, says his concern is that users
ultimately won't control LifeLog data.

"Because you collected it voluntarily, the government can get it with
a search warrant," he said. "And an increasing amount of personal
data is also available from third parties. The government can get
data from them simply by asking or signing a subpoena."

He cites examples from current technology such as traffic cameras and
automated toll booth passes that police already use to trace a
person's path. Dempsey questions how LifeLog's analytical software
will interpret such data and how Americans will be protected from
errors.

"You can go to the airport to pick up a friend, to claim lost luggage
or to case it for a terrorist attack. What story will LifeLog write
from this data?" he asked. "At the very least, you ought to know when
someone is using it and have the right to correct the 'story' it
writes."
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