1984 Foreword: "computer technology circa 2003"

[pynchonoid]

"What has steadily, insidiously improved since then,
of course, making humanist arguments almost
irrelevant, is the technology. We must not be too
distracted by the clunkiness of the means of
surveillance current in Winston Smith's era. In "our"
1984, after all, the integrated circuit chip was less
than a decade old, and almost embarrassingly primitive
next to the wonders of computer technology circa 2003,
most notably the internet, a development that promises
social control on a scale those quaint old
20th-century tyrants with their goofy moustaches could
only dream about."
--Thomas Pynchon, _1984_ Foreword

<http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,58909,00.html>


A Spy Machine of DARPA's Dreams  By Noah Shachtman 

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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