Techno-tyranny in dev: walk ID system for TIA

and you can get tangled. Speaking of cinema, ever see that movie Brazil, Mr. Buttle? But at least TIA's being run by upstanding, iron-willed patriots--like John Poindexter, indicted in the Iran/Contra affair. John's not going to take any guff from some pansy-assed nancy boys crying about free love and peace when there's throats to be slit abroad. Somebody's got to keep this world from going to hell...

Thanks for the article, geeky and sick of it, you know what mother says "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."

www.prwatch.org
www.thememoryhole.org
www.disinfo.com

I suspect that "sick of this crap" may be a terrorist and/or one of the many corrupt law enforcement personnel that continue to fuel the relentless march of Big Brother. Instead of intelligent, reasonable men and women in charge, this person seems to want to put boys in charge, using their bigness as the only criteria. Since people like show contempt for the US Constitution, why should they be allowed to remain in the US? People like this only jeopardize the safety of everyone else. Afterall, Hitler rose to power on the backs of brainwashed idiots like this. We can't afford to let that happen again. I would like to volunteer this person for the first microchip implant trials. Please list your contact information, "sick of this crap", so that we can fit you and your home with the proper hardware. I'm sure you won't mind if we keep an eye on you for a while- unless you've got something to hide, that is.

Without the "sick of this crap" comment here, the other two look strAnge. Why remove the "sick of this crap" comment? A large portion of the Murkin public does share the "sick of this crap" view. I think an alternate view can stand up to the corporate one. Thru debate, I am confident that some, more moderate folks will be able to understand that the unrestrained corporate government model is not in their best interest either.

To Agent Orange, didn't see Mr. Buttle, but Brazil is one of my favorites.

A Spy Machine of DARPA's Dreams By Noah Shachtman
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.

I'm thinking the comment "techno-tyranny" might not be too far off. Here's another tidbit from today's news on a similar topic. And who is "sick of this crap"?

Barcoding humans

The era of implanting people with identity chips is up on us

By Angela Swafford, Globe Correspondent, 5/20/2003

he painless procedure barely lasted 15 minutes. In his South Florida office, Dr. Harvey Kleiner applied a local anesthetic above the tricep of my right arm, then he inserted a thick needle deep under the skin.


''First we locate a prime spot,'' he said. ''The next thing is to release the button that triggers the injection mechanism, and that's it, the cargo's been delivered.''

The ''cargo'' was a half-inch-long microchip inside a glass and silicone cylinder that carries my permanent identification number. For an instant, I remembered the famous scene in the movie ''Fantastic Voyage'' in which a miniaturized Raquel Welch and her companions are inserted, submarine and all, into the vein of a patient. In my case, the tiny chip inside me can transmit personal information to anyone with a special handheld scanner.

Theoretically, this VeriChip will allow doctors to call up my medical records even if I'm too badly hurt to answer questions. It is also supposed to allow me to get money from an automatic teller machine by flashing my arm instead of punching in my PIN number. Or reassure airport security that I am a journalist, not a terrorist.

full article at  http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/140/science/Barcoding_humans+.shtml

If Mr "sick of this crap" wants to actually participate in a dialogue by explaining why what seem like reasonable and well articulated concerns are in fact overly alarmist, he's welcome to do so, by actually authoring a comment that contains some substantive points that address the substantive concerns raised by those whose points he is disputing. If all he wants to do is use epithets, he should look for a different forum. Having read Mr. "Sick-of's" comment, I was at a loss to see how any response could have a chance of impressing him. That is why I felt that his outburst was better addressed by deletion than by dignifying it with a useless waste of energy. There is no reasoned retort to someone whose method of dialogue consists in one-way yelling of epithets. I make no apology for the deletion, and plan to routinely delete outbursts from people that contain nothing that can contribute to the substance of this website. Note that Mr "sick-of's" outburst is still visible in the open trash, for those who enjoy this sort of thing. I don't think I'm asking for very much: If Mr. "Sick-of" could muster even so much as an iota of substance to accompany his diatribes, I'd be happy to leave his rantings unmolested on the newswire. Otherwise, his style makes it clear that he is only interested in provocation, not dialogue.

However, my original comment looks pretty silly up there as a response to nothing, don't ya think? Also where is this "open trash" section?

Follow the "compost" link at the bottom of the newswire to see the open trash.

Hate to sound like a schoolmarm, but maybe you'll save yourself the frustration of having your comments looking silly in the absence of the comment they're in response to by avoiding wasting your energy in the future responding to people who are only looking to get a rise out of you.