Slashdot Mirror
The Searchable Life
oni writes "Here's a story on wired about a Pentagon project called LifeLog. It seeks to record every bit of information that can be had, index it by name, or SSN, or even location, and make the database searchable. Furthermore, '[LifeLog adds] physical information (like how we feel) and media data (like what we read) to this transactional data.'" If you think you can build such a system, apply for a grant. There's also a current AP story about Total Information Awareness.
Big Brother reference in 3.. 2... 1...
About how angry having my privacy violated makes me feel... and about how my herpes has flared up again.
SELECT * FROM tblLife WHERE objName = "Keys"
This might come in handy.
"Moderate drinking can help prevent amputated limbs" -- Abigail Zuger, NYTimes, 12/31/02
Hello sir. My name is Mahmoud Albin-Ahmed, and i am from Kentucky. I would like to have applied for grant to developing wonderful system like echel... er, life so i can sear... er... serve my fellowing americans. i am havening wonderful oportunity.
thanks you and regards. plz send money soonest.
The government is still trying to live our lives for us and protect us from ourselves...
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
And why are so many of us geeks worried?
If the Pentagon wants record peoples' lives, fine. It's not as if I'm gonna appear in the database! How could I? I spend all my time reading Slashdot -- I don't have a life!
You sir are the lucky winner of post #6000000! Yes, 6 million! And it wouldn't have been possible without you. Thank you for your hard work here on Slashdot!
Now on to 7 million!
I've gotten into so many arugments with people about privacy and it usually boils down to trust: They trust, I don't.
,2 3008,3387549,00.html
They trust safeway to be kind and gentle when collecting all their iformation on every item they have ever purchased, they trust bars to maintain privacy when scanning a person's license to enter a bar. But that is folish.
[Shamelessly copied from latimes...]
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-celebs8apr 08,1,1932749.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dcaliforni a
Officer's Star Searches Raise Liability Worries
City studies possible legal fallout from use of police computer to get data on celebrities.
April 8, 2003
By Wendy Thermos, Times Staff Writer
For six years, Officer Kelly Chrisman used Los Angeles Police Department computers to look up confidential law enforcement records on celebrities and other high-profile people, including Sharon Stone, Courteney Cox Arquette, Sean Penn and Halle Berry.
Chrisman says he was just carrying out orders from superiors, but a lawsuit recently settled by the city for nearly $400,000 alleged that the officer had accessed the records to sell the information to tabloids.
Now Los Angeles officials are assessing the city's potential liability.
According to internal LAPD documents, between 1994 and 2000 Chrisman tapped computer files on scores of celebrities, including Meg Ryan, Kobe Bryant, O.J. Simpson, Larry King, Drew Barrymore, Dionne Warwick, Farrah Fawcett, Cindy Crawford, Elle Macpherson and Berry Gordy.
[Shamlessly copied from techtv]
http://www.techtv.com/cybercrime/privacy/story/0
Top 10 List of Police Database Abuses
Law enforcement officers are supposed to protect and serve, but some cops misuse police databases to get dates and more.
By James Hamilton, Web producer
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Email this story
Your address, telephone number, Social Security number, date of birth, criminal record -- all this data and more can be accessed by police officers if they have basic information about you. Some cops, however, use their database access for less-than-honorable reasons. This week on "CyberCrime" we show you how some cops used police databases to harass exes and even get telephone numbers of women they see in cars.
These abuses happen in law enforcement departments around the world. Here's 10 stories about cops who have abused their information privileges in police departments in Michigan, California, Ohio, and even as far away as Australia.
Cop Suspected of Using Database to Plan Murder of Ex-wife
A State Police detective whose estranged wife was shot dead at a Michigan zoo admitted using the Law Enforcement Information Network (LEIN) to check on his wife and her acquaintances, according to Lansing police search warrant requests. Although the detective is not suspected of pulling the trigger, the Lansing, Michigan, police department says it believes he knows who shot his wife a month after she filed for divorce. Read the story.
Rookie Cop Checks on 'Potential Girlfriends': 6,900 Database Searches in Only Two Months
An Australian constable new to the beat used the police database to check on potential girlfriends. In just over two months the then 20-year-old policeman performed an unprecedented 6,900 searches on the police database. The counsel assisting the case says that of those 6,900 searches at least 300 weren't connected to official duties. Read the story.
FBI Files Sold to Mob and International Criminals by Nevada Attorney General's Office Employee and Former FBI Agent
Dubbed the "Secrets for Sale Scandal" by the Las Vegas media, an attorney general's office worker and a former FBI agent we
The more we centralize things, the more vulnerable we are to a single point of failure with absolutely catastrophic consequences.
Historically, the core value behind the second amendment was not the right to go deer hunting, but the idea that we needed to reserve to the states and to the people enough power to protect itself if the federal government seemed overpowerful or out of control.
As information becomes more and more literally a form of armament in modern society, perhaps we need to ask the Supreme Court to start to construe control of information as covered under the second amendment, and to say that the unfettered protection of private information by the states and by individuals is Constitutionally protected. I've seen the courts look to the 4th and then 9th amendments for privacy protection, and having trouble finding it. Maybe they're just looking in the wrong place.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
which suggest that a chafing scheme could be used to mess with the logs on my web usage.
for example, I have perl script that continously goes to random web sites and pretends to browse web pages 24/7. My own usage is potentially lost. and by random chance I will of course visit al queda web pages, child porn sites, and many other dark alleys of the internet and thus launder them at the same time. Of course this idea sucks for its impact on web bandwidth but I suspect that by the time it becomes possible to track everyones's moves in a data base there will be lots of bandwidth available too.
Another schema is of course Anonymizing things via encryption and bitTorrent like peer-to-peer access to pages.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I have my privacy to "hide". Reveal every detail of your life if you choose - but respect my freedom to do otherwise. The U.S. is a free country, right?
Or did the terrorists win?
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Haven't Experian and all those other credit report asswipes been doing this for years?
Step 1. Create universe U. Return U.
The resultant data structure, U, contains all available state information indexed by location of each particle in the universe, hence comprising "every bit of information that can be had" within the scope of U. (Attempting to reference a variable outside of its scope is generally not permitted, and is definitely poor programming practice, so information outside the scope of U is not considered.)
The algorithm for searching this data structure is left as an exercise to the reader. Bonus points will be awarded for devising an algorithm that requires minimum time (sorting the data beforehand is permitted).
Initially this is true, of course. And in a perfect world, this will ALWAYS be true. In a perfect world, open source lives would be ideal, since no one would exploit others. No one would be a lazy burden to the rest by not doing his/her fair share.
We don't anywhere near perfect (to quote one of those stupid car commercials), so just because you have nothing to hide, it does not mean that you cannot be exploited. Sure, the chances are slim, but there is that chance. And, if something has any chance to happen, it will happen eventually.
Now, I am not saying this is or isn't evil... I am just saying that claiming that the reason people are against somethning is because they have something to hide really isn't a very solid arguement.
-John
"The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and hoping for different results"
I think MIT developed something along these lines a long time ago. (Here's a link.) The idea was not to empower the government, but to provide a sort of Super PDA for the individual. Oddly enough, I think it uses Emacs.
;-)
Another interesting system was Gelernter's LifeStreams, which time-indexed everything...
Of course, half the world seems to be blogging all the time anyway, which tend to be weak on the indexing and searching, but provide a nice low barrier-to-entry for inputting all kinds of trivial crap about one's life.
It's not necessarily entirely about dystopian government power
to describe how EVIL these people are.
They make SATAN look like Mr. Rogers.
I hope that someone puts not only a stop to this now, but puts an end to this reign of digital terror.
This can not be allowed to continue.
George Orwell was pretty much right, but he underestimated the depths that this would sink to.
I am currently researching the state of affairs in other countries because I just can not live in a country where you are a piece of meat.
You are born to be a good little consumer. You may not question the party line. You slave away to generate revenue for the state so that the state can grow more powerful. ALL of your income goes towards purchasing disposable crap and taxes.
You are not allowed to own anything that will last long enough to pass on to your kids. And when you die, the state takes most of your income in inheritence taxes.
Can you say "coppertop" ????
Demographers can already do amazing things with small amounts of data. I once talked with one who was able to tell me a lot about my hobbies, my political beliefs, religion and personal life based on three or four simple questions about alcohol, music, and color preferences.
Intelligence analysis (the military sort) is based on getting all sorts of data down to the pictures in a wallet and making connections.
What they are doing here is automating the process and feeding it all the data about everyone. There has been some talk here about the enormous amounts of processing power, the huge databases and whatnot making it impossible. I'm not so confident. The data don't have to all be available at once. Just as long as they can be accessed and processed eventually.
When they are combined and the patterns teased out (which the above-mentioned disciplines already do very well) you can get a pretty accurate picture of the person. And know what sort of things that person likes or dislikes. Whom they are likely to associate with. Political leanings. Mental stability. And so on.
Not only privacy but free will are at risk. The propaganda or the interrogation techniques or so on can be individually and automatically tailored to you personally. In advance. And they will almost certainly work.
You can even tell a lot by lack of data. There will be patterns that people who tend not to show up much in the databases will fall into. What things they are hiding. Transactions that they are trying to hide. Likely associates. With so many data the lack of information is itself information. Sort of like the soldier whose military records consist of a rank, an entrance date, and a discharge date. You KNOW he was doing special operations and was probably on loan to Three Letter Agencies.
The man who never alters his opinion is like the stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the Mind -- William Blake
Checks and balances is the key.
I'm not American, but I believe this mantra means that at long as there's adequate supervision, extra government powers aren't so bad, right?
Supervision, "checks and balances" means that you, or your representatives should be able to say when a government organization is trying to grab powers that it doesn't need to do its job, that are totally gratuitious - and also possibly open to abuse.
Well, this is the fucking Pentagon (your department of war on other countries) that wants to have a complete database of every tiny little thing about American citizens. Which is so totally unrelated to their job, and so open to abuse, that it's precisely those checks and balances that should stop this, if they are still effective, right?
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
Step #1: Invent Blog Software
Step #2: Distribute Blog Software for Free
Step #3: People everywhere log their life in excrusciating detail.
Step #4: Google Creates Blog Search Engine.
May I have my grant money now...in tens and twenties please.
What were you expecting?
The year: 2045. A grandfather, not long for this world, is handing over the family server to his children.
"Son, this here Petabyte array is the digital recording of my entire life. I've been building it, expanding it, adding to it and migrating data onto it since 1996, when it started out as a single 200Mb disk in a Win95 box running dbaseII. Thankfully it survived those dark days, those hard times. Now, it contains every digital photo I've ever took, every file I've ever downloaded, every mp3, avi, and mov I have seen. The entire family financial history in on there, including the papers from when William almost had to file for chapter 11 protection in 2021. All your baby pictures, all my grandchildren's schoolwork are stored in the hierarchy somewhere, those I've recently reviewed on are fresh on disk, those I haven't seen in 20 years are archived in the tape library. Every plane flight booked, every libraray book checked out, every speeding ticket, it's all there. Now, Son, I give you the key to the tape library and the root password. Promise me you won't let the UPS batteries fail, and check the RAMArray for cell errors periodically. If you do these things diligently, may your life's image merge into the family database tree, and when the time comes you will join me in cyberspace as your children tend the server farm. Bless you.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Here's a story on wired about a Pentagon project called LifeLog. It seeks to record every bit of information that can be had...
So that's what the iLoo was for!
Gives the concept of "tracking the movements of every American" a whole new meaning...
Until people get used to it, and then they make it so in order to apply for any job, you are required to sign a release form waiving your right to privacy, similar to the way companies can require drug testing today.
I can hear the speeches now, "If the government is aware of a risk in a potential employee, perhaps one that could present a dangerous situation to the other workers in the company, how can we not allow employers to ensure the safety of their employees by conducting a background test?"
Next thing you know, everyone gets an email telling them about the new condition in their work contract, and your boss is asking you into his office wondering why you recently bought a copy of "Resume Writing for Dummies."
And don't worry kids, it will remain confidental, just like the results of your drug test are confidental today.
Instead of me having to justify my life to the military, let the military justify everything it does to me (and all other US citizens).
Information is power. When the government has all information about its citizens, we have tyranny. When citizens have all information about the government, we have democracy.
What, you say? Then citizens will have access government secrets, and could harm our military defense by handing them over to our enemies. Well, I don't suppose the government (or some government official) would EVER hand over details of our life to people who want to harm us?
or, you might say ordinary citizens just aren't qualified to make decisions about national defense. These matters should be decided in secret, by qualified experts. Well, who has decided the Pentagon is qualified to judge my life? What gives the government the expertise to make decisions based on a database of individual's actions? After all this must be their intents for this information, they wouldn't just hoard it for the sake of having it?
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
So when they fuck up and mis-identify me as a terrorist and declare me an enemy combatant because I used to post to UseNet about drug use, never mind that I haven't touched the stuff in years, and take away my rights to challenge them in court, how exactly am I going to get any kind of "check" or "balance"?
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
So when they fuck up and mis-identify me as a terrorist and declare me an enemy combatant because I used to post to UseNet about drug use, never mind that I haven't touched the stuff in years, and take away my rights to challenge them in court, how exactly am I going to get any kind of "check" or "balance"?
This will never happen. The government doesn't make mistakes.
I have always been annoyed by data harvesting, either from the private sector (credit report, etc) or by the governement (this Life thingy, Echelon, etc). It is pretty much granted that this trend will not revert since the public is apathic and legislators (governements) have a vested interest in these mega DB. Unless you live like an hermit thousands of miles from civilization, it is almost guaranteed that your personnal data will be collected somehow. The only way I can think to fight back (beside complaining to legislator, which have a razor thin chance of changing something) is to somehow find a way to inject bogus data in these collection systems, thus making the whole DB less accurate and reliable. So far, I have not come up with an efficient and legal way to do that. Certainly, there is somebody smarter than I that have tought about it. So, what is your way of fighting back ?
:wq