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.
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.
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
Printer-friendly format
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
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
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
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); }
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