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Total Information Awareness, For One
Jason writes "This guy has created his own TIA program for his electronic transactions around DC. He writes, 'Conceptually, I decided to create a personal TIA program to track my own electronic movements... and to document every single electronically-recorded transaction I've made.' A small vignette into what could be done with your electronic droppings."
You seem to be suggesting that perhaps it is wrong for the US Government to operate a repressive and opressive system like the TIA. Well, you are entitled to your opinion. After all this is America. At the same time, this is America, so your implication is treasonous. Please remain seated until federal agents have come to a complete stop and John Ashcroft has arrived at your domicile.
Where everyone knows all your secrets...
When personal data is confidential, only governments and big business will have access to it. When personal data is public, even corrupt officials will be forced to behave.
The genie is out of the bottle, and it seems that only laws to mandate total and full access to all data by anyone who wants it will protect us from those who would seek to use such power against us.
Yes, I know it'd be a nightmare if anyone could monitor my phone records, but the nightmare could become quite fun if it went both ways.
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> a personal TIA program to track my own electronic movements
So is he an Autobot or a Decepticon?
Why does this surprise him? It need not take that much work to figure out that writing checks or using the "card" can get you mapped out, especially if the govt. has the warrant to track you (and with the patriot act, it shouldn't be too hard). Redundant to say the least.
A blog like any other.
There's more info on LifeLog here and here.
nms
Click on the "Click for PNG link".
Then click on some of the icons on his map. It's more involved than you think. Scanned receipts from that location, including what was purchased, and how much he paid for it. It's not just a map, and it certainly wasn't generated by Quicken or MS Money, unless those two programs have gotten significantly more powerful than I thought.
I too have been working on this sort of thing out of interest, but to a much larger degree. Since all my emails, chat logs, financial transactions, contact details, photos, etc. are digital and I have a record of them, I am able to place keys between them and come up with all sorts of useless info (which I will not share :P). Such things as:
Can look at a photo, then see how much money I spent on that date, where I spent it and what I said about it to my friends online using regexps.
Can map out (like this article) my location at any one time, with photos if it was since July 2003 (when I got my digital camera)
Can at-a-glance see all communication with any one person, and who that person knows through CC'd emails, group chats, etc.
Can get a calendar style day by day breakdown of time spent online, amount spent and where, amount I spoke to people online that day, etc.
The system is pretty cool but needs a bit more work before I am happy with it, and it is probably going to be just for me since it is a mess of SQL, shell scripts, perl and java.
Needless to say, the amount of data and stuff I can do with it is very scary. I cannot factor in recorded phone calls, precise supermarket purchases, etc. TIA and it's inevitable bigger brother (think patriot act then patriot act2) could store a lot more of my life than I would ever want to give out.
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I don't really think he needs a computer program to do this. Judging from some of my male coworkers, this sort of thing has been going on for years. If anyone wants to know exactly where he is at any given point in time, he should just get married... and then they can call his wife. ;)
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
Uh ... and you're not? It is NOT paranoia when they actually are out to get you, you know.
... no significant barriers to misuse.
Besides, I thought it was interesting to see a concrete example of what everyone (paranoids as well as normal sheep) has been worrying about. It's one thing when cops, spooks and other investigators have to spend time and effort to research what their victims, I mean, subjects are doing. It's quite another when detailed historical information about every person in the U.S. can be pulled up on a graphics monitor on an instant's notice, with no more effort than a couple of mouse clicks. No, I don't like that at all
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
If you live outside the USA, you should take special interest in [former TIA chief] [and felon] John Poindexter's recent open letter in the New York Times.
It's pretty handwavy, but he makes a couple of interesting claims:
responsible for discovering what is possible; other agencies will be
responsible for determining its correct use. I'm all for free exploration,
but this is calculatedly naive. I think this project in particular was
created with use in mind, and I think tax funded research should reflect
what taxpayers feel is in their best interest.
American hotspot, claiming that American financial data isn't analyzed).
I doubt this*, but even if it's true, citizens abroad should be letting their governments know about how they feel about the US accessing their data.
*: DARPA funds a lot of research into how to appease American privacy laws while conducting surveillance.
When I first looked at this, I thought (as a lot of people here have commented) that this wasn't much of a big deal: so what? This guy scanned in a few receipts and plotted them on a map, big deal...
However, as I started to look more closely at his patterns, I thought to myself: wow! Based on just this tiny swatch of information, I already know the aproximate area where he lives. If I wanted, I could find the average household income in his neighborhood. I know what he eats and I can tell if he's going to have a party next week based on what he got at the grocery store.
I know what date and time he went to the market, so if I had a few more data points, I could probably predict when he's going to be there.
He got a map of Central America at Borders, perhaps a statistical model shows that people following his patterns are likely to be terrorists who want to commit atacks in Central America? Or perhaps we can market cheap airline tickets to him?
While this may just look like a guys random map, you can piece together a whole lot from this.
Ahem.
... if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" bad things happened. It all hinges on who decides what is worth hiding. That is, in fact, the very time to start worrying.
It would protect me in the long run if ever I did get accused of something I didn't do.
Throw the teddy bear away and WAKE UP. The Law is only as good as those that enforce it. It's time you woke up to the fact that those in charge of that important function may no longer be our friends. And you obviously haven't the slightest idea what it means to be merely accused of a serious crime. Being so accused is, in itself, a punitive activity nowadays. Your life will never be the same, even if you are ultimately vindicated. I have enough attorneys in my family to have some understanding of what it is like to be run through the Justice system. You don't want that to happen to you or anyone you care about. Invasive, error-prone systems like TIA may, or may not, serve their stated function of deterring terrorism. What they will do is increase the number of individuals who, through no fault of their own, are put through the wringer.
I have nothing to hide. I follow the law.
So do I. That's my choice. And I expect to be left alone, without experiencing any undue scrutiny or privacy violations, until I do perform some illegal activity. I see no reason to allow the government to presume that I (and you, or you) might someday exhibit criminal behavior and to justify monitoring our daily activities because of that presumption, and to further log that activity until they decide it is no longer useful. Do not make the mistake (as so many before us have) of assuming that the government has no interest in you. If they didn't have that interest, they wouldn't want TIA.
Look at history. Every time a government has told its citizens, "Yes, we are assuming excessive powers that we cannot reasonably justify but, hey, don't worry
Now, I don't want to sound like some bleeding-heart liberal and I'm hardly defending terrorists, kidnappers or child molesters but the truth is that, in the United States, those people do have Constutionally-guaranteed rights. And why is that? Because it was always considered better to let a guilty man go free than to imprison an innocent one. And America is one of the few nations, to this very day, the still believes in this principle. At least, I hope we still do.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.