A Spy Machine Of DARPA's Dreams

from the for-good-or-for-evil? dept

There have been plenty of articles about Microsoft's "mylifebits" project and a similar project at consulting firm Accenture to create a "backup brain" that records everything going on around you and everything you do. People have mixed opinions on these concerning whether or not they'll be useful - but don't seem too concerned about the privacy implications. However, when the Defense Department says it's looking for researchers to build the same sort of thing, called the LifeLog, the conspiracy theorists come out from wherever they were hiding. This project sounds like basically the same thing that Microsoft is doing, but since it's a DARPA project, people are suggesting that it's really the "new" TIA - and that any such system will record everything you do and everywhere you go into a central database to be datamined. I think that's taking a simple research proposal and extrapolating out a bit too far, but who knows?

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  1.  

    hmmm

    identicon
    Joe Schmoe, May 20th, 2003 @ 2:05pm

    I just find it rather curious that they claim that the space required [to capture a "lifetime" of information] happens to be about a Terabyte (the Maximum Database Size for MS SQL Server)...

    http://www.microsoft.com/sql/evaluation/overview/default.asp

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    Why all the fuss? MIT Media Lab's been working on

    identicon
    Thom Kozik, May 20th, 2003 @ 4:15pm

    ...for years. Having seen the project in action up there, the coolest thing is the use of audio recording & processing to build an *index* of all your discussions, meetings, etc. If MIT's research ever sees the light of day as a product, I'll be near the front of the line.

    Projects at Microsoft, Accenture, DoD, et al are meaningless, unless you have a great interface for extracting the information

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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