The Searchable Life 413
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.
Why is it (Score:4, Interesting)
ambitious, and scary. (Score:2, Interesting)
How to destroy hypocracy (Score:3, Interesting)
2) Make it open to the public.
Suddenly, it becomes quite clear that innocence is a fiction, and everyone does things that we persecute each other for. Faced with such such evidence, either tolerance or societal implosion must result.
Re:The formula... (Score:1, Interesting)
Double-Edged (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Nielson television rating system (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Why is it (Score:4, Interesting)
Its amusing because the government has long since quit caring about individual citizens. Just take a look at all the actions it taken against its own citizens over the years, usually in favor of fake "people" (corporations) or its own lust for power.
So, if you're not super-rich and buying campaign ads for your government officials, or else telling the officials what they already wanted to hear, then "getting involved" means nothing, unless you're going to run for office.
I'd vote for anyone who runs for office on the platform of "not bought by corporate interests".
Re:1984 (Score:3, Interesting)
Big Brother is watching. The clear point of this data tracking system is to collect info on everyone, and then selectively enforce laws which everyone has broken on dissidents or the unpopular scapegoat of the day.
1984 can only come about if the people loose the power to speek freely,
Didn't Ashcroft say something like those who criticize the President are helping terrorists?
Incidentally, many Americans believe that the government should be able to stop speech that is "offensive."
The first ammendment is in more danger than we think.
do not participate in the government,
Less than half the populace votes in the United States. This should be a cause for alarm.
and have the ability to physically throw out those in charge if neccessary./i>
We've allowed the 2nd. Ammendment to be severely weakened for the sake of "protecting children." Now we can't even do that when when Big Brother comes knocking.
I Can See it Now (Score:5, Interesting)
"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.
Where is all this data kept? (Score:1, Interesting)
Failing some major political shift concerning privacy, the only hope we have is to shove as much invalid data as possible at them until it makes the results so useless that the entire concept will be scrapped.
Cue Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie: The Privacy Song...
Re:Everything you do. Everything you feel. (Score:2, Interesting)
Wow. Fascinating. What were the questions? Is there a web page I could browse? Or is this a demographer's state secret?
This could be better than "What's your sign?" for gathering information about people.
Rename Slashdot Category? (Score:4, Interesting)
Can this DB be corrupted by injecting bogus data ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:There are no words speakable (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd like to contradict what the kid said as for America not needing you. We do need you. We need people just like you in America to continue to think freely and express their opinions, however radical. That is what being American is all about. So I say stay and fight in your own way, only run when your actual _life_ is on the line. That's what I intend to do.
Re:Time for guilting. (Score:1, Interesting)
Oracle has already expressed an interest in it. They certainly have the database expertise. Think you can convince them not to?
Emotion recognition (Score:3, Interesting)
Emotion Recognition Using a Cauchy Naive Bayes Classifier [uiuc.edu]
Facial features detection and face emotion recognition [ukim.edu.mk]
I'd like to see them try this... (Score:2, Interesting)
How would they backup all this data? (Score:3, Interesting)
Where can I sign up (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This should be fun (Score:2, Interesting)