LifeLog Goes to War?

Charles Paul Freund | September 14, 2004

Remember LifeLog? It was the Pentagon's stupendously ambitious data-collection program that, as Noah Shachtman reported last year, was intended to "dump everything an individual does into a giant database: every e-mail sent or received, every picture taken, every Web page surfed, every phone call made, every TV show watched, every magazine read."

LifeLog died last spring, but Shachtman is now reporting that "the Defense Department seems ready to revive large portions of the program, under a new name."

Writes Shachtman, "Using a series of sensors embedded in a G.I.'s gear, the Advanced Soldier Sensor Information System and Technology (ASSIST) project aims to collect what a soldier sees, says, and does in combat zone -- and then to weave those events into digital memories, so commanders can have a better sense of how the fight unfolded."

Comments

|9.15.04 @ 2:38AM|#

Sorry, I haven't read the details, only the blog post. But, uhm, what do the two have to do with eachother? Lifelog, according to the post was supposed to dump everything an individual does into a giant database: every e-mail sent or received, every picture taken, every Web page surfed, every phone call made, every TV show watched, every magazine read".

But now they're creating a system which 'records' a soldiers battlefield experience. The former seems like a civilian snooping tool, the second seems more like a legitimate battlefield application. Is there a point in connecting the two?

Paul

|9.15.04 @ 8:04AM|#

Decent idea for the soldier (maybe?), but of course bad idea for the public. Then again, if this gets implemented and turns out to be successful, you will see civilian applications: first cops. Then teachers. Parolees. Students. Everybody. (Hey what better way to monitor what you do?)

Too bad the Pentagon started the intrusive "Lifelog" program before this ASSIST program for military use only. This story wouldn't be a blip onthe radar.

Sci-fi authors have long speculated that soldier communication/information sharing systems were part of the grunts' every day combat gear. (Heinlein's Starship Troopers, the movie Aliens)

|9.15.04 @ 11:38AM|#

The big question is how will the porno industry use this?