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."