Wired News: Pentagon Kills LifeLog Project

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

Pentagon Kills LifeLog Project

By Noah Shachtman

02:00 AM Feb. 04, 2004 PT

The Pentagon canceled its so-called LifeLog project, an ambitious effort to build a database tracking a person's entire existence.

Run by Darpa, the Defense Department's research arm, LifeLog aimed to gather in a single place just about everything an individual says, sees or does: the phone calls made, the TV shows watched, the magazines read, the plane tickets bought, the e-mail sent and received. Out of this seemingly endless ocean of information, computer scientists would plot distinctive routes in the data, mapping relationships, memories, events and experiences.

LifeLog's backers said the all-encompassing diary could have turned into a near-perfect digital memory, giving its users computerized assistants with an almost flawless recall of what they had done in the past. But civil libertarians immediately pounced on the project when it debuted last spring, arguing that LifeLog could become the ultimate tool for profiling potential enemies of the state.

Researchers close to the project say they're not sure why it was dropped late last month. Darpa hasn't provided an explanation for LifeLog's quiet cancellation. "A change in priorities" is the only rationale agency spokeswoman Jan Walker gave to Wired News.

MORE AT: http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,62158,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_4

[alfredo]

1. It probably wasn't intrusive enough.

Maybe they are awaiting a implantable chip that will provide real time info.