The term “lifelog” refers to a comprehensive archive of an individual's quotidian existence, created with the help of pervasive computing technologies. Lifelog technologies would record and store everyday conversations, actions, and experiences of their users, enabling future replay and aiding remembrance. Products to assist lifelogging are already on the market; but the technology that will enable people fully and continuously to document their entire lives is still in the research and development phase. For generals, edgy artists and sentimental grandmothers alike, lifelogging could someday replace or complement, existing memory preservation practices. Like a traditional diary, journal or day-book, the lifelog could preserve subjectively noteworthy facts and impressions. Like an old-fashioned photo album, scrapbook or home video, it could retain images of childhood, loved-ones and travels. Like a cardboard box time capsule or filing cabinet it could store correspondence and documents. Like personal computing software, it could record communications data, keystrokes and internet trails. The lifelog could easily store data pertaining to purely biological states derived from continuous self-monitoring of, for example, heart rate, respiration, blood sugar, blood pressure and arousal. To the extent that it preserves personal experience for voluntary private consumption, electronic lifelogging looks innocent enough, as innocent as Blackberries, home movies, and snapshots in silver picture frames. But lifelogging could fuel excessive self-absorption, since users would be engaged in making multimedia presentations about themselves all the time. The availability of lifelogging technology might lead individuals to overvalue the otherwise transient details of their lives. Furthermore, the potential would be great for incivility, emotional blackmail, exploitation, prosecution and social control by government surrounding lifelog creation, content and accessibility. Existing privacy law and policy do not suggest meaningful limits on unwanted uses of lifelogging data. This parry of the costs and benefits commences a fuller discussion of lifelogging's ethical and legal implications.

Dredging-up the Past: Lifelogging, Memory and Surveillance

At the dawn of America's love affair with the automobile, cars and trucks leaving the nation's largest city were unceremoniously dumped out of the western end of the Holland Tunnel onto local roads wending their way through the New Jersey Meadowlands.

Jersey City mayor Frank Hague -- dictator of the Hudson County political machine and a national political player -- was a prime mover behind the building of the country's first "superhighway," designed to connect the hub of New York City to the United States of America. Hague's nemesis in this undertaking was union boss Teddy Brandle, and construction of the last three miles of Route 25, later dubbed the Pulaski Skyway, marked an epic battle between big labor and big politics, culminating in a murder and the creation of a motorway so flawed it soon became known as "Death Avenue" —now appropriately featured in the opening sequence of the hit HBO series The Sopranos.

A book in the tradition of Robert Caro's The Power Broker and Henry Petroski's Engineers of Dreams, The Last Three Miles brings to vivid life the riveting and bloodstained back story of a fascinating chapter in the heroic age of public works.

The Last Three Miles: Politics, Murder, and the Construction of America's First Superhighway

Apropos of the stem cell news.

Synthetic biologists aim to make biology a true engineering discipline. In the same way that electrical engineers rely on standard capacitors and resistors, or computer programmers rely on modular blocks of code, synthetic biologists wish to create an array of modular biological parts that can be readily synthesized and mixed together in different combinations.

Synthetic biology has already produced important results, including more accurate AIDS tests and the possibility of unlimited supplies of previously scarce drugs for malaria. Proponents hope to use synthetic organisms to produce not only medically relevant chemicals but also a large variety of industrial materials, including ecologically friendly biofuels such as hydrogen and ethanol. The relationship of synthetic biology to intellectual property law has, however, been largely unexplored.

Two key issues deserve further attention.

First, synthetic biology, which operates at the confluence of biotechnology and computation, presents a particularly revealing example of a difficulty that the law has frequently faced over the last 30 years -- the assimilation of a new technology into the conceptual limits around existing intellectual property rights, with possible damage to both in the process. There is reason to fear that tendencies in the way that the law has handled software on the one hand and biotechnology on the other could come together in a "perfect storm" that will impede the potential of the technology.

Second, synthetic biology raises with remarkable clarity an issue that has seemed of only theoretical interest until now. It points out a tension between different methods of creating "openness." On the one hand, we have intellectual property law's insistence that certain types of material remain in the public domain, outside the world of property. On the other, we have the attempt by individuals to use intellectual property rights to create a "commons," just as developers of free and open source software use the leverage of software copyrights to impose requirements of openness on future programmers, requirements greater than those attaching to a public domain work.

Previously:

Synthetic Biology's Implications for Science, Society, and Mass Media

Essay: Our Synthetic Futures by Rudy Rucker

How Do You Like Your Genes?

Ethics of Emerging Technologies : Scientific Facts and Moral Challenges

Drew Endy

BioBricks to help reverse-engineer life

The Implications of Synthetic Biology

Synthetic Biology

Experts worry that synthetic biology may spawn biohackers

Keeping Synthetic Biology Away from Terrorists

Synthetic Biology: Caught Between Property Rights, the Public Domain, and the Commons

This paper, written for the 4th Asian IP Law & Policy Day co-organized by the IP Academy of Singapore (Singapore) and Fordham Law School (USA) in conjunction with the annual Fordham Conference on International IP Law & Policy, traces the development of the free software/open source (FOSS) and creative commons (CC) movements and the rise of user-generated content (UGC). In light of existing international treaty standards for copyright protection, growing global Internet penetration and various case law developments, the article considers whether the combined phenomena of FOSS, CC and UGC provide sufficient basis for a re-tilting of the copyright balance toward the user rather than the original copyright owner. Finally, the article examines whether the philosophy, rhetoric and experiences of the FOSS and CC movements make them appropriate models for copyright protection for UGC.

User-Generated Content: Has the Time Come for Users' Rights?

Changes are occurring from top to bottom — from reassigning personnel to counterterrorism, to examining our hiring practices, to rethinking the scope and form of internal and external information sharing. FBI Headquarters has been restructured to make it more effective and efficient. We have centralized case management; realigned the workforce to address our priorities; and developed a central body of knowledge available to all field offices and to our partners in the Law Enforcement and Intelligence Communities.

These changes have allowed us to make significant contributions to the war on terrorism. Working with our partners over the past 28 months, we conducted numerous counterterrorism investigations, resulting in more than one thousand arrests and hundreds of convictions or pre-trial diversions. We broke up the Lackawanna Six, dismantled the Portland Seven, and put would be shoe bomber Richard Reid behind bars. We investigated thousands of cyber intrusions, with one case involving a global criminal network reaching as far as the South Pole. We strengthened counterintelligence operations, placed counterintelligence squads in almost every field office, and created a counterespionage section at FBI Headquarters.

Looking forward, the FBI’s greatest challenges will be to further improve its intelligence capabilities and strengthen its information technology infrastructure. The FBI will continue to develop its talents through ongoing training, and through the recruitment and hiring of analysts, technology experts, and individuals with language skills. The FBI’s international presence will continue to grow, and we will continue our tradition of excellence in carrying out all of our responsibilities overseas and at home.

The FBI’s 2004–2009 strategic plan serves as a high-level road map for the FBI to achieve its mission. While the strategic plan provides clear goals and objectives, it also includes the flexibility necessary to adjust quickly to evolving threats. Since the FBI’s inception, the nation has turned to it to address the most significant threats, and the FBI has always responded. The strength of the FBI has been, and will always be, its people. The skill, determination, and sacrifice of the men and women of the FBI are outstanding, and I am extremely proud to serve as the Director of this extraordinary organization.

FBI Strategic Plan, 2004-2009

Following up on recent comments by Don Kerr.

Antiterrorism intelligence sharing across national borders has been trumpeted as one of the most promising forms of networked global governance. By exchanging information across the world, government agencies can catch terrorists and other dangerous criminals. Yet this new form of global governance is also one of the most dangerous. Even at the domestic level, secrecy and national security imperatives have placed intelligence agencies largely beyond legal and democratic oversight. But at the global level, accountability is missing entirely. Global cooperation among national intelligence agencies is extraordinarily opaque. The nature of the international system compounds the problem: these actors do not operate within a robust institutional framework of liberal democracy and human rights. Safeguarding rights in the transnational realm when governments conspire to spy, detain, interrogate, and arrest is no easy matter. Privacy is one of the most critical liberal rights to come under pressure from transnational intelligence gathering.

This Article explores the many ways in which transnational intelligence networks intrude upon privacy and considers some of the possible forms of legal redress.

Part II lays bare the different types of transnational intelligence networks that exist today. Part III begins the analysis of the privacy problem by examining the national level, where, over the past forty years, a legal framework has been developed to promote the right to privacy in domestic intelligence gathering. Part IV turns to the privacy problem transnationally, when government agencies exchange intelligence across national borders. Part V invokes the cause celebre of Maher Arar, a Canadian national, to illustrate the disastrous consequences of privacy breaches in this networked world of intelligence gathering. Acting upon inaccurate and misleading intelligence provided by the Canadian government, the United States wrongfully deported Arar to Syria, where he was tortured and held captive by the Syrian Military Intelligence Service for nearly one year. Part VI begins the constructive project of redesigning transnational networks to defend the right to privacy, with the safeguards of European intelligence and police networks serving as inspiration for transnational networks more broadly.

These European systems feature two types of privacy safeguards: multilateral standards, to which all network parties must adhere, and unilateral standards, applicable under the law of one network party and enforced against the others through the refusal to share intelligence with sub-standard parties. Moving to the global realm, this Article concludes that the multilateral avenue is more promising than the unilateral one.

Multilateral standards require consensus on common privacy norms, and consensus will be difficult to achieve. Notwithstanding this hurdle, multilateral privacy standards are crucial, for they will both enable the cooperation necessary to fight serious transnational crime and provide for vigorous protection of basic liberal rights.

Previously on Maher Arar:

Freedom vs. Torture?

Qaeda Pawn, US Calls Him. Victim, He Calls Himself.

Canadian deported to Syria by United States details torture, calls for public inquiry

Wired News: AT&T Whistle-Blower's Evidence

Arar Commission Report

A CIA Man Speaks His Mind on Secret Abductions

Towards a Right to Privacy in Transnational Intelligence Networks

America's military policy is in disarray, but not for the reason most people think. For the first time since around 1950, there is no coherent theoretical framework for thinking about how to shape our armed forces for current and future threats. This fact presents both a danger and an opportunity. The danger is that we will either fail to develop one and therefore drift aimlessly at a troubled time, or that we will reach back to some of the tattered remnants of the theories that guided military policy until 2007. But we now have the opportunity for a serious discussion about the shape of the world today and its likely shape tomorrow.

American Defense Policy at a Crossroads

Thomas Ricks stokes the fire.

A small group of U.S. military experts and intelligence officials convened in Washington for a classified war game last year, exploring strategies for securing Pakistan's nuclear arsenal if the country's political institutions and military safeguards began to fall apart.

The conclusion of last year's game, said one participant, was that there are no palatable ways to forcibly ensure the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons -- and that even studying scenarios for intervention could worsen the risks by undermining U.S.-Pakistani cooperation. "It's an unbelievably daunting problem," said this participant, a former Pentagon official who asked not to be identified because of the game's secrecy. The contingency plans that do exist, he added, are at the headquarters of U.S. Central Command in Tampa, and are in "very close hold." Even so, he said, planners really haven't developed answers for how to deal with nuclear weapons stashed in Pakistan's big cities and high mountain ranges.

"The bottom line is, it's the nightmare scenario," said retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson, who participated in an earlier exercise that simulated a breakup of Pakistan. "It has loose nukes, hard to find, potentially in the hands of Islamic extremists, and there aren't a lot of good military options."

Calculating the Risks in Pakistan

Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal consists of approximately 60 nuclear warheads. Pakistan continues fissile material production for weapons, and is adding to its weapons production facilities and delivery vehicles. Pakistan reportedly stores its warheads unassembled with the fissile core separate from non-nuclear explosives, and these are stored separately from their delivery vehicles. Pakistan does not have a stated nuclear policy, but its “minimum credible deterrent” is thought to be primarily a deterrent to Indian military action. Command and control structures have been dramatically overhauled since September 11, 2001 and export controls and personnel security programs have been put in place since the 2004 revelations about Pakistan’s top nuclear scientists, A.Q. Khan’s international proliferation network.

Pakistani and some U.S. officials argue that Islamabad has taken a number of steps to prevent further proliferation of nuclear-related technologies and materials and improve its nuclear security. A number of important initiatives such as strengthened export control laws, improved personnel security, and international nuclear security cooperation programs have improved the security situation in recent years.

Current instability in Pakistan has called the extent and durability of these reforms into question. Some observers fear radical takeover of a government that possesses a nuclear bomb, or proliferation by radical sympathizers within Pakistan’s nuclear complex in case of a breakdown of controls. While U.S. and Pakistani officials express confidence in controls over Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, it is uncertain what impact continued instability in the country will have on these safeguards.

Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons: Proliferation and Security Issues

Major government-to-government arms sales and grants to Pakistan since 2001 have included items useful for counterterrorism operations, along with a number of “big ticket” platforms more suited to conventional warfare. In dollar value terms, the bulk of purchases are made with Pakistani national funds — the Pentagon reports total Foreign Military Sales agreements with Pakistan worth $863 million in FY2002-FY2005; inprocess sales of F-16s and related equipment raised the value to $3.5 billion in FY2006 alone. The United States also has provided Pakistan with about $1.23 billion in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) since 2001, with a “base program” of $300 million per year beginning in FY2005. These funds are used to purchase U.S. military equipment. Pakistan also has been granted U.S. defense supplies as Excess Defense Articles (EDA).

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Major US Arms Sales and Grants to Pakistan Since 2001