A Pentagon project to develop a digital super diary that records heartbeats, travel, Internet chats -- everything a person does -- also could provide private companies with powerful software to analyze behavior.
That has privacy experts worried.
Known as LifeLog, the project aims to capture and analyze a multimedia record of everywhere a subject goes and everything he or she sees, hears, reads, says and touches. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has solicited bids and hopes to award four 18-month contracts beginning this summer.
DARPA"s research has changed lives far beyond the U.S. military before; it developed what became the Internet and the global positioning satellite system. The LifeLog research is unclassified, so its components could eventually be used in the private sector.
DARPA is also developing new anti-terrorism tools but says LifeLog is not among them.