Do you blog? Do you have an online profile? Do you have an email address? How much of your life do you really have online? Does it make you nervous? Well it doesn’t make Hasan Elahi, a 35-year-old artist and Rutgers professor nervous. In fact it is the opposite that makes him nervous. That is because professor Elahi makes a lot of overseas trips and a random tipoff left him on the FBI watch list. Of course the tip was false and he is in the free and clear, but once you get on the list… you never get off. So to create the perfect alibi he records every minute of his life and uploads it to a public webserver for all to view. Now that is being an open book.
I read this article in the June 2007 issue of WIRED magazine. The article is titled The Visible Man: An FBI Target Puts His Whole Life Online. The story is not too long so if you have a chance I’d highly suggest taking a glance. Then once you are done with that (I cannot believe they did not link to it) you can check professor Elahi’s tracking website, TrackingTransience.net. It actually shows a map with his current GPS coordinates… cool.