<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"\u201CHow do I not end up getting sent to Gitmo?\u201D  That was the question on the mind of Hasan Elahi, a Bangladesh-born artist and professor that was erroneously detained by the FBI after 9/11 and subsequently routinely monitored by the bureau.\nThe answer became an online art project and lifecast of sorts that started years before services to make such a thing relatively easy were readily available.  Elahi shared his story earlier this week at TED Global in Edinburgh, Scotland and then sat down with Mashable to talk about the life he\u2019s been living completely in the open since 2003.\n\u201CI was erroneously reported \u2026 it wasn\u2019t a case of mistaken identity \u2026 it was a case of ignorance.  But when your own country takes it on as a basis for national policy it\u2019s a little bit scary,\u201D says Elahi of his 2002 arrest at an airport in Detroit.  \nAfter months of regular phone calls and visits to an FBI office in Tampa Bay, Elahi started the site TrackingTransience, where in the years since he has broadcast and visually organized more than 45,000 images from his everyday life, most of which are uploaded in real-time using a smartphone camera.   The site also includes a map pinpointing his current location.  On the rationale for the site, Elahi told us, \u201CIt would be incredibly difficult to accuse me of something because I have this long paper trail.\u201D\n\n\n\n \nEventually, the calls and meetings stopped, but Elahi did see continual visits from the FBI, DHS, NSA and even the Executive Office of the President showing up in his website\u2019s referral logs.    \nNow, Elahi thinks more about the impact that sharing vast amounts of data is having on our society (he\u2019s also become Director of the Digital Cultures and Creativty Program at the University of Maryland).  \u201CI love the fact there are hundreds of millions of people doing the same thing I\u2019m doing \u2026 That\u2019s when art becomes daily life,\u201D he said.  \nElahi also ponders the meaning of the indefinite archive we\u2019re all creating.  \u201CWe\u2019re in a situation where we no longer need to delete \u2026 data is so cheap that we have no reason to delete,\u201D he said.  \u201CAs we\u2019re slowly externalizing our memory to these devices \u2026 it also means we never forget.  So what does it mean to a society that no longer has a need to delete and everything is indexed?\u201D  \nHad today\u2019s social media ecosystem existed back in 2002, Elahi does think things may have unfolded a bit differently.  Back then, he says, he\u2019d call close friends before going in for an FBI meeting so people would know where to look for him if they didn\u2019t hear from him. \u201CNow I\u2019d post \u2018walking into FBI office\u2019 [on Twitter] and it\u2019d sort itself out,\u201D he joked.  \nImage courtesy of James Duncan Davidson / TED"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2011/07/13/hasan-elahi-ted-global/>