Mental Intrusion at the Hands of Science and Law -- Are Our Minds Still Our Own?

By Carolyn Harris
Jan. 03, 2009

A recent announcement has been made that the technology has been developed that "succeeded in processing and displaying images directly from the human brain” and that “the technology could eventually be used to figure out dreams and other secrets inside people's minds."

Though that may portend the future, here in the present we have lost immense amounts of privacy via surveillance cameras in cities such as London, New York City, Chicago, Santa Cruz (CA), and Boston (MA) and other cities in various countries. Some are equipped with speakers to shout commands to unsuspecting people who, willingly or unwittingly upset the controllers by doing things like "dropping litter or committing anti-social behaviour." Many cameras have microphones ostensibly programmed only to record "gunshots" but have been used to listen in and record personal conversations, which have been used by law enforcement in court.

Surveillance cameras are now ubiquitous – they are on streetlights in cities and along highways, on buses and trains, the tube, within shops, offices and even bathrooms in schools.

The debate about privacy issues versus security usually ends with the tired old statement, "If you have nothing to hide, it doesn’t affect you and it shouldn’t bother you." Unfortunately, it most definitely does affect us who have nothing to hide.

Consider the following statements from philosopher Sandro Gaycken, a PhD student at Germany's Institut für Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung in Bielefeld:

"…there are well-established psychological consequences to being watched, observed consistently in studies. People change, tailoring their behavior to fit what they believe the observer wants (or in some cases actively rebelling against those wishes). Now imagine a society where everyone knows they are or may be watched as they walk through the streets, or while surfing online. That – as in societies like Hitler's Germany or Soviet Russia – will have tangible and widespread psychological consequences, reinforcing conformity, and literally crippling the ability to make autonomous and ethical decisions."

This is the point in having cameras, microphones and speakers everywhere. Its social engineering: the self-enforcement of the new social norms leads to conformity the fear of distinguishing oneself from the herd. The public has been "dumbed down" within public schools and propagandized repeatedly since birth, along with the now ever-present watchful eyes of Big Brother.

Now not only are our physical movements, buying habits, internet browsing, social connections, school and medical records, and physical characteristics all recorded and put into databases, but our behavior is being monitored and assessed as well.

In addition to scanning passengers’ bodies that show the body as if it is naked, airports now will use "behavioral screening" using technology that monitors and assesses visual as well as acoustic input, meaning they monitor facial expressions, gait and voices even utilizing subliminal messages to assess the passengers’ response. Some technology is available place under passengers' seats, potentially both in the airport and on the airplanes.

Technology has advanced to the point of being able to map the human brain and even tell what a person is thinking; a fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Image) can tell if a person is lying by the different areas of the brain that are active when telling the truth versus creating and conveying a falsehood. Grants from DoDPI, the Department of Homeland Security, our friends at DARPA, and other agencies "triggered a wave of research into new lie-detection technologies" after 9/11.

Does this mean that our minds can be read? Governments have long searched for the ability to not only read minds but affect them both for war and to manipulate the population. They have found it, and of course it will be exploited to the fullest.

"[Y]ou can begin to manipulate what someone is thinking even before they know it," says John Norseen, the former Navy pilot "who coined the term 'BioFusion' to describe "his plans to map and manipulate gray matter.'"

At the request of the Pentagon, Norseen submitted a proposal "to identify a terrorist’s mental profile. A miniaturized brain-mapping device inside an airport metal detector would screen passengers’ brain patterns against a dictionary of brain prints. Norseen predicts profiling by brain print will be in place by 2005." Did he miss the boat on that one? Would DHS tell us if they had this technology in use? Most likely not.

Not only has the terrorism-industrial complex benefited from extensive data-mining and profiling, the advertising industry has jumped on board, too. You may start getting targeted advertising through your cell phone based on your past and present preferences. For example, were you to use Wildseed's Smart Skins with their "removable faceplates with software that programs the phone to carry theme-related ring tones, screen savers, games, Web links, and design and color details" you would also get advertising tailored to which faceplate you chose. Cindy Smith, Vice President of marketing for the company said, "We don't want to encourage spam, particularly to minors… But we prefer the Amazon model, where they'll say, 'If you like this, you'll like that.' "

Minority Report, anyone?

DARPA’s "Project Hostile Intent" is for detecting –you guessed it – "hostile intent" ostensibly for "potential terrorists" at the borders, especially those with "no known past." "What about those with no known ties to terrorist organizations? Or those who do not appear in any government database?" the Human Factors Division of the DHS S&T Directorate frantically asks itself. Perhaps someone has escaped Echelon or the TIA! Perhaps they are not yet voluntarily sharing their personal history, activities and social ties on "Scalable Social Network Analysis" intelligence-gathering websites like MySpace or Facebook?

We live in the era of rationalized surveillance. With the technology available, and whatever is "in the public eye" or utilized by regular commerce is typically 40 years behind the military, in our Panopticon world being arrested for "pre-crime" isn’t all that far off.