Thought Police

NPR has an article “Neuroscientist Uses Brain Scan to See Lies Form – Daniel Langleben, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania, might go down in history as the man who revolutionized lie detection. Instead of wiring someone up to a machine like the polygraph, which measures the anxiety thought to accompany deception, Langleben has skipped a step: He is looking right into the brain to track a lie while it is taking shape.”

US Spent $43.5 Billion on Intel in 2007:

 The U.S. government spent $43.5 billion on intelligence in 2007, according to newly declassified intelligence budget. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell released the figure Tuesday because the law implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission required it. National security analysts outside the government usually estimate the annual budget at about 10 percent of the total U.S. defense budget. Around 80 percent of the intelligence budget is consumed by military intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office.

Mind Control: The Ultimate Brave New World. Technologies for stimulating the brain and controlling the mind can have benefits, but they have dark side that military and intelligence planners have been exploiting for decades. Extracted from: “Controlling the Human Mind” by Dr. Nick Begich.

US Electromagnetic Weapons and Human Rights

This research explores the current capabilities of the US military to use electromagnetic (EMF) devices to harass, intimidate, and kill individuals and the continuing possibilities of violations of human rights by the testing and deployment of these weapons. To establish historical precedent in the US for such acts, we document long-term human rights and freedom of thought violations by US military/intelligence organizations. Additionally, we explore contemporary evidence of on-going government research in EMF weapons technologies and examine the potentialities of continuing human rights abuses.

CIA’s In-Q-Tel not just spying on innovation:

In-Q-Tel, the VC business of the Central Intelligence Agency allows the CIA a foothold in the Silicon Valley,” says Gregory Treverton, a senior policy analyst at Rand Corp., a California-based public policy institute. Since In-Q-Tel was founded in 1999, the firm has reviewed more than 6,300 business plans for everything from identity recognition software to nano-sized electronic circuits. In-Q-Tel has put about $200 million into more than 100 companies, beating traditional VC investors to such technologies as the mapping software that’s become Google Earth.

From the New York Times:

“THE splotches of black ink that block out words, sentences and sometimes whole pages of Valerie Plame Wilson’s new memoir, “Fair Game,” pose an irresistible challenge to readers: What did the Central Intelligence Agency not want us to know? So let’s play Guess the Redaction!”

I came across this patent published in 2006 and belonging to IBM - “Method for communicating using synthesized speech – Patent 20060129394“. The patent describes a communication mechanism based on subvocal speeech recognition at one end to get the speech using a device attached to the throat. In subvocal recognition a set of electrodes are attached to the skin of the throat and, without opening the mouth or uttering a sound words are detected. What is analyzed is silent, or subauditory, speech, such as when a person silently reads or talks to himself . This generates electromyograms or bioelectric signals associated with speech muscles which are detected.The funny thing is that this work was pioneered by Chuck-Jorgensen at NASA and a quick google of subvocal and IBM revealed not a single scrap of work of any kind by IBM in this area. Probably just IBM patent hoarding but curious nonetheless. For more technical data on the work at NASA see “Small Vocabulary Recognition Using Surface Electromyography in an Acoustically Harsh Environment“.

The Future of Things has a report on a research team at Sandia National Laboratories designing cars capable of analyzing human behavior. These smart cars will be able to detect whether the driver is tired or not concentrated and take appropriate action to prevent dangerous scenarios. These cars of the future will alert the driver when they sense danger, or even control his cell phone by holding incoming calls that might distract his attention. In tests drivers wore caps with electrodes connected to an electroencephalogram (EEG) that monitored their brainwave patterns. The researchers collected information of the electrical activity of the drivers’ brains in various simulations of driving situations, or “classifiers” – for example, approaching a slow-moving vehicle or changing lanes. The system was able to detect the level of stress and difficulty of a task the driver was attempting and modified the tasks and/or environment to improve specified performance parameters accordingly.

The Center for Research on Globalization is rerunning an article entitled “On the Need for New Criteria of Diagnosis of Psychosis in the Light of Mind Invasive Technology“.

Unannounced, undebated and largely unacknowledged by scientists or by the governments who employ them – technology to enter and control minds from a distance has been unleashed upon us. The only witnesses who are speaking about   this terrible technology with its appalling implications for the future, are the victims themselves and those who are given the task of diagnosing mental illness are attempting to silence them by classifying their evidence and accounts as the symptoms of schizophrenia, while the dispensers of psychic mutilation and programmed pain continue with their work, aided and unopposed.

Tuft’s Daily is reporting that the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) group at Tufts University in the US has received a $450,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for its work using functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to monitor brain activity. Researchers said their research thus far has focused on whether or not the device can be used to determine a person’s workload while performing a certain task. For a more detailed article see “Human-Computer Interaction and Brain Measurement Using Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy“.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is funding a “Law and Neuroscience Project” which brings together scientists, legal scholars, jurists and philosophers to address how to use neuroscience and the law. 25 universities will receive a grant as part of this project centered at the University of California, Santa Barbara and with former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor serving as honorary chair. According to the foundation “skeptics fear that brain-imaging technology poses a threat to privacy … “. No kidding!