Thought Police

From Wikileaks:

UK campaigners NO2ID this morning enlisted the help of bloggers across the world to spread a leaked government document describing how the British government intends to go about “coercing” its citizens onto a National Identity Register. The ‘ID card’ is revealed as little more than a cover to create a official dossier and trackable ID for every UK resident – creating what NO2ID calls ‘the database state’. Read More.

From the ACLU Blog:

As expected, President Bush played the fear card in his State of the Union address last night. Once again, he’s trying to scare the public into thinking that come February 1, the phone lines will be burning up with terrorist-to-terrorist phone calls that our intelligence agencies won’t be able to listen to, because Senate Democrats want to debate FISA legislation instead of blindly accepting the White House’s demands. Read More.

From Business Week, Marketing goes to the next level by hooking consumers up to machines and reading their brains. But do the results tell the whole story?

Forget focus groups. Companies that want feedback on a product are getting inside consumers’ heads—literally. The latest rage in marketing involves harnessing a test subject to a narrow shelf, securing the head tightly, and introducing the body into the tube of a $3 million functional magnetic resonance imaging machine (FMRI). For about $1,000 per hour, researchers flash images for their tightly trussed subjects, play advertisements, and read promotional literature. All the while, they study the second-by-second response of the brain.

From Aviation Week:

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) is researching how computers reading brain waves may one day speed up the ways intelligence analysts detect targets in satellite images and also alert platoon leaders when soldiers are losing situational awareness. Read More.

The Guardian has more information on the FBIs plans for a huge biometric database which was reported on earlier. It seems they want to extend it to the UK and other countries.

Senior British police officials are talking to the FBI about an international database to hunt for major criminals and terrorists. The US-initiated programme, “Server in the Sky”, would take cooperation between the police forces way beyond the current faxing of fingerprints across the Atlantic. Allies in the “war against terror” – the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand – have formed a working group, the International Information Consortium, to plan their strategy. Biometric measurements, irises or palm prints as well as fingerprints, and other personal information are likely to be exchanged across the network. One section will feature the world’s most wanted suspects. The database could hold details of millions of criminals and suspects.

From Physorg.com comes a report on BCI research at the University of British Columbia, Canada.

Using the human mind to control computers could lead to a wide range of applications, such as giving people with limited motion the ability to operate machines. However, translating thoughts into actions is a great challenge for researchers. How can a system determine which thoughts should be acted upon, and which thoughts are merely personal thoughts and therefore should be ignored by the system?

IBM is partnering with Emotiv Systems in the development of Brain Computer Interface technology. A alpha version their “neural input” device was demonstrated at the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) . The headset features a 12 channel EEG with a wireless interface. The device is intended for a braod range of applications but the initial focus will be for use in 3D virtual reality worlds and computer games.

I’ve started a separate blog which will have longer articles on the technology behind the electronic harassment -See Lawrence Pinneo and Early Brain Computer Interface Research « SIGINT

 The Federation of American Scientists weebsite has published “Spartans in Darkness: American SIGINT and the Indochina War, 1945-1975″ a comprehensive history of Signals Intelligence by the NSA

The most sensational part of the history (which was excerpted and disclosed by the NSA two years ago) is the recounting of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Incident, in which a reported North Vietnamese attack on U.S. forces triggered a major escalation of the war. The author demonstrates that not only is it not true, as Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara told Congress, that the evidence of an attack was “unimpeachable,” but that to the contrary, a review of the classified signals intelligence proves that “no attack happened that night.”

Neurosky’s brain computer interface technology  is starting to attract a lot of attention as evidenced by a new CNN report. Hot on their announcement of a deal with Sega to use their technology in computer games comes news that they are working with auto manufacturers to develop a system capable of detecting drowsy drivers and signal them of the danger.

Just loaded up on Cryptome is a 1954 CIA document entitled “Nerve War Against Individuals” which lists some recommendations for psychological warfare to be used against Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, the democratically-elected President of Guatemala and his government. The scheme included

“… sending mourning cards to top Communist leaders, death threats to communists … wooden coffins, hangman’s nooses, and phony bombs to selected individuals.”

Tame by comparison to today’s gang stalking techniques but this was 1954.

The US already ranks as one of the worst surveillance societies along with several others. It now wants to go one step further with the formation of a new intelligence agency, the National Applications Office (NAO), according to a Pacific Free Press article by Tim Shorrock. The NAO is intended to coordinate data from increased domestic use of US satellites with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), domestic law enforcement and rescue agencies. Previously domestic use of electronic intelligence from spy satellites was limited to scientific agencies with no responsibility for national security or law enforcement. This new program will give greater powers to the NSA and NGA to turn satellites on their own people something we all know they been doing anyway but now its legitimized.