Mind Reading Machine Control

The sort answer is NO. why because it will aways be possible to defeat this sort of thing.

Either the device reads your thoughts perfectly, or it does not.

If it works perfectly, then you have no privacy left at all; even the privacy of your own thoughts has been taken away from you. What are you when you can't even be alone with your thoughts inside your own head? You are Borg. You have been assimilated.

If it doesn't work perfectly, then there will be false positives. In other words, some self-styled expert, whose high income depends on convincing people that this device is always right, will swear in court that that this squiggle on this piece of graph paper means you thought about things that you never actually thought about. Or that you were lying when you swore that you had never seen the murder weapon before. Or that you became sexually aroused when forced to view pictures of naked children. Or, well, you get the picture.

So if these devices come into common usage, untold damage will be done. Whether they work or not.

In the real world, such machines will sometimes work and sometimes not. So you will get a mixture of these two scenarios. The worst of both worlds.

Why just why doe it have to be a machine?

ur retarted

The real problem with the working world isn't a lack of transparency, it's all the boot-licking, back-stabbing butt-kissers and the brainless executives to listen to them instead of honest people who highlight problems out of genuine concern that things aren't right.

Are you just a little testy over this, after all where would we be if we had no one else to blame? But I do understand your being upset that the loonies still run the asylem.

The loonies don't run the asylum. It's much worse than that. The men who run this place are evil geniuses who work from the shadows to enslave billions of people all over the world, while making it appear as though the loonies are running the asylum.

Its first usefulness that jumps out would be an update to the lie detector. I don't see keyboard-less mind powered computers or even mind controlled machinery coming through the works in the near future. Imagine cruising by a lovely women (or man for the ladies [or whatever floats your boat for everyone else]) in a mind controlled car, tell me your not gonna swerve right toward them!

To think and to act are two separate things!

The ultimate danger of course is the big brother part.

Hi Moose. I do not like it and neither do I condone it. Here it the UK we are the most spied apon people in the world, there is a cctv camera to every 14 persons now and by 2010 that is set to double. Anyway if I am standing in a queue at the airport all they will be able to read from my mind is the sexy thoughts when I eye up the women. If such a system is emloyed in the UK there will be many hundreds or even thousands leaving to go to Africa or South America. We are all totally fed up with the survailance now, it puts everyone under huge pressure. Spencer.

Not to mention the latest in BIG BROTHER TACTICS the talking cameras, they now have installed CCTV with a speaker so the person in the control room will yell out at you if you so much as smile as you go by. We even now have CCTV viewable on the web so every one can look in. The only people who need spying on are the politicians. All email to from the US are scanned by big brother computers to try to find the bad guys, a whole big room full of computers is watching all that goes on look out that may be the FBI outside right now.

Haha, and everyone here (almost) is posting as guest. We'll our IPs I'm sure are logged somewhere. Who are we afraid of, our enemy's or our own governments?

Yeah, I vote to have CCTV in all politicians offices, viewable VIA Internet by all. After all they work for us don't they?

After they installed CCTV cameras in the computer room, one of the operators commented, "Now there is no place left to scratch!" So if a person is prone to having a butt itch, England is not the place to visit.

Good call! And if they're not doing anything wrong, they shouldn't mind being spied on each and every second of each and every day... that's what they keep telling us to feel, isn't it?

Hi Guest. After all they work for us don't they? You must be the first person I'v ever heard say that. Politicians work for each other, but mainly for themselves. Mind you I like the idea of us keeping our politicians under surveilance. Spencer.

Scapolie:

My God... has the idea that the government is the servant of the people gone that far out of public awareness?

"It is not the function of the government to keep the people from falling into error, but rather it is the function of the people to keep the government from falling into error."

-- Former Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson

There was a time -- not that long ago -- when every schoolchild knew this!

I'm still aware of it - but I don't believe any of the politicians are.

<Nod> wrt points on too much surveillance. It forces people to become devious. And it divides us from our neighbours - which is what they want, you watch, we'll have something akin o the Salem Witch Trials next (or the Nuremburg Rally - any bets on which one comes first?)

English Rose:

The Witch Trials are already here.

For decades, innocent people have been imprisoned for "satanic ritual abuse" that never happened. The testimony of children is obtained by coercive and manipulative interrogation techniques used by police and social workers under the direction of prosecutors wanting to make a name for themselves.

Sometimes, perhaps decades later, some of the children come forward and admit that they lied; the testimony was false. By that time, the guilty government employees have typically moved on to other positions beyond the reach of disciplinary action. But the innocent men and women have spent decades in prison, marked as satanic child molesters. All too often, these innocent people die in prison before the truth comes out.

Then there are the child-abuse and wife-abuse cases based on "recovered memories." The techniques used by glory-hunting therapists to "recover" these "memories" are similarly coercive and manipulative.

Beyond dividing us from our neighbors, these travesties turn wives against husbands and children against parents.

Guest, I think your expressed apprehensions far exceeds any likely future reality.

Mind control or even mind reading is about as unfounded or rather unrealistic as the plausibility or rather possibility of Artificial Intelligence.

We are so far and unlikely from any concrete knowledge about the workings of the brain or the formulation of thought, that is it more likely we will obliterate life on earth before any significant breakthrough in any of these fields will occur.

Hi, Yuval.

Read post #11 to find out what I think about "thought reading" machines. The problem is similar to that presented by "lie detectors" based on heart rate, respiration rate, skin resistance and so on. The arguments relating changes in these parameters to the act of lying are just plausible enough that some courts have been convinced to convict innocent defendants (or to acquit guilty ones) based on "expert" interpretations of the squiggly lines produced by such machines.

Whether or not "lie detectors" involve analysis of brain waves, the greatest evil results when courts treat them as though they work reliably, even though in fact they do not.

The underlying neuroscience isn't anywhere near fully worked out, but it's not as far fetched as one might think, either. Here is a reference to give you an idea of the current state of the art.

Schack, B, Weiss, S, & Rappelsberger, P, (2003). "Cerebral information transfer during word processing: Where and when does it occur and how fast is it?" Human Brain Mapping, 19(1):18-36.

Abstract: Different regions of the brain have to interact to perform language processing. Such neural integration processes can be studied by measuring synchronization of oscillations. Coherence is the best known algorithm to study synchronization between two sites of the cortex with regard to selected oscillation frequencies. Phase coherence quantifies phase synchronization, in particular. In addition, cross phase (or simply phase) gives information about the direction and speed of the spread of oscillations. We use a new method to study short-time phases between different sites of the cortex in order to explore transient neural networks during word processing. Particularly, processing of abstract and concrete nouns was investigated by dynamic phase analysis of the alpha1 frequency band (8-10 Hz). Abstract and concrete nouns turned out to induce different dynamic networks of information transfer. Whereas processing of concrete nouns excites a widespread network for about 800 msec, the interhemispheric interactions during abstract noun processing are restricted to 300-500 msec after word presentation. Further, the direction of cerebral information transfer differs for the two word categories. Additionally, it could be shown that the propagation speed of information is slower for concrete nouns than for abstract nouns.

Very interesting, and I tend trust your quote on face-value.

However, my point was that the extreme unlikeliness of mind reading has more to do with scientific inability to correlate signals read and documented (form the brain) to any useful knowledge, as the latter is pretty much non-entity at this point.

Should some government make use of some unproven claim or theory in the matter into court and evidence legislation, this would not be unlike governmental departments hiring people based on graphology reports, or spiritualistic evaluation.

Some Private companies do practice that mambo-jumbo, and for that, they have my full contempt.

Yuval:

Unfortunately, no amount of contempt from you or me will keep courts from being duped into relying on these self-styled "experts." People are already being convicted (or acquitted) based on this sort of reprehensible pseudo-science.

Allow me to introduce Dr. Lawrence A. Farwell, Chairman and Chief Scientist of Brain Fingerprinting Laboratories, Inc.

http://www.brainwavescience.com/

One page on this company's website, entitled "Brain Fingerprinting Testing Ruled Admissible in Court," contains the following claim:

"Dr. Farwell and then FBI scientist Dr. Drew Richardson used the Brain Fingerprinting system to detect with 100% accuracy which people in a group were FBI agents and which were not by measuring brain responses to items only an FBI agent would recognize. Brain Fingerprinting testing was also 100% accurate in three studies Dr. Farwell conducted for a US intelligence agency and for the US Navy."

They claim 100% accuracy (!) which sounds pretty impressive... until you read the carefully formulated scientific criticisms of Dr. J. Peter Rosenfeld, Professor of Neurobiology and Physiology at Northwestern University. Go to his publications page,

http://www.psych.northwestern.edu/psych/people/faculty/rosenfeld/publications.html

and click on either of the following links (which run server-side scripts that download pdf files for you, so I couldn't figure out how to paste them directly into this post):

Simple, Effective Countermeasures to P300-based Tests of Detection of Concealed Information

'Brain Fingerprinting:' A Critical Analysis

The former paper details electrophysiological experiments showing that "brain fingerprinting" can, under ideal conditions, achieve accuracies up to 92%, but can be as bad as 50/50 under the conditions most likely to be encountered in practice.

In the abstract of the latter paper, we read:

[This] review highlights methodological problems associated with BF [Brain Fingerprinting] and related methods, including vulnerability to countermeasures and difficulty with developing adequate and appropriate test material, leading to the concluding impression that the claims on the BF Web site are exaggerated and sometimes misleading.

Both of these papers were published in peer-reviewed journals. The full references are

Rosenfeld, J P, Soskins, M, Bosh, G, & Ryan, A, (2004). "Simple, Effective Countermeasures to P300-based Tests of Detection of Concealed Information." Psychophysiology, 41:205-219.

Rosenfeld, J P, (2005). "'Brain Fingerprinting:' A Critical Analysis." Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice, 4(1):20-37.

Thus we we see that courts are -- right now, today -- basing verdicts on so-called evidence obtained by methods which are every bit as questionable as graphology or spiritualism.

It's later than you think, Yuval...

Well you know, I'm not the only on to read your post here, so it's there for other people, to check, verify, and make their own mind about. For this, bless you for these quotes, as they are here for public examination.

That is precisely my intent, Yuval: to provide information and encourage rational thought, tempered with compassion, about the human costs of the technologies which big business and big government want us engineers to create. Let me pull together here a couple of points I made in other posts:

As engineers, we can and must refuse to design, build or install technologies that have greater potential for evil than for good.

Such technologies include all forms of surveillance, whether based on brainwave scanners, video cameras, RFID tags, electronic storage of biometric data or electronic money that does not permit anonymous transactions.

Some technologies are physically unsafe, but these technologies are far worse: these technologies are de-humanizing.

Not only are we engineers in a unique position to "just say no" to such technologies, we have a moral obligation to do so.

Whatever power you give to the good cops, goes to the bad ones, too. Never forget that.

-- Phillip J. Birmingham

Have you ever placed your own mind in a testing situation? Have you ever tried to make it do things you have read about?

Don't jump to conclusions two quickly

A grand conceit that one. Bet you did not know that there is a whole bunch of people that actually know how that instrument works.

It has it's own power systems two that are just going to astound you. Your nervous system is not a low power/low voltage one you are told to believe.

Geese don't anyone read between the lines anymore?

Hi Guest. Yes, I can remember what the so-called social services did to some families on the Orkney Isles. The problem being that these social sevices people have to justify their wages, and indeed their jobs! Although these families were in the end found inocent, there is still a seed of doubt lingering on in certain people on Orkney. Quote: "there's no smoke without fire", these words were said to me in a pub in 2005 when I visited the Orkney Isles. None of these social services people were sacked, they were just given the same job on mainland Scotland! Spencer.

Glad to get your opinion on this Scapolie. I've often wondered how the Brits really felt about all those surveillance cameras. Here in the U.S., advocates of intrusive technologies are fond of noting that there are already tons of surveillance cameras in the U.K., and that Britain is still a free society.

Hi Moose. "Britain a free society", you must be joking. Here in the UK we can be arrested for what we are thinking, or if we tell a religious joke about the muslims. We are not allowed to voice our opinions about most things these days, be it Jews, Muslims, Chritians or Homosexuals, I am not even allowed to call homosexuals homosexuals, they are gay's. It is called "politicaly correct". If you are attacked or threatend by someone and you fight back you will be arreted and put in prison or fined. The same happens if you hit or beat up an intruder in you home. Two years ago I told my neighbour off for repeatedly letting his dog foul my garden, she called the police and I was arrested. I was charged with a breach of the peace and fined £200. plus £150. court costs. So, a free society we are not. Spencer.

Moose:

How can you call it "a free society" when the people are taxed into poverty, spied on relentlessly, denied the right to carry arms in self defense, and generally treated as chattel?

ROFLMAO (an act that is recorded for posterity)

Why do you think they invented the Big Brother Show - soon there won't be ant need to audition for it - anyone with a telly will be able to choose which house in the street they watch tonight. It'll be fun watching the neighbours talking about you. <sigh>

Pandora's box is opening up and the consequences are frightening but up the revolution gather to arms and march forward. These morons must be defeated. The very freedom of the human race depends on the free will of the people. We shall defeat them yet because they to are but humans who have their own means of destruction about their person and we shall exploit that frailty. Rise up I say and gather to the call of the sound of mass discontent. Let us never give in to the lies they tell the mean things they do, nor should we get caught up in their political games. Take aim and open fire.

Hunnnhh...? I think I hear voices...

you think you hear voices????? maybe its something called a ( voice reactor) that is recorded on a tape! thAT REACTS TO THE sound of your voice and what you say & think( inside your head! )drives you crazy 24/7 !!!!!!! not funny is it!!!!! bet you cant even sleep at night can you???? the voice on the tapes keeps going & going & going just like that battery commerical with the bunny beating a drum!: mind bolging ; do you ever talk to the voice reactor ? I have personnely I sound like a mental retard; 24/7 ? ( still not funny) it makes you think you hear voices in your head;but you dont!!! the( voice reactor )is hooked up to the ( thought machine;/ human thought machine and that is hooked up to a cctv/ t.v/ screen monitor) it reacts to what it( sees and hears;) ( audio/ video) : try living with this crap for 26.yr; its called ( wrongful mental entrapment) to cause:( & discontent!!!!)

Hi Guest. I say, Amen to that. But what has given you the idea that the public will rise against their politicians (rulers, tyrants and dictators.)? We in the UK are totally fed up with the lies, deceit and downright chicanery of Tony Blair and the lobour government, but I have never heard or seen someone shout "Viva la Revolution", another thing is that our government has taken away our right to have arms! I said this in 1964, give the average Englishman his beer and his football and he will be satisfied!!! This still holds today 43 years hence. " United we stand, Divided we fall", and as the average Englishman supports his own team instead of a united team, that is all that counts. It is called "Tribalism", so as you can see, as long as a country of 60 million people are divided there will be no revolution! Spencer.

Scapolie:

It is the same here in the USA and Canada. I hear "men" in their twenties (should be pumping maximum testosterone at that age) tell me that they are content to give up freedom in return for saftey. I ask them what is the point of living if you are not free, and they ask me what good is freedom if you are dead. They have the mentality of slaves.

Throughout the Western world, we have become nations of castrati.

Sigh.

Hi Guest, A nation of castrati! Most, but not all, some of us have our ways and means to combat the "Big Brother". Spencer.

Blair has just anounced his capitulation apathy won the day, now all we have to do is ignor Brown politicians hate to be ignored. Soon people will realise things are so bad that direct action is the only way foreward. The internet is a thorn in their side so I say keep pushing. Then we can be free and safe.

Let's hope Bush follows Blair's example, and the sooner the better!

Hi BrainWave. You say that politicians hate to be ignored! Well how do you think that we in the UK feel like when for the past ten years the politicians have ignored us!!! Direct action? With what, sticks and stones against MP3s and Glock pistols? I do agree with you though, because all this spying on us innocent will only infuriate us even more than it does the criminals who take no notice anyway. I read in the paper today that the ID cards that will soon be imposed apon us will contain 52 pieces of sensitive information about us! Why? I have worked in many foreign countries which demanded that I have an ID card, on these cards are a photo of myself, address, date of birth, town and country of birth and date of issue, nothing else. I still have some of these ID cards in my possession, and at no time did I feel that while I needed them was I sbjected to surveilence. So why is our government insisting that all this information about us necessary other than keeping us under control 24 hours a day, every day. Spencer.

Scapolie:

I like the way you think! You may be interested in another thread going strong on CR4 right now, on "Drawbacks of using RFID." You can find it at

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/7382

Remember, remember the 5th of November.

People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.

YES!!

This is emerging as the single most important political issue of the 21st century. If we don't get this one right, global warming and peak oil will simply not matter.

Hi Guest. I totally agree with you, but after 10 years of Tony Blair it has only just gone up for our labour party government that they should be afraid of the people whom they govern. Now that Tony Blair is leaving office in june maybe we will get a change in the governments attitude, but we don't hold our breaths over that one. Everywhere you look there is war and distruction, death and starvation, and all because governments won't listen to it's people. Then there is the greed, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Now our governments want to control our minds, thoughts, what we say, how we live and where we can travel within our own country. It is time we woke up and defeated our governments plans including surveilance by cctv camera's, listening devices, thought reading machines and the clamp down on free thought and free speach. Long live the Revolution!!!

It doesn't have to be violent, you know. A general strike until corporations stop deducting income tax at source, followed by a general refusal to pay taxes until the government learns to obey the people. That's all it would take.

Hi Guest. I totally agree with you, but and this is a big but, our government here in the UK is taking so much tax of it's citizens that we cannot afford to have a general strike. Then there is the question of how the banks would retaliate when people stop paying their mortgages! Then there are the utilities companies, gas, electricity and water, they have all been given the power by our government to cut all suplies in the case of mass civil disobedience! The last time any government listened to it's people in the UK is in the reign of Queen Elizabeth Ist, and that is 400 years ago. So although I can agree with you, I cannot see a bloodless revolution in the forseable future. The answer that I can see lies in the hands of the engineers and scientists, they have to come up with something that can protect our citizens from an all seeing, all powerfull government. Spencer.

Gentlemen, May I remind you that this is an engineering forum and not a political one. So shouldn't we be asking how to go about engineering a revolution to get the bastards out in both country's? I think , under the circumstances of present day repressive governments and their ruling corporate masters, that the engineers need take a deeper look at their ethics. Some things invented or developed will do more harm than good for humanity and the planet. This "mind reading device" is one of those things. It's very existence should have been thought through before being worked on by those who worked on it even more so than the money behind it. After some fifteen years of development I had to make such a decision with a 3D projector. This after seeing how kids (not the goat kind but almost) became addicted to video games and television (the lying box) and were loosing contact with reality. Further military development of the small, fast and stealthy planes which are remotely guided (more killing at a distance) nailed the decision. The same technology could be used to guide the planes and kill people from a distance like a video game. All with the same disconnect from reality. Bad enough as it is without 3D making it all the more realistic. I am sure 3D will happen anyway and some money will be made on it. But it won't be my 3D and it won't be my technology doing the killing or further alienating (kids) and vulnerable adults from reality. It has to be the engineers duty on a personal level to see the possible evil their works can be put to by repressive corporate governments. We can't leave it to the corporations we work for. Most of those believe ethics revolve around quarterly profits.

Hi Guest. Our government here in the UK has already thought of that one! They are now going to have spy-planes (drones) in the sky to keep watch on everybody who is outside their house. I have an engineering solution to this, it is called a transmition blocker. That should f****k them up. Spencer.

Spencer, While the spy drones may be a cheaper solution such is already in to play with the spy satellites. An aquaintence (sp) of about 2,002 related the story of his son who was a heavy equipment (excavating) contractor. This took place a couple of years previous to 2,002. Seems the guy had a house out in the country a bit and was doing some excavating in the back of the house for a patio or something. He was using one of his back hoes. In less than a couple of hours the authorities show up sirens blaring, seems they caught the action from a satellite. This just a GD building inspector. I hope your transmission blocker works but I doubt it. The damage they do is in taking pictures. Radioing back to base is probably not in real time and by spread spectrum which is hard to block. I think in reality enough people with pitch forks, shotguns and base ball bats is the best solution. High tech isn't always the best answer.

Absolutely. It is only be retaining the old skills that we will defeat those who rely on technology - or survive in the aftermath the armageddon that they will cause (assuming we've survived the armageddon itself!)

I applaud you sir! These days, people who act with the courage of their convictions are few and far between!

Years ago, I made the same decision with regard to neural networks. I asked myself how we humans would prevent them taking over our position at the top of the food chain on this planet, and I found that I had no answer. So I stopped building them.

Indeed, today, armed robots are being build for infantry duty and so on. But they exist in spite of me, not because of me.

By the way, that "disconnect from reality" you speak of was called "the bravery of being out of range" by Roger Waters.

You write "it has to be the engineers duty on a personal level to see the possible evil their works can be put to by repressive corporate governments." This insight is sorely needed over in the thread entitled "Drawbacks of using RFID." You can find it at

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/7382

Thank You, And you also are to be applauded. I sincerely hope that the idea of taking personal responsibility for ones creations isn't one of my "original" ideas. LOL RFID is certainly one of the less thought out ideas as far as it's "evil" implications go. It was, however, more of a developmental project than one which comes complete "in a box" First came the Shottky diode, then the tuned antenna circuit. This was used to track things like tagged insects (where the bees are) by having an antenna absorb radio energy at one frequency and then readmitting at a different frequency. The diode acting like a spark gap generator. Next came the more minituresation and the "bar code". Now the things are smaller than a grain of rice and becoming ubiquitous. Other than being in goods, when they are in passports and drivers licenses, and tagged automobiles they are way over the top invading our privacy. These repressive governments fear their own people more than any of the terrorists. Here the terrorists (unproven who they were) killed 3,000 or so people. In retaliation our own government has killed over 3,000 Americans, with over 650,000 Iraqi's dead who wouldn't be, and the opium/heroin production that was almost wiped out by the Talaban in Afganistan is now back in full. But this is all stuff that can be researched on the internet, the last thorn in the paw of our oppressors. It still breaks down to (especially for engineers and such) taking the responsibility to research as best we can what is going on in the world and making sure that we as individuals create responsibly, that our contributions cannot be used to harm, control, spy upon, or add to the misery of others.

We passengers are scratching our heads at this latest development. Are airports the new laboratory for us rats?

Jules

I'm no rat. Lab or other wise.

Yes, you are right, that was going too far. Thanks for the reminder.

I will rephrase, "Are airports the new testing ground for new security technology?"

What do you think?

Jules

Hi photonicgirl. I most certainly think that you are right! I believe that people here in the UK are so saturated with all the surveilance that they do not no which way to turn. We are all worrying about the states criminalisation of our people for the most stupid of so-called crimes, eg, a young boy of 8 threw a piece of cucumber at another schoolboy, who in turn told his father who called the police. The young boy was found guilty of asault and his name, address, finger prints and DNA were logged on the police computer files!!! Why couldn't the policeman just have had a word with him about what he done? This is what happened when I was a young boy in the 1950s. Now with all this surveilance things are just getting worse. Spencer.

I know what you were saying there I just felt I should let you know I am a sensitive person. No offence was taken and no animals hurt while replying.

Hey, BrainWave, I hate to be the one to break it to ya, but that's not the kind of "sensitive" that the girls mean when they say they like sensitive guys... ;)

photonicgirl, I don't see any reason why you should apologize for your post; there was no disrespect in it... at least, not directed at anyone on this forum. I thought your wry humour worked quite well to point out how the government control-freaks are treating us all.

The reply, "I'm no lab rat," should not be aimed at you, but at those government control-freaks. In fact, the message should be much stronger. More like:

We are not children, and we are not chattel! Stop treating us as such!

As engineers, we can go much farther than that. We can refuse to design, build or install technologies that have greater potential for evil than for good.

Such technologies include all forms of surveillance, whether based on brainwave scanners, video cameras, RFID tags, electronic storage of biometric data or electronic money that does not permit anonymous transactions.

Some technologies are physically unsafe; but these technologies are far worse: these technologies are de-humanizing.

Not only are we engineers in a unique position to "just say no" to such technologies, we have a moral obligation to do so.

I really like what you said. That's the beauty of this site, engineers can discuss the moral, ethical and legal ramifications of ever-exploding bursts of technology. Because of scientists and engineers like many of you, there will always be hope that the world can still become a better, not worse place to live.

Jules

Hi photonicgirl. I have just come home from a meeting and I counted no less than 5 cctv camerera's within a radius of 30 yards from my house! What have I done? What have my neighbours done? The answer, Nothing!!! As an engineer I find it hard to accept that this technology, designed by an engineer to spy on inoccent people hard to swallow. Our government here in the UK say's that if you have nothing to hide then you should not fear them, I don't fear them, but that is not the point. The point is the small matter of trust, soon we will have no where to have a private conversation or love tryst with our loved ones. Our government yesterday voted to stop anybody who is not a member of parliament finding out about how or what they they are spending our hard earned taxes on, or what they are doing. We are supposed to trust them, but at the same time they don't trust us. I want all this surveillance of us ordinary citizens stopped as of now!!! Spencer.

Scapolie:

Why would you ever want privacy if you are not committing any crimes?

That's always the trick question, isn't it? What amazes me is how few people can articulate a cogent answer to this question. The answer is this:

If you have no private space in which to rest and reflect and be yourself, then you have nowhere to form an identity.

And as soon as this is said, it becomes clear what the true purpose of the surveillance is. It is to deny people the opportunity to become individuals in any meaningful sense of the word.

It has nothing to do with crime prevention. Unless you define deviation from the norm to be a crime. And, of course, that is exactly where all this is leading. Now that political correctness forbids us to speak openly and honestly, most importantly about moral value judgements, the words normal and abnormal have taken over the emotional territory that rightfully belongs to the words good and evil. These days, it's okay to be bad, as long as you're normal. Describe someone as bad, and people are titillated. But describe someone as deviant, and people shudder in horror.

Combine this attitude with constant surveillance, inescapable from birth, and you have created a relentless mental and spiritual pressure that inexorably squeezes everyone's mind into the same standard mould. Well, you may have to add a little Ritalin or Prozac for the difficult cases... but you get the picture.

Welcome to the Borg.

Hi Guest, You have got it in one. Of course I want a little privacy, it is my right as a law abiding citizen. In my passport it say's: " Her Britannic Majesty's secretary of state requests and requires in the name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance, and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as maybe necessary". This negates everything our government is doing to track us every minute of the day, but does our government care, not a bit. Our government has now started to log every child born in this country and has put their details onto a vast computer base, 4 million at the last count! They are going to put a tracking device in every motorcar and motorcycle, they say that this is necessary so that we can pay our viehicle tax for every mile we drive, but we already pay this tax once a year? Another tracking device will be put into our ID cards which we will have to carry at all times in the near future, everything we buy or do will be tracked. There will be 52 pieces of sensitive information about us imbedded into a chip on this ID card, my question is, Why? I believe that our government is getting very scared of what we might do if we do not like what they are doing. Democracy, don't make me laugh. Spencer.

Scapolie:

Let me get this straight. They take your money, and you have no right to refuse them or even to ask what they are doing with it.

This is slavery.

Get the hell out of that country before they lock down the borders.

Sell everything and go. It doesn't matter where. Almost anywhere is better than where you are now. Preferably, go to one of the states in the USA which has recently re-introduced the right to carry a concealed weapon. Those will probably be among the last places to lose their freedom.

photonicgirl:

Thanks for understanding. Unfortunately, ethics courses given to engineers focus on such things as giving the client his money's worth, being fairly paid for work done, giving due consideration to physical safety, and even assessing environmental impact. But the sort of thinking that underlies my reply to Scapolie in post #46 is very strongly discouraged -- not only in engineering schools, but in every part of every campus I know about.

The result, among engineers, is a strong tendency to consider only the benefits to be obtained when a technology is used in good faith, and ignore the harm that will be done if that technology is used in bad faith. This leads, for example, to the baffling phenomenon of well-meaning, intelligent engineers designing and building torture devices while telling themselves they are making the world a better place by working on non-lethal weapons.

Let's face it: a high-powered rifle is of limited use to a torturer... but a directed energy weapon that burns the skin to a crisp and leaves everything underneath intact is a torturer's wet dream. Raytheon has recently introduced exactly such a weapon.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6300985.stm

The article notes that the beam penetrates the skin to a depth of .4mm and causes unbearable pain by raising the temperature to 53 degrees C. It goes on to reassure the reader that the pain stops as soon as the target jumps out of the beam. But this begs the question, what happens if the target can't jump out of the beam? Cells die within minutes at a temperature of 45 degrees C, well below 53. Before long, you have a person who is completely unharmed, except that all of their skin cells are dead. I don't know how long it would take that person to die, but being skinned alive would be a quick and easy death by comparison.

To see how this is relevant to the topic at hand, just ask: how did the engineers who designed this device retain their self-respect? How did they silence their reason and their conscience? How did they convince themselves that this device would only ever be used as described in the company's press releases, and never as I described above?

You can see a good example of this exact process in action in another thread here on CR4, entitled "Drawbacks of using RFID."

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/7382

In that thread, you can observe several well-meaning, intelligent engineers who are so focused on the potential benefits of RFID that they are completely blind to the potential harm that comes from the ability to micro-monitor people's movements, actions and transactions, coupled with the immense computing power now available to big business and big government. You will see that no amount of effort seems sufficient to pull their heads out of the proverbial sand.

So, at long last, the real question is: how do we induce engineers to take seriously the potential harm that can be done by the technologies they are hired to develop? Or is that even a reasonable goal to strive for? Will it always be the case that, no matter how many engineers refuse to design something, there will always be others who will not refuse? And, if the latter is the case, how do we prevent technological power from becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of ever more ruthless corporations and ever more despotic governments? In short, how do we ensure that our children will never be enslaved by the technologies we are developing right now?

I know it sounds grandiose, but that really is what is at stake.

Hi Guest. Welcome to 1984 (big brother, by George Orwell)! I have to confess to doing some work in the 1980s for shall we say a government agency, I stopped as soon as two of my foreign friends were jailed and one killed. I reallised then what the state was about, any state for that matter. Since then I have been very wary of anything that the state does, espesially when they tell us that it is for our own good, and to be honest with you I cannot see light at the end of the tunnel. I was persecuted for years after because I bucked the trend, they don't like it! I started to have strange accidents, so now maybe you know where I'm coming from. It is our government who has plenty to hide, not us ordinary citizens!!! Spencer.

Congratulations on a very well thought out piece, I wish more people would bve like you and actualy evaluate the work they are asked to under take. May your life be filled with all future happiness.

I think a lot of scientists tend to focus on one thing without really looking at the ramifications of surrounding issues. That's how new inventions quickly come to market. Perhaps directing the engineers of the other blog to this one might also open their eyes to external thought surrounding RFID. Of course, people also tend to shy away from strong feelings when all they really want to talk about is pure science. The question is, how can one express concerns to the wider audience without coming off as a conspiracy fanatic?

Jules

Perhaps we will have to sponsor the right people into the top political jobs. An engineer in the White House?

Hi BrainWave. Here is a little food for thought! Yesterday one of our top policemen here in the UK said that he was not prepared to live in a country with so much surveillance going on, he said that the big brother style surveillance is eroding our civil liberties and he saw no reason why it was so necessary. He also questioned our governments tactics of keeping a huge database of suspects DNA even when they are not convicted. This referes to the practice of taking the DNA of every person who is arrested, even if they are not guilty of a crime, so far the DNA of 1.1 million people are on this database. 400,000 of these are children under 15. If one of our top police cheifs is starting to complain there must be something terribly wrong. Spencer.

Terrorism is not limited to simply the blowing things up by small politically- or religiously-motivated groups in order to instill fear in a populace. The governments of the UK and the US are using technology to wage a war of psychological terror on their people. The UK is pulling it off faster because UK is smaller and with a smaller population that has already been stripped of its right to bear arms. In both cases the justification for the governments' actions are external sources of terror. In both cases the true terrorists are in Parliament and the White House. Think about it.

photonicgirl:

Yes, indeed, "how can one express concerns to the wider audience without coming off as a conspiracy fanatic?" I often wonder if that stereotype was deliberately cultivated to discredit people who seek to warn the public of the dangers posed by big business and big government acting in collusion. The only thing one can do is to avoid sounding shrill, to present facts calmly and to reason carefully. Often, even that is not enough, because many people just don't want to know.

Actually, it is getting easier. Ten years ago, the universal, automatic response to anyone who spoke of such concerns was to classify them as a conspiracy fanatic. However, as the depredations and abuses of trust become more obvious, people are starting to see the problem. Here on CR4, there seems to be a fairly high concentration of members with a healthy distrust of big government and big business. And that is heartening.

The general public seems more polarized. There is one group that distrusts big business, and another group that distrusts big government. The real challenge is going to be getting those to groups to understand that these are but two heads of one beast, which was named "the military-industrial complex" by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican (!), in his farewell address to the American people. Here is an excerpt from that speech:

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defence. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defence establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States corporations.

Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defence with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

That speech was delivered in January, 1961. For a long time, it was largely ignored by the main stream. But now, almost half a century later, the excesses of the Bush administration, Haliburton and the Carlisle Group have finally opened people's eyes, not only to the reality of it, but to the real significance of it. People are finally starting to take it seriously. And not a moment too soon.

As you can see by this recent Wireless Technology article, "Tracking You," American Express is already using RFID to track purchases.

Tracking You What can you track with RFID? American Express received a patent to track purchases. RFID tags embedded in credit cards provide tracking information on customer purchases by reading the RFID signals from their credit card. RFID readers would be placed within store shelving, or within common areas such as schools and bus stops.

Imagine this: You walk into a big box store, purchase some items and scan your credit card. What if the store could automatically "download" all your purchasing and personal information, including your social security number, etc? Do you really want Big Box to have all your data?

Jules

Hi photonicgirl. Yes, I agree with you but here in the UK they have been doing just that for the past five years! To get our money from a bank we use an electronic bankcard, if we use a credit card or bankcard to purchase any item then that will be logged together with all the information about us. I have no other option as I am now retired, so every time I withdraw money or make a purchase my personal details plus the money I spent is logged onto a central computer. I travel a lot, both here in the UK and abroard so my every move is noted and logged. I advise you to come to the UK to see how big brother works in practice, I can guarantee you that you will not like it!!! Spencer.

Spencer, I have been reading news of the UK and Australia for many years, and have watched events unfold as you describe. What do you suggest concerned engineers do to balance the tide of rampant surveillance technology, so to speak? Or have we already taken the red pill and are now truly living in the Matrix?

Jules

Hi photonicgirl. I guess that we in the UK are living in the Matrix at this moment in time. Even if any concerned engineers could do something to turn the tide, it would be banned in the UK!!! I joke not, it would be banned under the heading " Not politically correct". Our government has banned anything that gives us law abiding citizens rights. Instead of reading about what is going on in the UK come and spend a month or two over here to see for yourself? You will wish that you were on Venus, Mars, anywhere other than here. Spencer.

Scapolie:

Why not just move to another country? You said yourself that anywhere is better than where you are now... why do you stay?

Hi Guest. If I could I would move to another country, but I am a disabled pensioner and cannot afford to move. I would lose my pension and disablement entitlements, besides I love my country, it's the politicians I cannot stand. It would not be so bad if it really did help fight crime, but crime has pocketed and all this surveillance only makes criminals of the law abiding majority. Spencer.

I understand, Scapolie. Then do what I do: spread the word. Make sure that the meaning and value of words like freedom and privacy are not lost. I've noticed that people are more and more receptive to this message every day. They have been betrayed often enough and badly enough by big business and big government that they no longer sweep such talk under the rug with convenient labels. They are eager to listen and, being retired, you have time to speak. Seize the opportunity to kindle a flame of understanding.

photonicgirl:

This is just the tip of the iceberg, I fear. But thanks for the link! The mere existence of an outfit like CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering) is heartening. Their home page is

http://www.spychips.com/index.html

This page contains a wealth of news and articles. Also, they have put together an excellent overview of the issues at

http://www.spychips.com/rfid_overview.html

On this page, you can also download a pdf article

http://www.spychips.com/documents/Albrecht-Denver-Law.pdf

which is first rate! Very well researched and thought provoking -- a great read!

Now, here is an example of state-of-the-art RFID technology:

These are mu-chip RFID tags manufactured by Hitachi. The ones on the left are first generation devices measuring 400 microns (.4mm) square. The ones on the left are second generation devices measuring on 50 microns (.05mm) on a side, 5 microns (.005mm) thick. That big black thing that cuts the picture in half is a human hair.

These pictures were originally posted at

http://www.pinktentacle.com/2007/02/hitachi-develops-rfid-powder/

If you peruse the comments left by people on that page, you will see that the general public is, indeed, waking up. People are seeing the danger. What is needed now is a way to organize them and galvanize them to action before complacency sets in. If we can do that, it is still early enough that we can put a stop to the proliferation of RFID by a peaceful political process.

And, if you regularly read Global Spec's Wireless Technology newsletter and blogs, you will find the RFID powder article under "RFID Takes a Powder" and RFID blogs here:

Newsletter:http://www.globalspec.com/Newsletter/ViewIssue?vol=Vol2Issue4_WirelessTech&pub=59&isPastIssue=1

Blog: http://cr4.globalspec.com/blogentry/1478/Applications-for-the-World-s-Smallest-RFID-Chip

Jules

Hi photonicgirl. I just had a thought, (although our govenment don't like us to think for ourseves), that if the scientists have developed a machine to read our thoughts then surley they can reverse the proccess. They could then program our minds and thoughts, thus creating slaves to the government, in other words we all do their bidding. Just thinking about it makes me want to move to deepest Brazil. Spencer.

I agree, the reverse engineering of mind reading is most likely already fully tested and could even be in place. Anyone out there know if that is the case?

Chances are there are cell phone towers in deepest Brazil, so the next best thing is to move to NYC and just be one person among the millions ... maybe making a difference.

Jules

Scapolie:

There is a way to use microwaves to cause people to "hear voices." This is done using an efffect called the Frey effect or the Microwave Auditory Effect. Here are some related patents:

• Flanagan GP. Patent #3393279 "Nervous System Excitation Device" USPTO granted 7/16/68.
• Puharich HK and Lawrence JL. Patent #3629521 "Hearing systems" USPTO granted 12/21/71.
• Malech RG. Patent #3951134 "Apparatus and method for remotely monitoring and altering brain waves" USPTO granted 4/20/76.
• Stocklin PL. Patent #4858612 "Hearing device" USPTO granted 8/22/89.
• Brunkan WB. Patent #4877027 "Hearing system" USPTO granted 10/31/89.
• Thijs VMJ. Application #WO1992NL0000216 "Hearing Aid Based on Microwaves" World Intellectual Property Organization Filed 1992-11-26, Published 1993-06-10.
• Mardirossian A. Patent #6011991 "Communication system and method including brain wave analysis and/or use of brain activity" USPTO granted 1/4/00.

These are cited by the following article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_auditory_effect

Hi Guest. Thankyou, you have cleared up a problem that has been worrying me for 10 years. My girlfriend was living on a hillside right in the middle of the path of two towers covered in a huge array of antennae. She complained about all the clicking and high frequent sounds she could hear in hear head, this was always at its worst during the early hours of the morning between 1am and 4am. The sound frequencies would vary at times, and at times she would say that she could hear voices, to combat this we would drive our mobile home to a small valley so that she could get some rest. Worse was to come, while driving in the countryside and travelling through a forrest she told me that she could hear these strange sounds coming from somewhere to the right of us. I could not see any antenna mast anywhere, but as we came out of the forrest I could see that to the right of us and about 150 meters away was a large mast covered with antennae. She is now in a mental institution, because she complained to her doctor about her problem. I have since joined a group of people here in the UK to study the effects of EMF on the human body, and I have found that my girlfriend is not alone with this problem. Spencer.

That is very interesting. Has your girlfriend improved now that she's away from the EMF "voices"? It must be challenging for you, dealing with this in your everyday life.

I'm sorry for your loss. I hope your girlfriend recovers.

Jules

Hi photonicgirl. Yes thankyou, my girlfriend is now back home after spending two years in the institution. But before she came home I covered the walls of her house with a specially prepared wall paper, this wall paper has an extremely thin aluminium foil between the paper and the wall. I also bought an extremely fine meshed metal netting to cover the windows, in other words her house is now a large Faraday cage. I learned this from other suffereres of the kind of problems she was suffering from, although I had already thought that that might help. Apparently there are hundreds if not thousands of people here in the UK who are affected by the effects of EMF, especially by pulsed micro-waves. It was very difficult to contend with my girlfriends problem while being ignorant of the facts, but now she is at last happy to not be plagued with it while she is at home. Spencer.

Just so you know, this problem has been reported in NM, USA for many years.

Jules

Governments ARE scared of us - they respond by trying to make us scared. The more scared they are, the more protection they feel they need

Don't believe me?

Since the advent of the Scottish Parliament we have been subjected to this, this (and those are the milder ones) - but the population will respond as desired to such events for only so long.

Hi GM1964. Governments scared of us - you bet they are! Back in the 1980s I worked for an agency that you don't even want to now about, Margaret Thatcher was so scared of the unions and the workers that she ordered a group of police and army guys (several hundreds) to train in the event of civil uprising. Quite lot of these people didn't like the idea of shooting their own people and left the training scheme. I left the agency that I worked for at the time because of their underhand methods, which were not only undemocratic but downright sinister. Since then I have always been very wary of what our government is up to, otherwise why do you think I am on this site. Spencer.

They are not so scared, they already have instruments in place to put down the next revolution that is coming.

You guys keep forgetting, what was the first machine that man used that he still uses, some only occasionally?

This machine is the most powerful in the entire world. If you only know what it is capable of. Did you ever put yours to the test? Hmmm

Moose,

Note that most posters on this thread, are "Guests" for one reason or another

A dead-giveaway of some sort ?

Yes, and at least one of these "guests" also has opinions about RFID technologies... spooky!

O-Hi there!

I couldn't recognise you.

Could it be, because you don't have a name?

Is this too much of a compromise to have a bogus name on the web, or is it because CR4 will only allow one user-name per DNS-mail at home?

Yeah. I think this is it.

It's really O.k by me, but why stress when we cannot address replies to a specific direction, or confuse your replies with other "guests"?

Not spooky, just a little misleading.

Actually, the large number of different guests on this thread proves my point... that people are becoming sufficiently concerned about the loss of their privacy that they are beginning to take positive steps to protect it.

And this is a good thing!

hi MOOSE sorry man thats pretty deep/(FMRI) your in a plane at 7000 FT/ your mind is controling the FLIGHT computer/your comeing down to the runway 6000/5000/4000/ when suddenly the great sex you had with the wife,the night before(ARRGGHH)mind control,comes into your mind,o no going down/going down interferance with control system SH////////IT, PROBLEM? how do you seperate good thoughts from the ? thoughts CHEERS DUDE

DAVE C (ENGLAND)

You guys are getting pretty close to the truth, actually exploring our boundaries set up for those who can see them and know what they stand for..

Please Please Please take it to the next step. There are things happening that you cannot see. There are things happening that you might say expands ones belief. There are things happening that are just astounding.

You are getting close to the root. please keep going.