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NASA Plan to Read Brainwaves at Airports
cascino writes: "In one of the more bizarre (and intrusive) spinoffs of the Government's 'crackdown on terrorism,' Officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have told Northwest Airlines security specialists that the agency is developing brain-monitoring devices in cooperation with a commercial firm, which it did not identify. Space technology would be adapted to receive and analyze brain-wave and heartbeat patterns, then feed that data into computerized programs 'to detect passengers who potentially might pose a threat,' according to briefing documents obtained by The Washington Times." This is the second story recently that gives me second thoughts about flying Northwest.
It's actually time to break out the tinfoil hat!
...to test brainwaves, because it's obvious that normal travelers (being delayed by extensive security measures) are never stressed-out or homocidal. Especially if they're made to stop for one more scan by minimum wage federal employees that aren't doing jack squat ANYway.
GREAT IDEA. I feel safer already.
-Styopa
That gives a whole new meaning to '/me puts on a tinfoil hat'
?-|||-----x<*))))><
Maybe we'll finally get proof that when Northwest claims "mechanical troubles", what they really mean is "We don't have enough people on this flight so we're just going to blow off that ticket we sold you."
yet another time when the simpsons can be brought up in a discussion
sounds like marketroids were at work here. i think reading brainwaves would fall under "products that violate laws of physics"
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
i guess if i say "lets firebomb the capitol", i'm a seditionist, but now if i think "god, airport security sucks" i'm a potential terrorist...don't i have a reasonable expectation of privacy in my own god damned skull?
used on the planes:
Pilot: Could a Mr. Smith please stop thinking about our stewardess'. It's frightening them.
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
In the year 2101
Security officer 1: What he thinking...
Security officer 2: I think he's thinking..."Someone set us up the bomb!"
Security officer 1: We get brain signal!
Security officer 2: We better not let him on the plane...
the same people whose $160,000,000 space probes split in two when their rockets fire.
Their first test subject was George W. Bush. At first they thought it didn't work.
So, you get a machine that can identify everyone who is angry, upset, nervous or paranoid and you send in the rent-a-cops! Oh, lovely.
:-(
I'd actually like to see this deployed for the humor value, except that it would probably cause a lot of borderline paranoid psychotics to melt down...
We get signal
He's thinking about setting up us the bomb
You have to chance to survive, make your time
thoughtcrime
This is where we need a very quick temporary restraining order and get this nipped in the bud right now.
There is NO WAY users of an airport have to submit to a passive medical scan prior to borading a plane.
Even under an expected diminished privacy defense, this isn't even close to legal.
It was only a matter of time.
Move to Antarctica now. Get out while you still can.
Hmmmm ...
If the US government was really interested in airline safety they would require Breathalyzers for every pilot.
Why not make the space stuff work first? You know, rockets that don't go BOOM, cool pics, robots that do wheelies.
Etc.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
How will such a system distinguish between someone with terroristic thoughts and someone who merely experiences a lot of anxiety from being in the middle of large crowds of people? Will those poor souls be delayed and harassed every time they travel? It would be a pity.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
The Thought Police always come to get you when you're sleeping... or when waiting for your laptop to get through the X-Ray machine
?-|||-----x<*))))><
NorthWest, or NoneWorst as we call it here in the midwest, will do ANYTHING to try and jump start their crappy airlines. I stopped flying these fuckers after all 4 of my flights had delays due to "mechanical problems". No doubt now they will use this as a marketing ploy to draw back pissed off customers that they've done an excellent job of fucking over.
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
This isnt some attempt to read your mind to see if your reading porn. All this machine does is look for "signs" from the elecromagnetic radiation from your brain that your under certain conditions.
Its like a Cop pulling someone from a crowd because there general movements/actions seem out of place. A person thats about to do something wrong tend to show signs based on there actions/behaviour.
This is the same thing that has been done for decades, just in a more advanced form.
Personal Website
so now all people with metal plates in their heads are terrorists...
-- Coops
zadok.org.uk
I think this may be an easy way to defeat these heart & brain wave analyzers.
I have found it easier to tell untruths and such while drinking a little bit im sure most of us already know about that side effect. A similiar effect happens while on Benzodiazepines such as xanax, ativan, klonopin, and of course the old stand by valium. Check em i think its pretty interesting...
I suppose NASA will call this machine of theirs Cerebro. Where is Magneto and his psychic sheilded helmet when we need him? I'll take two.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
Either way, I think it's a horrible intrusion of privacy.
It can't be stressed enough how important it is to have the shiny side pointing out. This is needed because the shiny side is most reflective to psychotronic radiation, while the dull side can actually, in certain environmental conditions, absorb it.
However, it is also wise to complement this with a layer of foil pointing shiny side in. This will keep your brain waves, which are also reflected by the shiny side, from being picked up by mind-reading equipment.
There is a small number of aluminum foil researchers who believe that this may cause an alpha-wave harmonic to build up in the skull resulting in memory loss or pseudo- religious visions, but their findings have never been replicated by the aluminum foil research community at large. Even if their findings are validated, the risk involved is small compared to the potential of mind-intrusion.
-- AFDB
Maybe they could equip the flight attendants with these things so actually show up when I want another !@#$ing soda.
My
Limekiller
With metal detectors, geiger counters, bomb sniffing equipment, brain and heart rate scanners, not to mention the radar, radios, cell phones, computers, flourecent lighting, etc.
How long will it be before all of the EM radiation converges and produces some kind of secondary effect, say like a worm hole or quantum singularity, or maybe fusion?
if we're all wore wearable computers and your brainwaves could be emmited over 2.4 GHz humans could essentially be "telepathic" right? haha
Or better yet, everyone could wear IR transmitters and transmit the data themselves instead of having the brain-wave sensors all over the place, just have one per person.
Then you'd have to be in direct line of sight to read each other's minds.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I thought NASA was the space agency. You know, charged with making space shuttles fly missions into outer space. I had no idea NASA was analogous to NSA, the national security agency.
Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. -Ayn Rand
I'd love to hear people's thoughts on how this is (or isn't) different from the standard x-ray and metal detector rigamarole. Seems like many of the complaints one could register against this approach would also apply to the already existing intrus^H^H^H^H^H^Hsecurity measures.
My deviantArt site
Anyway, the signal to noise ratio will be tremendous unless a fantastic group of parallel algorithms along with miraculous hardware is available that enables an AI aspect that in many ways could be even more perceptive than actual human thought.
Then we get the fact that any terrorist or criminal is worth anything is going to train for this. The common theme among all these idiotic plans that government bestows upon us is that they fail to understand that you should build up on basics before instead of depending on gadgets.
Now bring back in privacy issues, due process and so forth and you are left with a system that allows any one person to subvert it for their own personal gain. You in essence setup multiple powder kegs and leave out the torches in reach of any bureacrat. I don't think I ever voted in the entire executive branch. When people have power over me that is not strictly limited and regulated by those I place in power, then the chances are great that it can be abused or neglected. THe result is not only a destruction of our way of life... but in the end we will be less safe than before. Terrorists need not attack our country anymore, it is apparent what they did was enact a chain effect where by our 'well meaning' gray hairs will do the rest for them [the terrorists]
How long until we get these devices installed in our offices?
All employees shall need to be brain scanned first in order to determine their suitability for work.
You're under arrest for the future murder of...
Maybe the movie shouldn't be catagorized as science fiction any more
"Good things don't end with eum, they end with mania or teria." - H. Simpson
The court case dealt with a guys' activity inside his own home... the police deduced that he was growing marijuana by the amount of heat his house was giving off in the basement (if I remember correctly) seemed to indicate that he had heat lamps on at night.
In this case it is the home. But just as it is illegal for the police to search your home if there's no suspicions (4th amendment), they're not allowed to search your car, nor your person.
In the case of the airport, it's a little bit unclear, since submitting to a search could be a prerequisite for them to allow you on a plane. You don't have a right to ride an airplane, they just can't necessarily arrest you for violating the law due to these search techniques.
So, while you're technically right, that you're submitting yourself to search... it's not because it's public, but because it's at an airport. If the nations' airports become even more federalized, or if the security at airports can arrest you for specific "intent" before action; that's when it becomes a constitutional matter.
I don't recall if there's anything in the law books that allows for punishment of intended crime even if nothing is acted on...
-k
yours,
kbs
There's good news and bad news. The bad news is that the government is making an active attempt to read peoples' minds. The good news is that it's never going to work---if the description in this article is any indication of how they're going to go about it.
How could I possibly know it's not going to work? Well, let's just say I worked for a company that burned up millions of dollars attempting to do something FAR less ambitious than these bozos at NASA have set out to do. We were using essentially the same techniques as described in the article, with one incredible difference. THE NASA THING IS NOT GOING TO TOUCH YOU. BAA HAAA HAAAAA! I nearly broke a rib when I read they're going to gather the EEG signals---I have to steady myself from laughing so hard as I type---without placing a "cap" on the subject. Wait, can you hear that? It's the sound of my former co-workers laughing their asses off. What is the NASA team going to do *I'm still chuckling*, have every airline passenger step inside a Faraday cage packed with room temperature, superconductive sensors built by little gnomes at Area 51!?
We've been there, we've tried this....well, minus the full body Faraday cage and extraterrestrial sensors. That is, we had the luxury of actually using a standard EEG headset to collect the data. And it was still difficult to JUST GET QUALITY DATA. EEG is the biggest pain in the ass to work with. Ask ANYONE who's ever dealt with it.
Well, say NASA can wave a magic wand and somehow collect the data, then what? Predict high order human behaviors and thought processes by analyzing EEG with some other special herbs and spices thrown in for good measure? It may sound good on paper, but I'm here to tell ya: It's bullsh*t. No, it's double bullsh*t. Two years and millions of dollars later, I'll tell you what we got: Snake Eyes. Nothing. Jack. Nil. And I can assure you that we weren't going for anything remotely as hard as this NASA thing. We had lots of PhDs, freaks, nerds, experts, etc. It didn't matter. The feds would have a better chance of getting at the intent of an individual if they would let a circus macaque run loose in the terminal, randomly identifying "terrorists" in the crowd!
In case you think I'm kidding about all of this, that's me in the pictures. Pic1 Pic2 Pic3
Down with President Clark!! errr... wrong reality, sorry.
----- The aluminum foil helmet is for my protection!
So, firstly if you're a terrorist aware that your brain may be scanned, you'll smoke a spliff. Or meditate.
Secondly, if you're nervous about having your brain scanned, you'll get more nervous and end up getting cavity searched.
It's like the arguments on spam mail yesterday - terrorists can adapt to terrorist filters pretty easily, and this is CERTAINLY not a 0 false positives scenario.
If you can't see this, click here to enable sigs.
I used to be sad that there were so many emerging technologies I'd never get to see. I'm less sad after reading this.
My
Limekiller
I can see the court cases now.
Sexual harassment charge: "You were harbouring lewd thoughts about the air hostess, don't try to deny it!"
Air rage charge: "Ok so you claim you were only THINKING about throttling that kid in the row behind you, tough luck, throttling is throttling"
Seditious thoughts charge "So you were delayed at checkin, that doesn't give you the right to think the security controls are crap"
Didn't Arnold got a body scan at the airport? He then took his head off and tossed it to the guards where it blew up.
Great, now we're going to have terrorist's heads blowing up. Airport security will then start checking hats AND shoes. Doh!
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
RIAA/MPAA of course!!
You there! STOP! We are sueing you for thinking of a copyrighted song, as you have the potential to duplicated it within your mind or sing it to someone, thus resulting in us lossing millions!
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
Wow, all I can say to that is "can you get any more blatently big brotherish than this?" A lot of the 1984-esque things that have been going on lately have been similar to BB and nazi germany (report your friends etc), but suddenly they are proposing a literal thought police?
*shaking head*
Wow
putting power like this into the hands of government is the equivelent of giving the controls of worldwide placed nuclear weapons into the hands of angry gorillas who like pressing buttons. Its not that I don't trust government personnel as a whole from a ethics and moralistic perspective... because I don't. I simply do not trust in their competence. I work with those monkeys and they prove on a daily basis that what they lack in understanding, skill and ability they will make up in endless red tape and buzz words. Funny how China is slowly becoming more free (and Russia is ahead of them) yet the US, CAN, AUS, NZ, UK, GER, etc are becoming more of a socialist state.
This technology is useless. Half the people in the airport are going to light up for one reason or another.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
Isn't this going to be discrimination against mental and heart patients?
It's is soooo misleading the way this story is being headlined everywhere today.
An electroencephalogram (EEG) is not capable knowing what images or thoughts are in your head. An EEG can only measure electrical activity and create a graph of that activity. Think of the output of a heart monitor - a line goes up and down in time to the heart's beating. Now think of a couple dozen lines that represent the electrical spikes in major nodes of the brain.
An EEG can detect abnormal brain activity as a result of disease, head trauma, or seazure. It cannot tell me if you are an asshole.
This idea is a red herring. I think the fear it creates is more useful to law enforcement than the actual tool itself. The output of an EEG is not very useful in a court of law.
Doesn't this sound like what is described in George Orwell's 1984? The big brother is observing what you're thinking... sounds scary to me...
Maybe between all postings slagging Microsoft and its practices we can all take some time to speak out against mindreading governments.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
IIRC, the Washington Times is a rather biased, right-wing paper owned by the Unification Church. Or used to be, anyway. Anyone have recent data?
Uhmmmm.... I would like to know what you get..if you place such a device next to a windows machine... would you would find a lot of terrorist activity?
Nautilus
From having worked with EEG's before, both on the recording end, and the analyzing end, I can tell you it is amazingly difficult.
We were doing something that would get much better results anything they can do in airports, which is fitting an cap of about 30 electrodes on the head, and meticulously calibrating them so they are in good contact with the scalp. It requires a special gel to get good conductivity.
Even so, the data was very difficult to analyze. There is a low signal to noise ratio. In our case we didn't have a lot of outside electrical noise, but there just is a lot going on inside a persons head. And different people have different EEG's, some very strong, others weak and hard to analyze. Analysis frequently requires advanced techniques such as wave decomposition (I'm forgetting the real term for this, though).
What this is about is signal detection. My personal view is that the signal to noise ratio will be incredibly low, making this detection fairly useless. Either there will be too many false alarms, or not enough hits. So i wouldn't start worrying yet.
Let's hope they don't hook us up to 802.11b systems, we'll have people driving by looking for open access points.
But then again FCC might not like the signal range, or the RIAA sues everyone - because the brainwave patterns belong to them and everyone isn't allowed to communicate with each other.
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
what's better?
(a) a tinfoil hat project
OR
(b) sex with a mare?
I don't think this would give me second thoughts about flying Northwest... it seems as though Northwest is trying to position itself as "the secure airline"... a strategy that I'm surprised no airline has really tried to use since the terrorist attacks. (Sure, you can take Foo Airways, where the only security scan is a newly minted federal employee staring at the women on the x-ray cam, but wouldn't you prefer to take Bar Airways where they interview each passenger rigorously, require biometric ID and scan aganinst federal fingerprint databases before issuing a ticket, check branwave scans etc... I think it has marketing potential.)
Whether these measures are effective or not is questionable, and I would agree if this became federally mandated it would be invasive, but this seems to be a private initiative so far and thus not much to worry about.
> This is the second story recently that gives me second thoughts about flying Northwest.
Fact: Every singly time (yes, literally, every time) I have flown with NorthWest, they have managed to send my luggage somewhere other than my destination. I don't need anything else to give me second thoughts about flying with them...
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Minority Report?
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Anyone reading my brainwaves would get a piece of my mind...
Remember: If you buy anything from spammers, you have a small penis.
... he'd have fitted EEG ports on our heads...
The real question we should be asking is: If this works, how long until they figure out to actually modify the brainwaves of the people they are scanning, or to create new brainwaves/thoughts/ideas? I know if sounds crazy, but who would have thought that even reading the brainwaves were possible 10 to 20 years ago?
And so we go, on with our lives
We know the truth, but prefer lies
Lies are simple, simple is bliss
Everyone knows that you can tell if someone is a criminal by the pattern of bumps on their skull.....
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
what's with the google shirt? please tell me google wasn't trying to read minds ...
It seems to me that the September 11th hijackings were a result of gross incompetence by the respective authorities that are in charge of plane/airport security. No one can say that they couldn't have predicted it, hi-jackings have happened before, suicide attacks have happened before, and even both together have been at least attempted before, maybe even successfully. Nothing was done to try and prevent this, but now, after its happened, and at a time when its becoming increasingly unlikely that it will happen again, they want to waste time and money looking into sci-fi, big brother security methods that no-one wants, and that don't work. I don't worry that i will be hit by a plane, or even that a plane im on will be hijacked, there are lots of things that are far more likely to happen - like getting run-over on the way to the airport, or being mugged. I don't appreciate anything they are trying to do, they are being paid to sit around pursuing dumb ideas that we all know aren't the solution. This is like Microsoft developing Palladium which is way over-the-top, just because they cant accept that all the security flaws/vbs virii in their products are their own fault.
:)
Anyway, everyone knows that the only real way to make planes safe is to put a big sign at the gate "Danger! Hijacking this plane and flying it into buildings is dangerous and may result in injury and/or death"
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
This is the second story recently that gives me second thoughts about flying Northwest.
First, the article *I* read never said that Northwest was behind this plan, only that a proposal was *made* to Northwest. Sheesh.
But on a side note, if there were studies out there that could indicated that this work really could potentially catch people who posed threats, I'd be the first to get on a Northwest plane. I don't, after all, have a problem with people passing my body through various screening methods, and I don't have a problem with people looking at the contents of my luggage.
Based on NASA's recent history confusing inches with centimeters and kilograms with pounds, I have serious questions on thier ability to pull this off...
How many mili-inches to a brain wave anyway?
If I give them a mental picture of The Finger, will it show up?
I just find it ironic that the people who are supposedly the New Adopters of society, those who are supposedly on the cutting edge of technology are really no different than the rest of the herd.
Yes, this government of ours, just like almost all governments of the past, at various times in history, is likely to abuse this power of "mindreading", but guess what? If the tool is not working right, you fix it, and you do not just abandon it....time to start voting for third party candidates, people....
and BTW, if it is not obvious, I strongly the "mindreading" technology, and advocate thse widespread use of videocams in public places....
This post is protected under the DMTA (Digital Millemium Trolling Act). It is illegal to moderate it as a troll.
Another proof of the validity of "The United States of America: country of unforseen liberty"
The last time I linked to the Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie. Well, who's laughing now? ;-)
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
this is nothing more than a million dollar mood ring. 99% of the cost of one of these is making the bar grapf that will make NW part with some of their pile of $
This is the second story recently that gives me second thoughts about flying Northwest.
Exactly !
Someone ought to investigate how the new, post-911, dragonian security measures are affecting the number of people that won't fly.
If they are reading brain-waves and penalising people based on those readings, shouldn't it be called thought-crime ?
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Aw, you had me all excited about brain controlled jet fighters
And once we're all used to getting EEG'ed, we'll all sit by and watch as they slowly get more powerful and more accurate over the next 30 years until they basically ARE reading your thoughts with some high degree of effectiveness. (And of course they will demand to stick a cap on your head as soon as they find out it won't work without it.)
We need to stop this, preferably sooner rather then later. The brain must be held as sacrosanct, or we'll really going to regret letting this go.
Another trading freedom for illusory security story again.
What, you don't want your mind read? You must be a terrorist. Your citizenship is revoked. HAND.
Imagine the headlines..... "In other news, the Thought Police made their BILLIONTH arrest today, as yet another man, tried to board a plane, carrying an illegal thought. He was tried and convicted this afternoon, and will be put to death, tomorrow 1600 EST, Channel 5."
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
To this kind of brain-wave invasion:
Professor Chaos!
It could be that this new "technology" doesn't exist at all. It's probably just a deception that will justify selective ethnic profiling. "Gee, walk through this gate. It will read your brainwaves and heartbeat. Don't be afraid, it's harmless and non-intrusive. We can't actually read your thoughts, but we can get a pretty good idea of your state of mind and intentions from your physiological data." translates into walk through this gate with the pretty blinking lights, and we will pull you aside, run background checks all the way back to your great grandparents, interrogate you anyway we see fit, and if we find anything, you win a FREE all expenses paid vacation to Cuba.
To bluff the system, just wrap a wet towel around your head, or if you're wearing a turban, dunk your head quickly in and out of a toilet.
"All the graphs are showing a big middle finger.."
everyone knows google's 'magic' works thanks to pigeons ...
l
http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.htm
http://www.lessemf.com/personal.html
http://www.rfsafe.com/rfclothing.htm
http://www.nspworldwide.com/
and some industrial stuff
http://euclidgarment.com/KWGARD.html
There is plenty info out there if you search for RF protective or emf protective clothing.
I like the RF Safe Baseball Caps myself.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
except no mind reading involved here. there actually was a patent to the effect of remotely reading eeg. it consisted of 2 parts: part1 sent out 2 signals at different (high) frequencies, the signals were *modulated* by ur brain as they passed, then picked up on the otherside. by interpreting the interference patterns, they were able to read your brain waves.
on the other side...they could figure out exactly what signals to send in order for the modulate signals to be what THEY wanted, so it would not only monitor, but given sufficient amplitude, CONTROL!!
they were only able to read alpha waves and a few beta, but it would be interesting to get some gamma readings (and control them). gamma are the readings which are supposedly indicitive of your senses. so, see something or hear something, and it would show up on gamma frequency (30-40 hz) waves. makes sense why we can only distinguish 30-40hz in video.
QED
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
Of course you are correct.
To suggest we have any technology today that can infer a person's thoughts is ludicrous. Even at a coarser level, to suggest that a momentary detection of brainwaves can be reliably correlated with some "bank" of known EEG signatures which indicates the disposition or identity of the subject is fantasy.
The weakness and noisiness of scalp potentials cannot be overstated. The devices we use in our lab are state of the art, but even these require a sophisticated multi-electrode cap, each electrode carefully primed with an electrolytic gel, and fed into an extremely sensitive amplifier, while the subject sits in a completely electrically isolated room (basically, a glorified Faraday cage).
And even when *all that* goes well, the data you collect is extremely noisy due to the inherrent conflation of *billions* of neurons all contributing to the recorded potentials. The solution is multi-event averaging. We give subjects 100s of trials, and only after tedious signal processing and averaging can we extract the gross electrical activity associated with a particular cognitive act ("event related potential").
And to suggest that we (cognitive scientists) have some sort of repertoire of electrical signatures mapped to "thought patterns" is preposterous. The best is the suggestion that particular waveforms are associated with "orienting" or "error-making" or "perception" or "novelty." Most serious scientists work hard to localize these signatures to particular brain structures (a whole industry unto itself) rather than wonder if these tiny effects can tell us about a person's hidden agenda.
Much has been made in the popular press about a particular waveform called the P300...a characteristic "positive-going" wave occurring around "300" milliseconds post stimulus onset. This waveform has been associated with attending to a novel stimulus. Some people have suggested using this waveform as a sort of ERP "lie-detector" using the following flawed thinking: If you show a suspect scenes from a crime, if they are novel (new to the suspect), they'll elicit a P300. If they are not surprising (indicated by a *lack* of P300), then the guy's seen the scene before and is guilty. I won't even begin to address all the problems with this "guilt by failure to disconfirm" approach...I'm sure you all are bright enough to see the logical holes, much less the technical and cogntive-theoretical problems.
Anyway...no, some guy passing through a gate, and some gee-wizardry fingering him as a terrorist-like baddy? Only in Ashcroft's wet dreams for now.
The September 11th terrorists engaged all sorts of nervous, suspicious behavior, and security guards didn't notice, or felt in inappropriate to subject them to further scrutiny (yes, yes, they let them get through with box cutters when they shouldn't, yadda, yadda).
Is it appropriate or inappropriate for a human to make the call for further scrutiny based on nervous and suspicious behavior? If it is appropriate, then why is it bad for machines to detect suspicious and nervous behavior in these situations? Despite the reference to "Mind Reading", the technology, whether based on reading brainwaves or other physiologic responses, is really only looking for signs of heightened agitation. Yes there will be false positive (especially at introduction of these technologies), but why are these false positives inherently worse, than false positives by alert security officers detecting suspicious behavior?
For arguments sake, lets assume a 100% accuracy rate in detecting stress or agitation. Should nervous or agitated people be allowed to fly without some attempt to ascertain the source of their agitation?
Now they may have a personal reason they don't wish to divulge.
"I'm afraid of flying"
"I just got a divorce"
"I'm moving to a new job"
"I'm afraid of being asked why I'm afraid"
They should just be informed they can/should respond:
"Yes I am feeling some degree of stress for personal reasons."
Many may be surprised to learn they are giving off signs of being stressed, which may of benefit for them to be aware of.
Gun toting terrorists are likely respond with the majority in saying:
"Yes I am feeling some degree of stress for personal reasons"
But they would still have shown up to security screens as requiring extra attention.
While such automated scrutiny is likely to stress some people, especially at introduction, it could potentially make airport checking much quicker for the majority, and even for the minority, since their additional screening occurs immediately, instead of in line with everyone.
I agree there should be checks and balances for the use of such technologies. They are not appropriate for all areas, but to reject them outright in all situations is probably short sighted. Many things in life are a compromise from the ideal. The ideal freedom would be to board all planes with no screening, and having them fall from the sky in some percentage due to terrorism, which would just be the price we pay for complete privacy and freedom. I'm sure x-ray screening technologies were initially seen by some as too intrusive. As threat scales up, so must our technological intervention.
False positives must be assumed to occur, and those people that need further screening must be handled in such a way as not to stigmatize them, stress them further, or alarm other passengers. Even without this technology, near strip searches in front of other boarding passengers fails this requirement.
BTW, I would rather respond to why this would be bad, if the technology works, rather than why it won't work, which in all truth may not work well enough now, but can probably be made to work well enough in the future.
Let my pillorying begin at the hands of /. Freedom Fighers. :-)
Letter To Iran
...tin-foil hat!!!!
They ain't gonna steal *MY* brainwaves!!!
It would be interesting to know how they will tell the difference between terrorists and angry people... Oh I know, the ones about to die for Allah are at peace and the others are just unhappy people because of the cramped seats.
Are there electrical signals formed in the brain that are 1. not random and 2. that change with the thoughts of the person?
If yes, then at some point in time, if not tomorrow, then the next day, and if not the next day, then at some number N days in the future, and if not N days, then N + K days in the future, there will exist technology to "read minds" as we commonly understand it today.
You may agree with me, and yet say that the NASA studies are irrelevant b/c we are so far away from that sort of technology. I disagree with that position. I maintain that with respect to mind reading tech, we are at point A, and in order to read minds we need to be at point B. Well, I maintain that the trip to point B is not free, and that the NASA research is a good starting point. And IMO, mind reading research is much more worthy in terms of being funded than would be trips to Mars, etc.
This post is protected under the DMTA (Digital Millemium Trolling Act). It is illegal to moderate it as a troll.
An employee was told an idea he thought of at work was the property of his employer. I mean c'mon if he doesn't tell them the whole idea will they take is brain out?
When will these folks realise that you need more security people not half-baked technology, I'm sure a determined terrorist groups take out the electricity supply to the airport.
I have heard of NASA making control mechanism for jet pilots that register eye movements and brain waves to control planes. What ... are they going to put a joystick in everyone's hands and flash a picture of a big building in front of everyone and wait for the "steer into building" brain wave?
... the next terrorist attack will come where you least expect it to or from an opening that free society is not willing to close up ... yet.
Guess what folks
They will hear my hip hop tunes for which I am so fallen. Peace, all bro.
Wow, now that is a cool idea!
Now this is a security measure that I can deal with.
One Tiamat at every terminal!
All terrorists will be engulfed in Hell-flames forged in the belly of the guardian dragon located at the Delta counter at terminal C.
is Hooters Air
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
My boss was smart, he made them sign a reverse-NDA so anything they said was public. Sadly, the ideas were always worthless, and the demos had such deliberate deception. Somebody must be buying because there were so many, but I found that hard to believe.
- The Washington Times is not a real newspaper. It is a publication of the Rev. Sun Moon's Unification Church that was founded in the 1980s to advance church interests by influencing people who would mistake the publication for the Washington equivalent of The New York Times.
- Church funding
- A decent sports section (not news)
- The Washington Times did not obtain these documents from the government; EPIC did. The EPIC story plays down the brain-reading aspect by devoting only one sentence to it:
- Neither organization which claims to have these documents provides them or quotes more than one out-of-context sentence fragment from them. Normally when an organization obtains government documents through FOIA, it provides the focuments themselves as proof. Anything obtained through FOIA is public record. If EPIC took the trouble to show us its FOIA request in PDF format, why isn't it showing us the documents it claims were obtained?
Conclusions:You should see the stories they ran during the Clinton administration... one front page I remember staring out of the newsbox at me as I walked up the Metro steps one day featured a giant photo of kids dancing around a bonfire at a rave. The headline on that story criticized Clinton for not supporting an "anti-drug" bill, but the article said nothing about the fact that he was opposed to the non-drug-related things that were tacked onto the bill.
The publication survives for two reasons:
This kind of voodoo isn't new to the legal system: fingerprints, graphology, fiber analysis, and lie detectors are all suspicious to some degree because they have not been evaluated with the kind of scientific rigor that is necessary. Similarly, DNA tests, where we have a good scientific basis for knowing how reliable they are, are often not carried out with scientific rigor by forensic labs (e.g., the DNA tests during OJ's trial were ridiculously sloppy).
But, you see, the people we elect as our representatives usually are lawyers and administrators, and they have no clue about truth or evidence. When some previously successful entrepreneur, or someone with a big name, or someone who can talk fancy, tells them something, they believe it and pay lots of money for it. Scientists and engineers to them are just more talking heads who can't be very smart because otherwise they wouldn't be satisfied with being scientists and engineers.
Time to line your hat with Aluminum foil. It's been effective in protecting me from the Orbital Mind Control Lasers. NASA isn't at tech savvy as the NSA or CIA. You may have to use the Reynold's Freezer Foil wrap. It's thickerer and should protect you adequately from a close range scan.
The ACLU should immediatly sue them under the DMCA. After all the only true intellectual property is what's in your head.
Brother, can you paradigm?
The reason for testing brain-waves is to ditect those who havn't been brain washed.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Note that the problem isn't necesssarily with the "brain wave measurements" themselves--it's plausible that you might be able to determine familiarity of a picture from such measurements to some degree of reliability. The problem is that it is completely unclear how reliable any such measurement would be for finding actual terrorists. For example, after you have seen a set of images once during one screening, you will remember them. Next time, they will be familiar (people remember even images that they have seen very briefly basically forever).
Any scheme for identifying terrorists has to have a very low false positive rate because the consequences of misidentification are so serious. Establishing a low false positive rate requires not only extensive testing, but also just a lot of experience with a new technology.
A further problem is that you'll have people argue that flying is a privilage, and therefore they can suspend or seriously modify your rights while in transit. I disagree with this concept as well; this sort of thinking implies that, unless you walk everywhere, your rights are subject to forfit.
Here we totally disagree. Already, probably from the day the first airports opened you gave up rights when flying. I don't see people with firearms on boarding planes. People are asked to have their posessions searched (and I'm sure they wouldn't allow you to fly if you refused their requests). If this weren't so, I think very few people would dare to fly.
For example, yesterday I was sitting at a sushi place eating lunch and reading a copy of a book about the crusades. Should a cop be able to search me or my bag? Is that fact that I'm reading a book called "Holy War" in public overwhelm my fourth amendment rights? Of course not.
No, you should have the right to refuse the cop to search you. You could be reading a book on how to make bombs and not have your rights compromised because of this. However, if you were seen doing this, you shouldn't be surprised if officials were keeping a closer eye on you.
"Stop that man! He copied the Spiderman movie without paying!"
Table-ized A.I.
that computers were the devil's work. This application just proves my point.
Gotta go get me some tinfoil...
Computer:Citizen! Why have you concealed your brainwaves?
Citezen: Oh merciful and great computer, I have concealed nothing from you...
Computer: Citizen, I know that you have not concealed your brainwaves from me, that would not be possible. Please report to summary interrogation in level Purple.
Citizen: But great Computer, I am only a Red level citizen and thus unable to venture into the Purple levels.
Computer: Citizen, level Red is currently undergoing clean up after an "incident". Please report for summary execution in level Blue.
The game paranoia is closer than you think.
Aluminum foil hats reach record high in sales!
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Because their users will be thinking about:
Crashing (potential suicide bomber/hijacker)
Killing (playing too much Q3/UT2002)
Bad thoughts in general (Windows users at anytime the system does a random reboot)...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
..isn't there a name for that? Anyway, I wonder if that's what's going on. They tell you that they can read your brainwaves, so anyone who has something to hide (and doesn't know how ludicrous this claim is) will immediately become nervous, thus changing their behaviour enough that security personnel will notice.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
They wouldn't have to do this if they simply divided the plane into "Terrorist" and "Non-Terrorist" sections.
"Sir, you can't light up your sneakers in this section. I am sorry, but you are going to have to move to the Terrorist section if you want to continue."
Table-ized A.I.
I wish you guys would put up spoiler warnings when you post reviews of movies. I haven't seen Minority Report yet. Uh, what? I'm sorry, I thought...
I don't know how many times this has to be drummed into people's heads. Just because I am standing there - delayed for the 3rd time in one day due to obvious incompetence - could make me think "Wow, I would like to kill a few people." Does this mean that I am actually going to go out there and kill them? No, of course not, because I am not a maniac.
There is a difference between thinking about something and actually doing it.
With all that kind of security, terrorists can't make it onto a plane to kill people anymore. They're just gonna have to kill them at the terminal.
Stop them at the gates so you can't get inside the terminal, they'll kill people on the highway.
Stop you at the toll booth so you don't get on the highway, they'll kill people in the supermarket.
And so on and so on. Eventually, mofos will just bum rush your house and fuck you up in there, or roll up on you in your driveway.
My point you say. All this technology is not going to do shit. If someone wants to get you, they'll get you regardless. They'll just have to think smarter.
With five-dollar-an-hour security checkpoint employees operating the scanning equipment, I have to assume that every now and then one of them would screw up the voltage and fry the brain of a passenger who is walking through. The first few times this would shock the other passengers, but eventually we'd accept it as the price of secure air travel and we'd get used to hearing:
Followed by the collective groan of the travelers in aisle seven who are faced with a choice between jumping onto the end of another line or waiting for "Irv from cleanup" to arrive.The other thing that the press is not going to make clear is that an EEG is only a tool, and a DOCTOR must then enter that process and make a determination of the patient's health. Airports are not going to find people with the skills to conduct and read an EEG who will work for burger-flipping wages.
Airport EEGs would be more expensive than the bomb sniifing machines, the see-thru-your-clothes machines, and all of the other crazy ideas that will kill off air travel.
EEGs can help determine brain damage or death. The press is going to make this sound like a TV that shows pictures of what's in your head.
And perhaps that's the real goal here - to make the under-educated third world believe that terrorism will be more difficult, if not impossible. After all, the Americans can now read minds. The idea is the most powerful thing here. This doesn't have to work, it only has to make people THINK that it works.
It tried to sell anything it could the the Chinese, then tried to get a blowjob from the water fountain.
It's always interesting to see the differences between the two papers. If a story is bad for Democrats, it's on the front page on the sLimes, and most likely not even carried by the comPost. Conversely, if it's bad for the Republicans, the comPost will probably beat it like a dead horse. They're still occasionally running stories about the 2000 election and how if the moon were full and there were 17 drunk monkeys counting the ballots, Gore may have won if he had managed to squeeze out an 8-gallon shit and wiped with his left hand widdershins.
The Washington Times is a "real newspaper". Many people dismiss it because of its owner/publisher. It's funny that they don't apply the same standard to other newspapers that are owned or founded by eccentric people with political agendas. That would disqualify many of today's "respectable" newspapers.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/homepage/mlb_
That explains how this shadowy organization is able to launch its satelites. This conspiracy has, of course, been thoroughly documented.
they've just created a market for brainwave jammer... anyone likes to buy one ? :)
with (100/2/6)% accuracy.
you have "sex" on your mind.
(2 for males being half the population and 6 for well the every six second thing.. so sex is on your mind 1/6th the time.)
and NASA is getting funded for that??!!
You mean passengers would want to kill gays and lesbians? Interesting.
I guess im part of the minority tho ...
NASA plans to read terrorist's minds at airports, blah, blah, blah ...
Means:
NASA looking for huge budget increase.
Incidentally, the headline says "NASA plans to read terrorist's minds at airports". Why only one terrorist, why does he have more than one mind (schizophrenia?) and if they already know that he's a terrorist, isn't the process redundant?
Sigs are bad for your health.
1. I have had EEGs done before. There are several types, and (generally) the more accuracy you want, the more electrodes and skull scraping are needed. How close can you get electrodes placed in a public area to a person's brain?
2. What about epileptics, others with neurological disorders, and those taking (legal) neurologically-active medication?
At least somebody could make a killing selling mobile processing power for these units.
Will make me paranoid, hence my heart rate will increase and I will get arrested
The article seems terribly misleading. "Plans to read terrorists minds"? No, they plan to read EVERYONE's minds searching for terrorists. If they could identify the terrorists in the first place there wouldn't be a nead for reading the brain waves.
It seems airports are fair game for taking away civil liberties now. Beyond just searching your property and bags, it isn't an infringement on your personal liberties to search your person - clothed and/or naked, see your body completely naked through a low yield scanner, predict your behavior with software, profile you on the airline computers..... and now, read your brainwaves.
I'm close to the point where if I ever have to travel again for my employer, I'll simply refuse to. I don't care if I lose my job. I don't make enough money to justify being treated this way.
unless there's an ocean in the way.
Chip H.
Cutting edge sciences has determined that the brain waves of all living things are transmitted in what is known as the "zero point field". Go to here for more.
People such as yourself believe that all we know about now is all that can exist and what isn't here now can never exist. If we changed the year to 1502AD and someone said "we have has invented a rocket to go to moon." I'm guessing, based on your statements, that if you were in the year 1502AD, you would call it ludicrous, fantasy, preposterous, or someone's wet dream. Do you see my point?
I predict in twenty years the thought patterns of people will be like tuning into a radio. I wouldn't be surpised if the goverment already has this techinogly. The government has top secert project that are so advance that it's 30 to 40 even 50 year a head of our time. Best example? Lasers which were in use in 1950 but didn't become wide known to the public until the late 70's.
Let's get back on subject, the Russians developed and used mind control devices during the cold war and used those devices on their own people. There are KGB record of this. The airforce had a project in the early 80's for "remote seeing" that was cancled not because it was failure, but because it was too successful. I could go on and on about this if needed. Here's my last statement on this, we don't know much about the mind. To say something isn't possiable with the mind is what is truely ludicrous, fantasy, and preposterous.
Have a good day.
The journey is better then the end.
They're probably just checking for alpha, beta, delta, and theta waves.
Alpha - (8 to 13 Hz) Indicative of Relaxed, Awake State
Beta - (14 to 30 Hz) Fast, Unsynchronized Activity
Delta - (0.1 to 3Hz) Indicates Deep Sleep Highly Synchronized Brain Activity
Theta - (4 to 7 Hz) Slower Activity, Found in Sleep
They might combine them with heartbeat, breathing, eye, and electrical signals and feed it into an expert system or neural net to identify people that are unusually nervous.
In the future they'll hide incriminating images and voices all around you and check your EEG's for "P300 waves." If your brain recognizes too many of them, it'll increase the chances of you being a suspect. John Norseen, a scientist with Lockheed Martin, is often able to discern when subjects are thinking of particular numbers. He predicts that by 2005, brain mappers will be able to automatically scan the skulls of everyone going through airports to search for potential hijackers.
The Lie Detector That Scans Your Brain
They'll also have probability assessments of people instead of a definite guilty or innocent. Those with a higher probability of guilt will get more agency attention.
Eventually they'll know what you're thinking. They can already wire a computer to a cat's brain and create videos of what the animal was seeing.
All that's left is to reverse the process and plant ideas into your head.
What if I'm trying to battle my fear of flight?
What if those devils^H^Hces cause my brain to go into some funky state where I do turn homicidal?
What if all I wanted was to see my mother whom I've been angry with for 40 years but she or I am dying or I've been studying to be a monk and am almost ready to take my vow of silence, for that matter, what if Holy Ghost in me sends out funky signals and causes the machines to explode?
Bet you didn't think of that one did ya?
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
We have already given up our rights and then we go ahead and make Dubya president.
Isn't that like betting on the losing horse after it crossed the finish line?
People have given up enough rights already. It's time the government payed up with some safety and fairness.
Besides, with this brain scanning I won't be able to board a plane if I'm NDA'd to a company. I'll have too many trade secrets.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Thoughcrimes. What? What?
Should 20000 Leagues Under the Sea not be considered sci-fi now that we have submarines?:)
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
"Umm sir, you readings are very strange, I am afraid you will have to be detained."
"ON what charges?"
"This says here, illegal parking, jay walking, homosexuality, drug use, stealing candy from a baby, stealing candy as a baby."
"Anything else?"
"No."
"Check again."
"OH MY LOVING GOD! YOU ARE GOING TO STICK THIS MACHINE WHERE?!?!?!"
Then you are allowed on the flight with no further problems.
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
What if a terrorist doesn't get his instructions to hi-jack the plane until he is already on the plane? Wasn't this how the 9/11 attacks took place?
There's no place like ~/
Northwest and United are 2 airlines I would avoid flying @ all costs. The service is horrible!
A good, friendly airline (that won't try to read you mind) is SUN Country.
Sounds like NASA has chosen to scan for something they have no idea about. You have to have a brain first to understand what is coming from it. On the flip-side, probing people's minds based on their emmitted brainwaves may pose a threat to privacy. Despite everyone having the ability to emit brainwaves, there is no natural way to understand what another person is thinking just by "changing the mental channel". Since not everyone can do that, NASA would essentially be probing our minds and getting inside our personal thoughts. It was once thought that the last remaining bit of privacy was the space between our ears, but I guess NASA knows that too now...
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
It also icludes protection against punches,
kicks, stabs, mobile phone radiation and in
lucky cases gunshots...
So they'll find out what I think about the girl standing in line... and the same joke I think everytime I go to the airport; I want to run into a long lost friend named Jack, and shout "Hi" to him.
I see several people here on the public transit system that are absolutely convinced that NASA is scanning their brainwaves anyway. What good is it going to do to prove them right?
This sig no verb.
This is impossible, in about every way I can think of.
1. Technically: how are you going to check all those people's brainwaves within a reasonable amount of time?
2. Scientifically: what can you deduct from these waves, without knowing anything about the person's 'normal' behaviour, background, beliefs?
3. Legally: what are you going to do when somebody has an irregular brainwave-graph or fast heartbeat? Lock gramps away... based on what?
4. Politically: who will approve this... Correctomundo, nobody. Especially not the badass liars and politicians who are behind the law. Imagine, funding technology that sees through people... Must be their worst nightmare.
My girlfriend is deadly afraid of flying. Will she be refused access to the plane (not as if _she_ would mind)?
No, this is just FUD. I hope NASA sticks to space missions 'n' stuff, otherwise they'll drop from the 'slashdot cool companies and organisations' to the 'slashdot blacklist' in no time.
I say let 'em read our minds. Think about it. Why do you want privacy? Privacy is for people ashamed of their actions or thoughts. If it were possible, eliminating EVERYONES privacy all together would solve a lot of problems. Since this is probably not possible any time soon, I say stop your whining. Fly on an airline that favors privacy over than safety. Our other option is to fly handcuffed and naked, with no luggage. I'll fly on Norhtwest.
If you fail the screening, do they cancel your ticket and send you home? Or are you permanently banned from flying? Do they have you arrested and held indefinitely because you're a possible terrorist? Maybe Ashcroft has good timing with his desire (announced last week but given little press) to set up camps to hold citizens deemed a threat.
I really hope this isnt serious..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I thought that after 9/11, americans decided that it was ok to be racist and not allow anyone who looked arab or wore the attire to get on a plane, with all the storys of pilots kicking off passengers who they didnt like the look of, it seems that planes have been filtered of terrorists already.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Even if they cant do it, just teh thought that they are going to try should scare the hell out of everyone..
What in the world is going on? has everyone gone nuts?!?!?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Probing would involve the device emitting particles or photons (active sensor.) This device is almost certainly going to be designed to simply collect photons, a.k.a. radiation from the brain (passive sensor.) Given that, your arguement doesn't hold...
Personally I would suggest dowsing, it would be cheaper and probably just as reliable, with the side benefit that it would keep some homeless bag ladies employed and fed.
"So, first time on an airplane?"
"Y-yeah.."
"Nervous?"
"A little.."
"GET HIM!"
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
The Economist (www.economist.com) is a highly reputable news magazine and recently had a series of articles on the ethics of behavior modifying drugs and methods to "look into the brain". The article is called "The Future of Mind Control" from the May 22, 2002 issue. Sadly, I've passed my copy on to a friend, but it was a most interesting read.
Regards,
Slak
Im so glad I managed to patent those tin foil caps. I'll be a millionaire.
Maybe Big Brother isnt so bad aft...
I think that whoever approved this should be the first test subject. Let's see if he has any brainwaves.
Here's a complete list of successful El Al hijacking in the last 30 years:
They don't have brain-wave scanners. They don't have k3wl, l33t supertechnology. They don't even have armed pilots.
What they do have is bulletproof and hardened doors between cockpit and passengers, openly armed air marshals on board, and ground security that's trained and clueful.
They don't give terrorists a break with profiling.
I like Star Trek technology as well as the next guy, but I also recognize the difference between SF and reality.
Tech Public Policy stuff
chess butckfucker
You can use Josephson junction devices to remotely detect brain or heart signals.
/ squid.html>
From http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/solids
"The superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) consists of two superconductors separated by thin insulating layers to form two parallel Josephson junctions. The device may be configured as a magnetometer to detect incredibly small magnetic fields -- small enough to measure the magnetic fields in living organisms. Squids have been used to measure the magnetic fields in mouse brains to test whether there might be enough magnetism to attribute their navigational ability to an internal compass.
Threshold for SQUID: 10-14 T
Magnetic field of heart: 10-10 T
Magnetic field of brain: 10-13 T"
The rest of their proposal sounds like bs.
1- you can't train or test the system without allowing known terrorists to roam airports.
2- lie detectors don't work, except to frighten the gullible.
One, assuming the original article wasn't a troll, it must never be allowed.
I get pissed off and have the desire to cause hell death and destruction somewhat commonly. The difference between me and a terrorist isn't in our emotions, but in our intents. I could see technology like this being useful for psychologists, to help them understand their patients emotional states better, but beyond that it has no place. Our thoughts must remain our own. When all else fails, inherent in the human condition is freedom of thought. We could be beaten, locked up, working in a death labor camp, but we still have the freedom to think what we want even if we can't act on it. This would be a step towards destroying the one freedom that no amount of laws can remove or restirct.
I go through international borders all the time (it's part of my job) and last week I realized I'm ALWAYS nervous at the checkpoints. Who isn't now? It's downright intimidating nowadays to travel.
It's not that I'm doing anything wrong, I just don't like to hang out with guys with very large guns and more power over me than my own government does.
I let the search me and everything, answer all their questions, but it is a bit intimidating. It also doesn't help when you look arab too.
If they went though with that, they'd have to pull over half the people that go through, heartrates and all.
"Don't be nervous while we aim weapons at you and read your innermost thoughts. Really, it's okay..relax!"
-Net
at least it wasnt slashdot who blew it this time
Ok, great. No two brainwave patterns are alike. We'll have 99.9% matching under any circumstance, right? Can't fake a brainwave like you can a face with plastic surgery. But here at Slashdot, it's our job to poke holes in, destroy, mutilate and otherwise tap-dance over silly ideas such as these. My contribution to this high and lofty goal? ECM Jammers, of course! These devices are measuring the electro magnetic energy radiating from the brain (I assume, since they're not going to have time to shave everybodies head and attatch electrodes to them as they wait in line), right? How hard could it be to build something the size of a cellphone and jam these scanners? Just seed an airport with a bunch of them (assuming a low cost of production) and their several million dollar scanner becomes a mere paper weight while airport security faces increasing pressure to just start letting people through without scanning. Silly rabbit. When will they learn you just can't beat the ol' Mk1 Eyeball and field experience...
Oh and if you wanted to get really tricky, have these ECM devices mimic somebody elses brainwaves at a higher output, hopefully confusing, and/or overriding your scan. They really should consult with us before slapping the money down for this stuff. We'd save them so much time.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Umm, lets stop and think about this before you haul off and create that new world order. You're walking through security and see the ugliest, most hideous security woman you've ever seen in you're life. Revolting. Now whether you're ashamed of that thought or not is beside the point. How is she going to treat you when she finds out what you think of her? What kind of effect is hearing that 500 times a day going to have on her psyche? What if you just happen to be number 501 and she snaps, capping you on the spot?
>Security Check in progress...
>Initiating text dump of last 5 minutes of conscious thought...
>Scan #1187-AA, Session 3.04
"Damn she's fine. Wow, that stewardess has the finest ass I've ever seen! I'd like to have her bent over a table and shoot my load-- WHAT THE--!! THAT HAS TO BE THE UGLIEST SECURITY GUY I'VE EVER SEEN!!! Wait a minute... That's no GUY!!! She's got warts all over her...! And a mustache! No!! I hope she doesn't touch me!" etc, etc...
>Download complete.
>Keyword matches: Shoot, Security [1% of process]
>Subject scores 20% terrorist rating.
Yep, I'm sure you never have one of those thoughts you probably never should have had and I'm sure you'd just love it being shared with the rest of the world, right?
You need a FREE iPod Nano
In summary, don't be afraid. Just open your wallet, nod your head a few times, and everything will be just fine.
paledim
tear yourself apart and feel this resonance
This is a joke right? You're just trying to irk us, right? I mean, this is the stuff of conspiracy theories and urban legends. This is beyond 1984, man! Have the aliens landed yet?
I have a friend who is a secretary for the RIAA, she says that they are actually considering licensing that technology for that very purpose.
It's like trying not to be nervous at the doctor's office. Just thinking about being nervious makes you more nervous, which, when you think about it, makes you even more nervous!
Unless they figure that whoever shows no signs whatsoever of being nervous must be the twisted assailant - hmmm, that just might work. Because we all know that it's OK to cause fear and panic for millions, just as long as we catch the 1 terrorist per year. Or, maybe, every other one.
If one in ten people can fool a lie detector by being calm, one in ten thousand could fool this by being a religious zealot who believes they are doing 'gods' work...
It won't work.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Fact is, a scientologist has such a superior mind that
they will not be affected by this type of mind control.
Did you know that scientologists are the ONLY group of
people on the planet that will not have to wear a
tinfoil hat. All of their thetans have been taken care of.
They are clear.
While the rest of us poor stupid bastards just propogate
insanity, criminality, and war; the scientologists
spread love and peace around the world.
That is if and only if they 'audit' on a regular basis.
'Auditing' is exempt from taxes by the way. Whew.
So don't try to take those exemptions from the sacraments if you are a
christian or a jew, otherwise the IRS just might have
to fine your ass.
Last time I heard, it wasn't illegal to think about killing somebody. Hell, I didn't even know it was against the law to WANT to! In fact, up until today I was pretty darn certain that unless you actually DID kill them, you were pretty much OK....
I've gone for years hating my boss, WANTING to do baaaad things to him. I've thought about it, wanted to do it, but naturally I've never given in to temptation. I guess the world is changing... will I get arrested for thinking about pushing him down a stairwell? Or fined for considering parking in a handicap space? What if I glance twice at an underage girl, does that constitute statutory rape?
Thank Christ I live in Australia, where stupid shit like this doesn't seem to happen so often.
(for the non-militaty-lingo-conversant, that's 'Special Operations Command Table of Organization and Equipment')
...we might find reference to a small unit known as Fox-Hound. Further digging might even give us some details on a thin man with a propensity for leather and a WW1-style gas mask.
-insert obligatory [i]Minority Report[/i] reference here-
Seriously, though, both superpowers were conducting psi research during the Cold War. Nothing came of those programs... at least, that is the official line. And most people agree that the official line is not necessarily the same thing as the truth.
- White Knight of the Order of Mihoshi Enthusiasts
Perhaps the gov't has watched one too many Spielburg films...
Tibbon
tibbon.com
Juiz de Fora IRC
Hey, why not go pack to this?
~k
would get around this nicely.
Let's start by shooting the sonofabeach who "thought" this scheme up... What an incredible buttwipe ! I can't believe any American actually considers this a good idea...
I guess they were looking too much like idiots, so now they're denying it:
6 1
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=90
PRESS RELEASE
Date Released: Tuesday, August 20, 2002
NASA HQ
NASA Rejects Claims it Plans Mind Reading Capability
NASA managers today said published media reports suggesting the agency plans to read the minds of potential terrorists go too far and ignore the facts and science behind the research.
The articles were based on a NASA presentation, which served as talking points for a meeting with Northwest Airlines in December 2001. The presentation was in response to the call from the Federal Government for all agencies to look inward and find what could be done to help in the war on terrorism.
"NASA does not have the capability to read minds, nor are we suggesting that would be done," said Robert Pearce, Director, NASA's Strategy and Analysis Division in the Office of Aerospace Technology in Washington. "Our scientists were asked to think outside the box with regards to ideas that could aid the nation in the war on terrorism and that's what they are doing. We have not approved any research in this area and because of the sensitivity of such research, we will seek independent review before we do."
The information contained in the presentation identified research and development challenges that NASA is currently aware of in the information technology arena, and the agency offered some limited thoughts and proposed possible solutions in this field. Some of the ideas will take several years of effort to establish, if there is a practical application.