Brain Privacy

sleepyrobot writes "As neuroscience advances and brain scans become more sophisticated, the Boston Globe points out that some privacy advocates are concerned about brain privacy. Could employees be scanned for violent or depressive impulses? Could soldiers be screened for homosexuality? It sounds like a Philip K. Dick vision of the future, but some predict this will be a bigger ethical issue than genetics."

Comments

This is scary, or is it just over-reaction?

[Blaine Hilton]

Now this is a rather disturbing article. I've always thought it was something that people can check out brain function and all of that, however I never thought off it as being a privacy concern. This article though brings up some interesting points. Such as having brain scans be a condition to being hired, much like a drug test of today. This at first seems shocking, but it is commonly accepted to take a drug test without any objections. With the heightened security concerns around the globe I believe people, as a whole are willing to work towards a "more secure" future.

The problem I see though is people are not thinking broad enough. Technologies such as this can be used on a large scale against humanity. I believe the consequences of such abilities need to be addressed in a uniform manner, without always talking about the terrorists that will kill us all anyway. How far will society let the security over take our lives? I for one do not want to end up living in a military state where every body that does not have blonde hair, blue eyes, and a perfect attitude is destroyed. Do you?

Go calculate something

THis is already being done, to a certan degree.

[Unknown Poltroon]

REad the book out ther "profiler" I think thats the name. HEs one of the guys who works out the psychologal profile of wanted murders and serial killers. He basically claims that he can tell who a serial killer is just by the fact that they follow his profile.

Its getting to the point where any variaton from the median of society is being seen as wrong, or a disease. Speaking as an outlier, fuck you.

What a load....

[bcollier06]

That was one of the most poorly researched articles I've read about brain imaging. When will magazines and newspapers stop hyping up a technology that will never deliever the big brother scenarios they try to drum up ratings with....... For starters, MRI doesn't measure brain activity!

MRI imaging can only measure blood flow in a certain area, not the actual eletrical impulses of your brain. The way it works is by using huge magnetic pulses it forces all that wonderful iron-rich blood in your head to align in a certain orientation. After that, it essentially lets the "flash-magnetized" blood sink back out of alignment. Where your brain is working it's hardest (continually using "fresh" blood), it takes the longest for the blood to fall out of alignment relative to the rest of your sleepy noggin because of the increased iron content.

That is only the first step to getting those pretty magazine studies which most of the time are mere pseudo-science.

MRI has HORRIBLE temporal resolution. Anyone who has ever sat for an eternity in one of these machines knows this....It's the exact reverse problem of an EKG or similar system. An EKG is excellent at recording when electrical activity in the brain occurs, except for the fact that you have little or no idea where in the brain it is occuring. With MRI you get to find out exactly where in the brain this blood-consuming activity is occuring, but it takes considerably longer than instantaneous... COnsidering that most brain processes occur in under 250ms, this is like shooting in the dark. Only by repetative exposure to a given stimulus can you even hope to gain usable results...

Nor do the inaccuracies end there. After you've collected all of this wonderful MRI data from multiple test subjects (Doing a single on would be completely usualess as individual brain topology can vary) you need to compute thresholds, percent differences, and generally massage the data however you would like! The kicker is that most of these "scientific studies" never share the number crunching with any other group of scientists for independant verification..They just smile, show the pictures, and recieve the avalanche of funding.

Now I don't mean to suggest that MRI as a technology is without merit, but when you look at its limitations it can only produce useful data on a limited number of things. (Like FFA research, etc.) It certainly can't read the contents of your thoughts.

Now, even 50 years down the road if Mr. Executive placed an ultra-fine grid of sensors inside your skull, chances are you would still be safe for a long, long time. Staring at localized electrical impulses and trying to discover the functional equivalence of neural networks in a system as complex as the human brain is going to take a while.

Companies are already doing this ...

[adzoox]

I remember a while back (10-12 years ago) I applied for a job at Toys R Us. For that job, I had to fill out a lengthy multiple choice survey. A question was asked 3 different ways at 3 seperate points during the survey.

A question like:

A Customer is demanding they get their money back for a product we don't carry or that will not scan. You

A) Da da da da

B) Da da do da

or

C) Da da de da

This was clearly a personality test as some of the questions had no "wrong answers" with some choices seeming better. But better to who?

I was told at the beginning of the survey, the answers had NO bearing on my employment chances. If it didn't, why administrate it?

And while this may get this post moderated "funny" I also have this point to make:

Companies like CompUSA make you go through a ridiculous "smile for the customer course". I beleive it's intent was two fold. One, to test to see if an applicant would be driven into a psychotic state. Two, to alert management to "moldable corporate clones".

The training at CompUSA was over two weeks and touched on subjects like greeting customers and asking specific questions. I consider a lot of the training like this; if you don't know how to sell, or you were not born with the ability to sell (some aren't) then CompUSA is not the job for you. I do agree with training. But to tell people they need to sell at CompUSA by Mary Lou Retton (I kid you not) that you are part of the "Winning Team" with a twinkling smile is absurd and belittling. I really do consider this type of training a "personality test" with a twist.

I am sure that some jobs use training and other subliminal ways to test personality. While not a job, isn't this what Sororities and Fraternities do as initiatiations?

Oh if we were all so enlightened...

[kramer2718]

It's a good attitude to say "Fuckoff" to all those who want to scan your brain/test your blood/test your urine/etc. In fact that's pretty much how I feel. Unfortunately, there are more sheep than not in society and as long as the majority of people do not refuse the tests, those who do refuse will be branded dangerous and denied jobs/insurance/rights. If everyone stood up for basic human rights and dignity, I wouldn't be so afraid of the future. Unfortunately, the trend looks to be exactly the opposite.

And as with genetics...

[OwnerOfWhinyCat]

This science will require us to grow socially, or regress into something ugly.

In both cases there will be untold millions for large corporations to save by abusing this technology. If we do not fight for our rights to be ourselves, companies will require periodic brain-scans as easily as periodic drug checks. They won't have to pay attention to individuality or the cause of one person's odd brain-patterns, they will justify it with statistics. "People with your brain-type are 80% more likely to become unhappy at this job, therefore we will not risk hiring you." They won't care that 5% of the people with your brain-type do especially well at that job, because they will work the percentages and it won't pay to take the risk.

The pay off of having faith in people doesn't show up on the bottom line, and the burden of having faith in people is one that the "gifted" or "blessed" often don't want to shoulder. If we want these scientific advances to be stairs for the ascension of mankind into the kind of species we can truly admire, then we must bridge this social gap. We must say as a society that we are willing to pay the price in dollars and cents, in mistakes and losses, to retain our diversity and that of our neighbors, even when we don't understand or approve of them.

Numerous studies have shown, the category of people who smoke has more accidents to it's credit than that of people who don't. As it stands, today it is legal to charge someone more for insurance if they smoke, than if they don't. Smokers have become the outsiders. This injustice remains. It is based on a statistic no more or less true than:

• People who smoke pot have a greater chance of becoming addicted to pot.
  Can't really argue that one.
• "People who steal in their youth are more likely to steal as adults."
  Also very true, and plainly so when you consider it's corollary.
• The first black person on your board of directors will have a harder time "getting along."
  This, in my limited exposure to such things is also likely to be true, and were the mechanism to exist to quantify such things (one day it will) I'll wager that statistics would bear this out.

As technology advances more "truths" like these will exist, and the scientific evidence to back them up will become undeniable. The socially myopic corporations of the world will want to modify the way they treat the people who fall into the categories above in a profitable fashion and they will fight for their perceived right to do so.

The question of how to move forward is not one of fighting discoveries, or denying the obvious.
It is one of willfully choosing to make illegal and immoral by our societies standards, any use of indirectly related statistical phenomena to alter or inhibit any citizen's opportunities in any endeavor the public is permitted to regulate.

Most of us would raise hell if our auto insurance company demanded the right to to base our insurance rates on the following questions:

Have you ever stolen anything in your life?
Have you ever smoked canabis?
Are you of African American descent?

And we can be proud of that fact.

How many of us left the question box "Do you smoke?" unanswered and got on the insurance agent for being at the root of a Gattacan state?

Is it because of how incredibly annoying it is to step outside a crowded shopping area yearning to breath fresh air only to find our lungs filled by a cloud of noxious fumes? Is it the meal ruined by the elderly folk, who sat at the edge of the smoking section in a restaurant in our youths and managed to billow forth more atmospheric poisons than a '66 Chevelle? What ever our reason for just checking the box handing over the form, does it really justify making them pay more for mandatory auto insurance? Is any reason you could give any less a prejudice than would be implied by seeing the three questions in my list above listed on a job application?

Gattaca ends or begins with us.

Re:The Spartans

[241comp]

Actually, you make a very good point. He did.

Romans 1:26-32 - 26. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. 28. Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30. slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31. they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

Re:Got a whole lotta hype

[Eric Savage]

Actually the hate crime point is valid. The hate crime legislation makes penalties stiffer for the same crime when the court/jury determines you did it to a member of an identifiable group (race, gender, religion, etc) out of hatred for said group, thus thought (in the form of hatred) is an issue. Of course, thought (in the form of intent) being an element of a crime is nothing new, its core to the legal definition of many, possibly most, crimes.

Brain Scanners Work On Politicians - No Problem!

[0x69]

Once a lie-detecting brain scanner is reasonably available, there'll be some public challenges to sleazy politicians to answer (under the scanner, with cameras rolling) questions like "did your vote on bill X have more to do with that fat campaign donation than with the good of the country?"

The media will hype this up so far, it'll make the Clinton sex scandals look like a 5-over-limit speeding ticket.

Conclusion - self-serving sleazy politicians will make sure than brain scanners are *extremely* illegal.

Screening for homosexuals -- already been done!

[cartman]

Strangely enough, something like this has already been done. The military investigated a series of devices that measure sexual attraction, in order to screen out homosexuals. The idea was that they could put new male recruits in front of mostly-undressed pictures of athletic young men, then measure the level of sexual excitation, and screen out the homosexuals.

By the way, one of the devices used to measure sexual excitation was called a "Penile Photoplathismograph". It measures blood flow to the sexual organ, and most youngish men can't help but get a little bit of an erection when exposed to a picture of a naked attractive potential sex object.

ANYWAY, the idea was abandoned, for two reasons. First, some of the extremely homophobic people could not pass the test themselves. This grants some credence to the notion that angrily homophobic people are sometimes having some kind of internal conflict. Second, people who are "bisexual" to some extent greatly outnumber people who are outright gay. Although men who are exclusively homosexual make up 1-2% of the population, people who will evince at least some attraction to members of the same sex make up 5-6% of the population. Kicking out 6% of the military would be a problem.

Re:Got a whole lotta hype

[Avaxx]

I agree with you completely on the idea of punishing people for their crimes and not thoughts. However, when their inner racist feelings leak out and they do something like that, an extra step must be taken.

These two punks needed to learn that it is even more wrong to vandalize a memorial like one to Martin Luther King because of what the man stood for for the black people of our country.

But what if someone vandalizes a Microsoft billboard because they hate monopolistic corporations, and then they get a felony for having the wrong motives when they did the crime? If everyone doesn't have freedom of thought, then none of us do.

While your example sucks, I get what you are attempting to say. Had the people of Microsoft been punished and held down by people of our country then yes, I would say the preps in this case should be held on higher charges. But, because MS has not been, you can't quite compare your example to the Pennsylvania case.


In a mild attempt to get back on topic, I think it will be a long time before we see any sort of thing like public brain scanning. It would take some serious advances (both in actual brain scans and in the society in which we live) for something like this to happen.

Re:Got a whole lotta hype

[chihowa]

I agree.

I like to take the tests (a small price to pay in order to make my point more effective), pass them and then inform the potential employer that I choose not to work for them because of their disrespect for the privacy of their own employees. It seems to me that just refusing the job before taking the test reinforces their faith in the good that the test is doing for them ("Well, he was just a stoner/crackhead/junkie anyway. I'm glad he didn't waste our time.")

I choose to drive my point in more thoroughly by wasting both their time and money (as I feel that they wasted mine).