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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."
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
The part that makes this the most frightening is that we've seen recently how far people are willing to go if they think that security is at hand. The Patriot Act and Patriot II (return of the civil liberty abuses), both passed with widespread support, just because people were scared. With the right amount of fear, this technology will not only be allowed, but mandated in usage to screen for "potential security risks"
Could soldiers be screened for homosexuality?
I always find it ironic that technologies created by open-mindedness have to ability to empower the narrow-minded.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Now my boss will know how burned-out and disgruntled I have become... I'm so screwed...
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.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
to figure out what is going on in someone's head by looking at the things that the person does or say, the external manifestations of a person's thoughts. If you are concerned about your "brain privacy", just don't talk to people, post on Slashdot or a personal blog, don't write letters or emails, etc.
I'm sorry, but I hold the copyright over my brain and the information therein, and your brain scanner is an unlawful circumvention device under the DMCA.
My lawyers will be calling.
www.eFax.com are spammers
I'm one of the folks who feels uneasy, but on the other hand I'm not quite sure I can bring myself to believe that the potential harm of some of these developments outweighs the benefits -- if the technology can be applied in both directions, not just by the police. If I can quiz a politician on what his real motivations were for passing a law and be assured that he's not dodging the question, it might not be quite as onerous to be unable to lie about breaking it. But even with that thought in mind, I'm still uneasy.
There's a major difference between a drug screen and having your brain scanned as a condition of employment. A drug screen is meant to pick up illegal activity which poses a tangible safety and liability issue to a potential employer. There's nothing illegal about thinking anything (at least in the developed democracies), so I don't see brain scans becoming accepted practice during my lifetime (knock on wood).
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
It will also be doubleplusgood to be able to identify thought criminals with technology like this.
The bleeding-hearts freedom of thought advocates can spend a while in room 101 of the ministry of love as they always do.
You can't take the sky from me...
This is rediculous, I'm doing some work on neurobiology wrt attention for my CS Masters in Computer Vision. From reading some of the recent research, I don't think the field of neurobiology is anywhere close to being able to determine such concepts from an fMRI or anything similar.
You know what's really funny about this? The most feared army in Greek times, the Spartans, were all gay. Many of them fighting shoulder to shoulder with their lovers.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
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.
-bcollier06
That makes sense. I expect that your brain is much more likely than your DNA to determine your behavior. However, DNA can be fully sequenced right now. I would bet we're a long way off from being able to fully map a human brain.
Also, I think that much of the expectation of the privacy of one's thoughts is founded on the fact that today nobody else can be sure what those thoughts are. The examples in the article are fairly crude tools related to activity in a certain area of the brain. Care certainly will need to be taken with any potential use of these tools. Taking it to the extreme of real-time mind-reading will be a different thing entirely.
Well, hey, I didn't spend all those years playing Dungeons and Dragons and not learn a little something about courage.
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?
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
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.
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
We are the techno-elite, right?
Technology may be our plaything, but the technologies we do not own will own us.
There is always a window of opportunity for the early adopters to acquire mastery over those who would use a technology to oppress. Plus, brain hacking might just be the ultimate in geek fun.
While not everyone can afford to use their own MRI to do neuro-feedback hacking, there are tools that can be had right now that will let you do some serious tweaking of your own skull pudding. One such device is made by IBVA Technologies
IBVA has been at the forefront for the past few decades in building devices that allows one to view in real-time their own brain activity on Macs and PCs. They soon will be releasing a Linux version of their software.
Hopefully, we'll stay ahead of the curve on this folks, because the dark side of this tech is pretty fucking dark.
The most conservative view of the brain's power say that it's a computer program. The most elaborate theories also envision that there are other structures like souls that can't be 'caught on tape'. Strangely, I'd be the hardcore conservatives wanting to use this technology are statistically more likely to be those who say we have unmeasurable souls. Just a guess. But if it's so, I wonder how they rationalize that.
But let's take the conservative view--that the brain is just a computer program that is trillions or quadrillions of times more complex than your average programming project for work. Now we're talking about hooking us up to a machine that has no idea what a single line of source looks like, no idea what data has been preloaded, and is just going to watch the approximate equivalent of the blinking lights on the console and tell me if my program is not only functioning correctly now, but whether it's predicted to function correctly in the future?
Geez, forget core dumps, stack debuggers, tracing tools, and all that. I just want one of these cool push-button debugging tools for writing programs!! People pay enormous amounts for teams of people to pour over source code for days or weeks or more on projects so trivial as today's... and it's apparently all wasted. We could have solved the whole Y2K problem by just letting this machine watch the blinky lights on the front of some COBOL boxes and tell us that the planes wouldn't crash and the elevators wouldn't stop. Why didn't we rush them into production if they were this close to ready?
Or is it possible that the effectiveness is slightly oversold?
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
My wife is a behavioural neuroscientist and let me say that Neuroscience hasn't advanced that much. They only have rather vague ideas about which brain regions are involved in, not responsible for, certain general classes of behaviour. Don't mix up correlation with causation. Brain sciences are pretty much still in the "look for correlation" phase, and are FAR, FAR, away from any predictive value, expect certain specialized clinical areas. The brain is so complex that we may be incapable of understanding it. It's like peeling an onion.
I have to disagree with you. People need privacy. There is no reason for anyone to know everything about what I say, think, or do.
I have nothing to hide, but my privacy is my own.
Am I gay? No.
Am I a criminal (Caught or not)? No.
Am I trying to hide something? No.
But, if I look at a woman and think to myself, "Boy I'd sure Like to F*** her!" That thought is my own and not something that anyone has the right to know about me. Thinking that doesn't make me a rapist nor someone to fear or "keep tabs" on.
Much like if I thought to myself, "Boy, the President is a dumb sonofabitch." That too is not something that I feel is something that should be public knowledge nor held against me. Just because I might think something doesn't make me guilty of anything.
Much like this discussion, it's my opinion and I should be the one to choose if and when I want to share it.
Everyone has a right to their own personal privacy. Just because someone enjoys their privacy, it doesn't make them a criminal. Did you ever think that it might protect you FROM the criminals? What would happen if everyone could know if you were scared of them. Wouldn't that make you a target of those that would exploit that fear?
Any kind of brain scanning that invades my privacy, or makes public my privacy is wrong.
That's my two bits on the matter.
-Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
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.
-
"People who steal in their youth are more likely to steal as adults."
-
The first black person on your board of directors will have a harder time "getting along."
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.Can't really argue that one.
Also very true, and plainly so when you consider it's corollary.
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.
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.
It would be great to screen the boyfriends my daughter brings home. I could set curfew based upon the 'horney level' of the boyfriend.
Now we know how the machines really know what Tasty Wheat tasted like.
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.
It's easy to make up & spread cool- and credible-sounding stuff. Finding & checking hard facts is hard work.
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.
"Could soldiers be screened for homosexuality?"
No, because that violates the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" regulation. Half of that policy is "Don't Ask."
Of course, screening someone's brain with that kind of precision will probably tell you that homosexuality has little impact in one's ability to serve in the military.
Brainscanning and other monitoring abilities would give a company/gov't (the same thing these days, particularly in the USofCorp America) power similar to that of the "Emergent" in A Deepness in the Sky
by Vernor Vinge.Picking up impulses whether acted on or not, knowing who is hot for who whether it is "secret" or not, knowing who is PO'd/disgruntled and thus a "security risk" and in need of firing or pre-emptive jailing (or indefinite detainment by the gov't under out current Shrub).
The possibilities for superb abuse are wondrous. Can't wait for widespread law-enforcement use, gov't use, and corporate use. Those tin foil hats would start to come in handy about then but they would be a dead giveaway that you have something to hide and thus need to be detained, fired, etc.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
I've read (nearly) all of PKD's books, and I don't recall seeing any mention of anything like brain screening. I love PKD, but really, he gets too much credit. The best literary reference I can think of is David Brin's excellent "Sundiver," in which one of the characters lives the life of a second-class citizen after having failed a battery of tests designed to screen for violent or perverted impulses. David Brin's latest book, "Kiln People," is also quite good, and utterly unlike anything I've read. Check it out.
self-serving sleazy politicians will make sure that brain scanners are *extremely* illegal
This is a fine point, and I don't dispute it.
However, politicians have other defenses as well. One such defense is changing the form of the question. Remember they are always at risk of having anything they say proven wrong, so they try not to say anything with interesting truth value at all.
One common politician trick is to make sure all questions about what they support are single-place predicates ("Do you favor lower taxes?") and not two-place predicates ("Do you think it's more important to have lower taxes or better schools?"). By doing this, they can be in favor of everything good but omit the critical bit--how much they're in favor of each thing, and therefore what their actual priorities are. I'm sure this is not the only trick they use.
(Incidentally, I've noticed a surprising similarity between the problem of detecting whether a politician is someone you should trust and the Turing Test. Or maybe I shouldn't be surprised. Maybe the essential question is the same--"is this person for real?")
Furthermore, I've been fascinated for a long time by an analysis of the late HP Grice called The Rules of Conversational Implicature, which basically assert that the relevance of speech is often not carried in its propositional, or per se, truth value, but rather in what is written between the lines. (Grice offers techniques for making this more concrete than you might expect.) I've often thought it would be interesting to see some implementation of Grice's rules applied to the various legal arenas involving speech acts (slander, fraud, perjury, etc.) I don't think it's practical (yet), but if it could be, it would yield fascinatingly different results than what we get now. Poking about in Google reveals at least one good writeup of Grice's position, though there must surely be others.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
The term "retarded" is strongly stigmatised, and many people associate it with Trisonomy 21/Downs Syndrome or other forms of severe mental disabilities. People with HFA and AS are often above average intelligence and some can be a genius in a very specific area, but they lack important social skills, which can cause bizarre (to "normal" people) behaviour and usually social withdrawl and isolation. Neither condition can be treated per se, but it is possible to "learn" some of the innate social capabilities that most people have.
IANAP