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Big Brother Really Is Watching Us All
siddesu writes "The BBC has a nice high-level overview of some technologies for surveillance developed in the US and the UK. 'The US and UK governments are developing increasingly sophisticated gadgets to keep individuals under their surveillance. When it comes to technology, the US is determined to stay ahead of the game ... But it [a through-the wall sensing device in development] will also show whether someone inside a house is looking to harm you, because if they are, their heart rate will be raised. And 10 years from now, the technology will be much smarter. We'll scan a person with one of these things and tell what they're actually thinking.'"
I grew up in Poland in the 1960s and 1970s. This is the sort of shit we dealt with each day.
The Communists claimed to have devices that could read minds to determine one's intentions. Now, we didn't know if this was true or not. But seeing as many of us wanted to live another day, or at the very least not get tortured, we assumed they did.
It seems that the citizenry of the UK and the US are now in a very similar position....
I'd rather the government not base their decision on whether to come in guns blazing on something as ridiculous as whether my heart rate is increased above some theoretical average at the time.
So in the end, my question is what can we do about it? It's impossible to get the masses (in the US) to actually get out and do something about this right now, I just don't think they care enough. Mass opinion is that if you don't have anything to worry about the government finding then don't worry about them watching you.
The only credible methods I've seen for avoiding surveilance involve actually destroying the surveilance equipment.
The only way to circumvent them is by RF jamming, wire cutting and creating a bright spot around you at all times to flood the camera view - which involves wearing bright LED's or a laser.
Does this mean that eventually there are going to be rogue groups going around and destroying government surveilance equipment? I think so. When you feel you're cornered you do what you have to.
Does this mean that people who are planning terrorist attacks in the future will develop plans to destroy/jam all of the surveilance equipment if they want to get out alive? Definately.
In the snap of the chilly evening,
My face frozen like a thrull,
The roaring of the howling wind
Is deafening to all.
House minions roam out in force,
Trying to fathom thoughts
Of Citizens within their homes,
Whose actions they know naught.
Fahrenheit Four Fifty One, and
Huxley's Brave New World
Form siren lures to power lords
Elected and unfurled.
The weak attempts must duly fail
Of the Bretheren of Cain;
Cordwainer Smith declared it best -
Scanners Live In Vain
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Actually, modern technology can detect the magnetic fields that your firing neurons produce right now. This is where you get all those images of "brain activity" that you see. It is very much a non-invasive and passive technology, and could, theoretically, be carried out remotely. If studies are carried out in real situations, they could correlate the patterns of brain activity with the the apparent intent of the individual (assuming that similar intentions make similar patterns). The result is they could tell what you are thinking (in a rudimentary way). It's not really that far fetched.
There is already court precedent for this in the U.S.
Through-the-wall IR scanners have been available to some police departments in the US for a while now. There has already been at least one court case about them.
In the United States (yes, still), it is illegal for officers of law enforcement to use electronic means to determine what is going on in your home without first obtaining a judicial warrant. The case I mentioned dealt with police using an through-the-wall scanner to determine where an alleged drug dealer was inside someone else's house, before they raided it. Because they had not obtained a warrant, the evidence was thrown out of court. The judge ruled that it was clearly an electronic device, and thus fell under the Federal Statute preventing its use.
I wish I had a citation at hand for this case, but I do not. I will try to find it.
"Actually, modern technology can detect the magnetic fields that your firing neurons produce right now. This is where you get all those images of "brain activity" that you see. It is very much a non-invasive and passive technology, and could, theoretically, be carried out remotely."
*sigh*
Now I can see why you all think broadband is "unlimited".
In plain English the energy is too small. The attenuation is too great. And no useful device is sensitive enough. Let along the resolution is too poor. And I haven't even touched upon the issue of matching "brain activity" with "what you think" in other than the most superficial way.
Interestingly, we, the public, don't seem to mind. Opinion polls, both in the US and Britain, say that about 75% of us want more, not less, surveillance.
I think we've just found the next Jason Blair.
I have to call bullshit on this one. In my entire life, I have met atheists and believers, gays and straights, liberals and conservatives, and not once, ever, in my life have I met someone who espoused more surveillance. Now, I live in a large metropolitan area - one with numerous projects involving installing more surveillance cameras, and even the most conservative, cop-loving suburbanites are at best indifferent, and quite often, vehemently opposed. There's a lot of hostility, but absolutely no support. The law of statistics would dictate that if 75% of the population supported more surveillance, I would have - at least once in my life - have heard someone argue in support of it. But I've never heard it from anyone. Not even the most gullible of idiots or stupidest of patriots I've met has ever said they'd like to see more surveillance.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Some people are born with this ability, but are not trained killers. A member of my family is completely immune to excitement and pain. He is in his fifties and has never accepted anaesthetic during medical procedures (including major dental) because the pain does not phase him in the least. His mood never changes. It is creepy to a lot of people, but he leads a normal life as a high-end carpenter, husband, and father.
I remember hearing that he had been hit by a cab and was in the hospital for over a week, and in a wheelchair for a while after that. After the cab hit him he got in and requested a ride to the hospital... then limped himself into the lobby and calmly told the nurse that he was seriously damaged.
I am pretty certain that he could off a bus full of preschoolers without flinching.
You have looked into Scientology's use of the primitive polygraph called an e-meter? Go look at www.xenu.net for details on how they use it for brainwashing their own new members, and track the links for testimony about how the "auditing" confessional materials get recorded and sent back to their headquarters, for use against anyone who tries to leave the cult and speak out against it. Such monitoring is old hat: the US government grew very fond of using polygraphs on security personnel, and probing for political information.
In reply to both the article poster who said "...We'll scan a person with one of these things and tell what they're actually thinking." and the above comment, I have some things to say about 'mind reading' and 'telepathy': they AREN'T VIABLE. The problem is this: each one of us, as we grow up, develops complex internal symbol systems - essentially private language. Example: a baby that learns to recognize a ball DOES NOT have to know the word 'ball' to think about a ball. He uses an internal symbol system. As we grow and integrate ourselves into society, we learn to map from this internal coding to a publicly accepted coding: 'aha', thinks Baby, this thing I know from sense impressions of red and round, is called a 'b-a-l-l'. Also, if we're American, we map to English words. If we're Japanese, we map to Japanese. Now the thing is, no matter how sensitive a brain scan is, it cannot pick up internal codings, which are partly physical/topological anyway, and make them available in any way that can be individually externally decoded at a semantic level. There is NO universal pulse train that always decodes to 'hamburger' in all human beings. So if I have a technology to read impulses in the nervous system of a test subject, there is NO WAY I can pick an arbitrary subject - a guy in a house - and decode to a meaningful word level what his brain is computing at the moment. In an analogous way, the concept of telepathy is pure fiction and could not work, because no two people have the same native internal base dictionary, and if you pick up 'radiation' from someone's brain, you still are stuck with not knowing the internal-to-external mapping. That spike sequence you just emitted - I can't know what it means outside of you. So the point is, no, they're not able to read minds and it isn't going to happen any time soon.