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.'"

Comments

This is when...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll become a millionaire overnight selling my own brand of tin-foil clothing!

CAUTION: May cook organs/skin during warm weather.

I hope they really can read my mind....

[timmarhy]

.. I'll just think of tub girl and goatse.cx man all day. take that fuckers.

Re:I hope they really can read my mind....

[Walt Dismal]

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.

This reminds me of my youth in Poland.

[Anonymous Coward]

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....

Heart Rate Raised?

[Randseed]

Harm you because their heart rate is raised? They could be overdosing on caffeine. They could be on meth. They might be some teenager on Ritalin or its relatives. They might be masturbating. They might just have physiological tachycardia.

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.

Re:Ineffective

[Nossie]

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA !!!!

And you actually thought it was aimed at terrorism?

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA !!!! /moment of temporary insanity

Chicken Joke

[Dragonflite]

Why did the chicken cross the road?
Big Brother: I've seen many chickens cross many roads. Please specify.

It's just an excuse. Re:Heart Rate Raised?

[Erris]

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...

They will base the decision on your political expression and activism, the other things will simply justify your murder. The elevated heart rate will come when they ask you if you and your children would like some pancakes. The report will say that they had reason to believe you were armed and dangerous.

Unless the US returns to rule of law, tools used to track individuals will be used to identify, harass, intimidate, disrupt and eliminate opposition. Domestic spying is against the law. Unreasonable search violates the Constitution. It is completely unreasonable for government or industry to keep tables of "gait DNA" and other metrics for people who have not committed crimes. The purpose for this kind of thing is a crime in itself.

Re:Just like the polygraph

[Harmonious Botch]

You forgot ROCK&ROLL! I forget a lot of things that come after drugs.

Re:Elevated Heart Rate?

[jagdish]

however the prosecution requests the defendant not be allowed within 1000 feet from any property which houses goatse.
Fixed!