| Mental Intrusion at the Hands of Science and Law – Are Our Minds Still Our Own? | |
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01-02-2009 by Carolyn Harris
Though that may portend the future, here in the present we have lost immense amounts of privacy via surveillance cameras in cities such as London, New York City, Chicago, Santa Cruz (CA), and Boston (MA) and other cities in various countries. Some are equipped with speakers to shout commands to unsuspecting people who, willingly or unwittingly upset the controllers by doing things like "dropping litter or committing anti-social behaviour." Many cameras have microphones ostensibly programmed only to record "gunshots" but have been used to listen in and record personal conversations, which have been used by law enforcement in court.
Surveillance cameras are now ubiquitous – they are on streetlights in cities and along highways, on buses and trains, the tube, within shops, offices and even bathrooms in schools.
The debate about privacy issues versus security usually ends with the tired old statement, "If you have nothing to hide, it doesn’t affect you and it shouldn’t bother you." Unfortunately, it most definitely does affect us who have nothing to hide.
Consider the following statements from philosopher Sandro Gaycken, a PhD student at Germany's Institut für Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung in Bielefeld:
"…there are well-established psychological consequences to being watched, observed consistently in studies. People change, tailoring their behavior to fit what they believe the observer wants (or in some cases actively rebelling against those wishes).
This is the point in having cameras, microphones and speakers everywhere. Its social engineering: the self-enforcement of the new social norms leads to conformity the fear of distinguishing oneself from the herd. The public has been "dumbed down" within public schools and propagandized repeatedly since birth, along with the now ever-present watchful eyes of Big Brother.
Now not only are our physical movements, buying habits, internet browsing, social connections, school and medical records, and physical characteristics all recorded and put into databases, but our behavior is being monitored and assessed as well.
In addition to scanning passengers’ bodies that show the body as if it is naked, airports now will use "behavioral screening" using technology that monitors and assesses visual as well as acoustic input, meaning they monitor facial expressions, gait and voices even utilizing subliminal messages to assess the passengers’ response. Some technology is available place under passengers' seats, potentially both in the airport and on the airplanes.
Technology has advanced to the point of being able to map the human brain and even tell what a person is thinking; a fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Image) can tell if a person is lying by the different areas of the brain that are active when telling the truth versus creating and conveying a falsehood. Grants from DoDPI, the Department of Homeland Security, our friends at DARPA, and other agencies "triggered a wave of research into new lie-detection technologies" after 9/11.
Does this mean that our minds can be read? Governments have long searched for the ability to not only read minds but affect them both for war and to manipulate the population. They have found it, and of course it will be exploited to the fullest.
"[Y]ou can begin to manipulate what someone is thinking even before they know it," says John Norseen, the former Navy pilot "who coined the term 'BioFusion' to describe "his plans to map and manipulate gray matter.'"
At the request of the Pentagon, Norseen submitted a proposal "to identify a terrorist’s mental profile. A miniaturized brain-mapping device inside an airport metal detector would screen passengers’ brain patterns against a dictionary of brain prints. Norseen predicts profiling by brain print will be in place by 2005." Did he miss the boat on that one? Would DHS tell us if they had this technology in use? Most likely not.
Not only has the terrorism-industrial complex benefited from extensive data-mining and profiling, the advertising industry has jumped on board, too. You may start getting targeted advertising through your cell phone based on your past and present preferences. For example, were you to use Wildseed's Smart Skins with their "removable faceplates with software that programs the phone to carry theme-related ring tones, screen savers, games, Web links, and design and color details" you would also get advertising tailored to which faceplate you chose. Cindy Smith, Vice President of marketing for the company said, "We don't want to encourage spam, particularly to minors… But we prefer the Amazon model, where they'll say, 'If you like this, you'll like that.' "
Minority Report, anyone?
DARPA’s "Project Hostile Intent" is for detecting –you guessed it – "hostile intent" ostensibly for "potential terrorists" at the borders, especially those with "no known past." "What about those with no known ties to terrorist organizations? Or those who do not appear in any government database?" the Human Factors Division of the DHS S&T Directorate frantically asks itself. Perhaps someone has escaped Echelon or the TIA! Perhaps they are not yet voluntarily sharing their personal history, activities and social ties on "Scalable Social Network Analysis" intelligence-gathering websites like MySpace or Facebook?
We live in the era of rationalized surveillance. With the technology available, and whatever is "in the public eye" or utilized by regular commerce is typically 40 years behind the military, in our Panopticon world being arrested for "pre-crime" isn’t all that far off.
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Comments (3)
  written by Jeremy, April 28, 2010
Poor poor reporting. You should be ashamed of yourself. Why not just write about the issue with cameras and microphones in the mentioned cities. why bother assuming this site's visitor's are stupid and that they immediately forget about the headline which brought them to the article. Clearly the research product in the article has nothing to do with the cameras and microphones you are focusing on. So hypocritical of you.
 written by Carolyn Harris, May 05, 2010
I understand people are used to the dumbed-down 6th grade level writing that passes for 'journalism' but hypocritical? That doesn't even make sense, though I am sorry it was hard for you to follow. "Mental Intrusion" with respect to being able to 'read' a person's thoughts, identify a person, gauge their behaviour based on their gait, as well as actually manipulate a person via subliminal messages on the screens at airports to view the resulting effect on the person were all discussed. It is in fact 'mental intrusion' to invade a person's thoughts.
It might be instructive to actually follow the links in the article - it was written with that in mind. It neither fair nor accurate to use the epithet 'stupid' when describing this site's visitors, as that does not apply. Again, I'm sorry you had trouble following along.
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....................... that is the way that it is with the 'overuse' of technology . .... the use of such technologies , as mentioned in the article , is that it has 'a chilling effect; upon the general public's willingness to enjoy their constitutional rights .
technology like that referenced can intimidate . and , it sucks .
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./............ this is difficult to prove in court . how do you .measure . intimidation or 'chilling effect' .
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................ in the us , we do not ;end crime ; we have made it a business .
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...................... fighting crime needs crime .
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...................... the paradigm of Judas .
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................................. sucks .
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.................. solution , don't give a hoot .
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............................. enjoy your rights without intimidation by technology .
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................. eventually , the courts 'catch up' and make things right .
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.................... we are ;stoopid; evolving to ';intelligent design;' but it takes time ..
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.................. so 'bitch' and scream for release .
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.......................... it;s worth it .
. scream .!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111 it starts the process of reversal of stoopid .
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....................... i scream with you .
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.......................... yelling aloud .
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