By Madison Ruppert: What
most people thought to be the last bastion of privacy in today’s world –
the mind – are likely going to be quite disturbed to know that a new
company, Veritas scientific claims that they are developing technology
which “will invade that.”
Remember, earlier this year I reported on a study showing that computers very well might be able to spot liars better than even the most successful human experts, meaning that we can only expect to see this type of technology used in law enforcement on a more regular basis.
It is important to note that we are not talking about your run of the
mill “lie detector,” a polygraph. As many people know, it is very easy
for some people to beat these tests as former CIA operative and spy for
the Soviet Union Aldrich H. Ames explained in saying,
“There’s no special magic [in passing lie detector tests] … confidence
is what does it. Confidence and a friendly relationship with the
examiner … rapport, where you smile and you make him think that you like
him.”
This technology, on the other hand, is what Discovery called
“a mind-reading helmet” designed to measure the brain activity of
subjects via electroencephalogram (EEG) while flashing potentially
familiar images across the visor.
Unsurprisingly, Veritas Scientific has chosen to go after the most
lucrative market: the U.S. military.
When you’re dealing with the
military, you’re dealing with a market with never ending demand and at
times a complete disregard for even the most essential of considerations like the functionality of products being purchased.
Eric Elbot, CEO of Veritas, stated that he wants his technology to be
used by the U.S. military to “help them pick friend from foe among
captured people,” according to IEEE Spectrum.
Elbot also pictures
it being used by law enforcement agencies, the justice system in
criminal trials and corporate takeovers. He thinks it might even make
its way into consumer cell phone applications at some point.
“Certainly it’s a potential tool for evil,” says Elbot. “If only the
government has this device, it would be extremely dangerous.”
This is quite true, but unfortunately, since Elbot has confirmed that
it will first be going to the U.S. military, it must be noted that they
could easily claim exclusive rights to the device.
Indeed, the federal government has the ability to simply seize a patent under eminent domain,
meaning that the control would quickly be completely out of Elbot’s
hands and thus remove his ability to control his technology which he
readily admits is “a potential tool for evil.”
Surely Elbot realizes this and the fact that the U.S. military is
obsessed with lie detection technology for a reason, and it’s not to
find out who stole the cookie from the cookie jar.
For instance, take the military’s interest in the use of functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology, especially technology
which can be used at a distance.
As IEEE Spectrum has noted in the past,
in 2006 the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) called
for proposals for research to “understand and optimize brain functions
during learning.”
Just a year later, DARPA put out requests for a transportable battlefield MRI scanner.
“For the intelligence community, what we’re interested in are going
to be devices that you can use remotely,” said Defense Intelligence
Agency (DIA) research scientist Sujeeta Bhatt. “We can create a
fantastic map of deception in fMRI, but what we use for national
security has to be something that we can train anyone to use fairly
easily, that’s fairly portable, and not outrageously expensive.”
This device Bhatt speaks of is not, however, an fMRI-based device, at least according to what Bhatt believes.
“Functional MRI has serious limitations. Countermeasures haven’t been
seriously studied, but of the ones that have, simply moving your tongue
can compromise the data,” Bhatt said. “And in the intelligence
community, the people that you’re screening have really studied their
cover stories. Will that look like truth or a lie? We’re not there yet,
and in terms of using [fMRI] as a practical, everyday tool to detect
human deception, I don’t think we’re ever going to be there.”
Could the EEG helmet being developed by Veritas be precisely the
device Bhatt spoke of? Only time will tell and if it is really as
successful as Elbot claims, we likely won’t hear very much about it.
“Once you test brain signals, you’ve moved a little closer to Big
Brother in your head,” concludes Paul Sajda, an associate professor of
biomedical engineering at Columbia University.
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