The mind-reading helmet: 'Big Brother in your head'

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.

Did I forget anything or miss any errors? Would you like to make me aware of a story or subject to cover? Or perhaps you want to bring your writing to a wider audience? Feel free to contact me at admin@EndtheLie.com with your concerns, tips, questions, original writings, insults or just about anything that may strike your fancy.

Source: End the Lie

Hacktivists seek ways to open govt secrets to public

Cell phone companies see huge rise in surveillance requests from law enforcement

As the police state Leviathan grows ever larger, its tentacles are extending further into the privacy of millions of Americans, aided in large part by technology that enhances our lives at the same time it is being used to dismantle our civil liberties.

The latest disturbing example of this trend is manifested in a statistic released by mobile phone carriers, as part of a congressional inquiry. They report that U.S. law enforcement agencies made 1.3 million requests for the phone records of cell phone customers, adding that such requests have been steadily increasing.

U.S. Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., released the 2011 request figures recently, which were tabulated from data supplied by nine wireless carriers. No one - neither the law enforcement agencies nor the telecommunications firms - are required by law or regulation to report the requests, making it the first time police cell-phone surveillance figures have been released to the public.

According to Reuters, Markey sent letters to the nine carriers in June asking for information on the number of scope of police cell-phone requests following a New York Times report in April that tracking cell phone usage had gotten to be common practice for law enforcement agencies, and with little-to-no oversight.

Too many requests or too little supervision?

Responding to Markey's letters were Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group Plc; AT&T Inc; Sprint Nextel Corp; T-Mobile USA, a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG; MetroPCS Communications Inc; C Spire Wireless; Cricket Communications Inc, TracFone, a unit of Mexico's American Movil, and U.S.

Officials from Verizon Wireless, the No. 1 U.S. carrier, told Markey the company has seen an average spike in requests of about 15 percent per year over the last five years, and that it responded to about 260,000 requests last year alone.

T-Mobile USA, the No. 4 carrier, reported a 12-to16 percent annual increase, but the company did not provide Markey with the number of requests it receives every year. (Editor's note: A complete list of responses from each carrier can be seen here.)

Markey, a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said more oversight was needed to prevent abuse of customers' rights.

"We cannot allow privacy protections to be swept aside with the sweeping nature of these information requests, especially for innocent consumers," he said in a statement. "Law enforcement agencies are looking for a needle, but what are they doing with the haystack?"

Of the 1.3 million phone record requests, Markey noted that, for comparison, there were only about 3,000 wiretaps issued nationwide in all of 2010.

"We need to know how law enforcement differentiates between records of innocent people, and those that are subjects of investigation, as well as how it handles, administers, and disposes of this information," Markey said.

So frequent are the requests that the companies maintain specific teams to deal with them all, Markey's office said. The companies added that they only release information when they are ordered to do so by a subpoena, or if police agencies can certify they are making the request in response to an emergency where death or serious physical injury could occur.

That said, a press release on Markey's House Web site revealed that in a number of cases, customer data unrelated to any police investigation may be compromised.

Time to amend electronic privacy laws

"The responses received by Rep. Markey were startling in the volume and scope of requests made by law enforcement, including requests for 'cell tower dumps in which carriers provide all the phone numbers of cell users that connect with a tower during a discreet period of time, including information on innocent people," it said.

The Computer and Communications Industry Association, a technology industry trade group which includes as its members Google Inc., Facebook Inc., Sprint Nextel and Microsoft Corp., voiced concern over the growing demand for user information by law enforcement, saying it appeared to be coming less from a legitimate judge-issued warrant and more from subpoenas without oversight.

"As access to our wireless data gets easier to obtain by government, and we move to using communications methods that don't involve voice such as email and text messaging, there is less reason for them to go through the process of getting a wiretap warrant," said an attorney for the group, Ross Schulman, in a blog post.

CCIA has called on lawmakers to amend the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, passed in 1986 during the Reagan Administration, to expand full warrant protections to mobile and online content, as well as location information.

Source: Natural News

Monsanto Promises Pain to EU, Assault Underway

Since the introduction of genetically modified (GM) crops into the food supply in the mid-1990s, the European Union has generally resisted allowing these crops to be planted in member countries. This resistance has primarily been due to the fact that there is much debate over the potential harm that GM crops could do to the environment and other non-GM crops, and the potential harm that food containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) may do to humans. 

This resistance seems to be weakening, however, no doubt due to persistent pressure from Monsanto, the world’s leading biotechnology firm, and Monsanto’s many allies in the U.S. government. According to mercola.com:

It's quite clear that the U.S. government, which is closely tied to Monsanto, has been aiding and abetting Monsanto's tireless and often ruthless quest to control the world's food crops.

U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, showed the government even conspired to find ways to retaliate against Europe for refusing to use GM seeds, mainly by engaging in aggressive trade wars against reluctant nations. As you might suspect, the EU has been under heavy pressure to add some slack to their GM regulations — and it seems they are about to cave.

While GMOs have been ubiquitous in the U.S. food supply for nearly two decades (unlabeled and unbeknownst to most of the American public, and after very little testing), several European countries have traditionally upheld bans against the planting of most GM crops and required any processed foods containing GMOs be labeled.

Apparently reflecting a recent change of heart, the eurozone is proposing to drop its “zero-tolerance” policy toward untested and unapproved GMOs in food. The new proposal would allow GM ingredients into the food supply in levels below a certain threshold. This echoes a decision made last year to allow GM crops to be used in animal feed below certain concentration levels. Why this recent “change of heart”? Opponents of GM crops note that the dropping of the zero-tolerance policy is due to pressure from the U.S. government, the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the biotech industry (arguably led by Monsanto).

Germany, for example, has banned Monsanto’s MON810 corn, and several years ago France asked the European Commission to suspend Monsanto’s authorization to plant MON810, citing studies that show the GM crop poses significant risks to the environment. The European Union, however, stepped in and blocked the ban. Craig Stapleton, who was the U.S. ambassador to France at the time, had this to say:

Europe is moving backwards not forwards on this issue with France playing a leading role, along with Austria, Italy, and even the [European] Commission…. Moving to retaliation will make clear that the current path has real costs to EU interests and could help strengthen European pro-biotech voice.

Country team Paris recommends that we calibrate a target retaliation list that causes some pain across the EU since this is a collective responsibility, but that also focuses in part on the worst culprits. This list should be measured rather than vicious and must be sustainable over the long term, since we should not expect an early victory.

This was an admission by a representative of the United States that the U.S. government, working with biotech firms, had plans to “retaliate” against those who attempted to stop the spread of GM crops. They recommended causing “pain” in the EU and admitted that there would be a prolonged battle.

In the United Kingdom a big push for GM crops is underway. The UK’s Agriculture Biotechnology Council (ABC) recently published a report titled “Going for Growth” that recommends GMOs be placed in the forefront of the UK’s agricultural developments. While the ABC may appear to be a government agency, it is in fact a pro-GM lobbying group that represents the interests of Monsanto, Bayer, DuPont, Syngenta, and other biotech giants.

GM crops are causing problems in other European countries, whether those governments have banned their use or not. As mercola.com notes:

Two years ago, the Food Freedom blog reported that the Irish government accidentally planted Monsanto's Roundup Ready GM maize, which was, and still is, banned in Ireland. The contaminated seeds had been supplied by Pioneer Hi-Bred Northern Europe, a subsidiary of DuPont. To protect surrounding farmers and organic farms, the contaminated maize crops were destroyed before flowering, to prevent pollen drift. However, there's still no telling the full extent of the GM contamination. After all, it was only discovered through random testing. The seed had been verified as "GM-free" by Pioneer Hi-Bred.

Last year, a Greenpeace report revealed Monsanto's GM corn had been discovered across 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) in seven German states. Since GM corn is banned in Germany, the farmers had to destroy their crops and "eat" their losses, as the seed companies refused to accept liability for the contamination.

In 2007, pollen drift from GM maize (MON810) fields were also found to have contaminated hundreds of conventional and organic farmers in Spain; the only country in the EU that allows GM maize to be cultivated.

Farmers who plant non-GM crops have frequent issues with cross-contamination by GM crops, even in countries where GM crops are banned. While this may seem like an insignificant problem to those unfamiliar with the controversy surrounding GMOs, cross-contamination can have serious negative consequences. The most obvious consequence is that the GMOs can end up in the human food supply, and some studies have shown that GMOs may lead to an assortment of health problems. Additionally, in countries where GM crops are banned, the contaminated crop must be destroyed at the farmer’s expense. If contamination occurs in a country that accepts GM crops, such as the United States, the affected farmer will likely be sued for patent infringement, and will still have to destroy the crop.

These consequences often result in small, independent, non-GM farms being forced out of business, while biotech companies continue to gain more market share with the help of government regulations. Critics have long noted the “revolving door” between the boards of big biotech companies, especially Monsanto, and government offices. This no doubt helps the cause to spread GM crops around the world, as biotech companies appear to be attempting to dominate the world’s food supply. This is a fine example of fascism, and certainly not a model of free enterprise (which would support independent small farmers).

While the European Union seems to be weakening from the biotech-and-government onslaught, there is growing opposition to GMOs in the United States. While companies such as Monsanto have typically enjoyed extremely favorable legislation in America, several states have started ballot initiatives to get legislation passed that would mandate labeling of foods containing GMOs. Mercola.com reports that California’s initiative is drawing the most attention:

Since California is the 8th largest economy in the world, a win for the California Initiative would have the power to affect ingredients and labeling nation-wide. A coalition of consumer, public health and environmental organizations, food companies, and individuals has submitted the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act to the State Attorney General. Now, they need 800,000 signatures to get the Act on this year's ballot.

It appears the fight for food freedom is just beginning.

Source: the New American