Army developing “synthetic telepathy” UN Commission of Human Rights, Interpol, EU Commission of Ethics

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Dr. Mike D’Zmura- Professor & Chair, Department of Cognitive Sciences, from the University of California, Irvine and the lead scientist on the project.-"Public sale of Artificial Telepathy technology would inevitably result in the stealing of bank account numbers, PIN numbers, passwords, trade secrets, etc., which in turn would inevitably translate into actual theft. The damage to the economy could be catastrophic, and the sudden disappearance of privacy – all privacy – might literally cause society as we know it to melt down."   1998  http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~mdzmura/
Michael D'Zmura
http://www.socsci.uci.edu


Army developing “synthetic telepathy” UN Commission of Human Rights, Interpol, EU Commission of Ethics

Read This Thought: The U.S. Army is developing a technology known as synthetic telepathy that would allow someone to create email or voice mail and send it by thought alone. The concept is based on reading electrical activity in the brain using an electroencephalograph, or EEG.


By Eric Bland

Oct. 13, 2008
Vocal cords were overrated anyway. A new Army grant aims to create email or voice mail and send it by thought alone. No need to type an e-mail, dial a phone or even speak a word.
Known as synthetic telepathy, the technology is based on reading electrical activity in the brain using an electroencephalograph, or EEG. Similar technology is being marketed as a way to control video games by thought.
“I think that this will eventually become just another way of communicating,” said Mike D’Zmura, from the University of California, Irvine and the lead scientist on the project.
Artificial Telepathy machine cannot possibly be advertised and sold on the open market for obvious reasons: they would utterly destroying the privacy of many, many people. “Peeking” into the lives of others would quickly pervert itself into stalking, mind rape, privacy violation, identity theft and information theft on a massive scale.
Public sale of Artificial Telepathy technology would inevitably result in the stealing of bank account numbers, PIN numbers, passwords, trade secrets, etc., which in turn would inevitably translate into actual theft. The damage to the economy could be catastrophic, and the sudden disappearance of privacy – all privacy – might literally cause society as we know it to melt down.
For all of these reasons, Artificial Telepathy may be rightly called a “non-lethal” H-Bomb. The damage done to society by release of such technology would be nightmarish. See for example the dystopian film Strange Days(1995, starring Ralph Fiennes) in which dream thieves use a technology called “SQUID” to jack into the minds of people, record their experiences, and sell those experiences on disc:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Days_(film)
See also the film “Artificial Telepathy” (Dir. Mitchell Cox), from which the movie poster (above) is taken:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~visualaffects/vault/details/15196.html
No one would die as a direct result of the Artificial Telepathy’s use. It is a “non-lethal weapon.”
But nothing would ever be the same again.
Most scientists and lawyers understand this. Indeed, if the maker of an Artificial Telepathy weapon tried to sell the product on the open market, the number of people who would line up to sue that manufacturer would probably circle the Earth.
Third in line would be a lawyer representing every voice-hearer and human rights advocate in the Western hemisphere. That’s a large number of people.
Second in line would be a lawyer bringing a massive class-action suit joined by every paranoid corporation that has a trade secret to hide. That is, almost every corporation in the world.
First in line would be the United States government. Every copy of the machine, its blueprints, and its patent documents, would be immediately seized and locked away on the grounds of national security.
The military reasons for grabbing up this technology and suppressing it are obvious: With Artificial Telepathy, there is no such thing as a surprise attack. And without the element of surprise, war becomes impossible. Artificial Telepathy machines could potentially put every single G.I. Joe at the DOD out of work. And as far as the Department of Defense is concerned, any technology that puts them out of work is a weapon of mass destruction.
Even if it doesn’t kill anyone. (But IT DOES KILL)
Translation: No one gets one of these weapons but Uncle Sam. The United States Department of Defense has no objections to weapons of mass destruction. It just objects to anyone else owning one.
Although any government would strictly forbid public ownership of such technology, every government would certainly want to use the Artificial Telepathy machine itself. Far from destroying such a weapon, most military service branches would probably compete for possession of one, as would every law enforcement organization and every intelligence agency under the sun. Some would argue that the machine ought to be destroyed, but others would find that the lure of knowing exactly what the “enemy” is thinking is far too intoxicating to pass up.
An Artificial Telepathy weapon is, after all, a spy agency’s dream.
Conclusion: If or (more properly) when an Artificial Telepathy machine is developed, it will certainly be classified as a weapon – specifically a “Non-Lethal Weapon.” It will never be released on the public market. The public will be given no clue that it exists, and the military branches of different countries will fight fiercely among themselves for possession of this cool new toy.
Within the U.S. military branches, the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines will probably squabble with the intelligence community, law enforcement and the Department of Justice for possession and control, then finally settle on a scheme for sharing control among themselves. Most likely they will combine forces (and budgets) to build and manage new weapons based on the first Artificial Telepathy technology. If the weapons work, everyone will claim to be the proud Papa. If the cover is blown, and Congress launches a massive investigation, the program will be orphaned. Everyone can back off and point fingers at each other.
Joining forces means everyone wins, and nobody is to blame.
Given this conclusion, we can now ask ourselves a simple question: Where would the military hide its deep-black research program into Artificial Telepathy, if such technology exists?
Answer: They would hide Artificial Telepathy under cover of a Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program.


“It will take a lot of research, and a lot of time, but there are also a lot of commercial applications, not just military applications,” he said.
The idea of communicating by thought alone is not a new one. In the 1960s, a researcher strapped an EEG to his head and, with some training, could stop and start his brain’s alpha waves to compose Morse code messages.
Michael D'Zmura
Professor & Chair, Department of Cognitive Sciences
University of California, Irvine

Contact information
Social Sciences Plaza B 3219
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, California 92697-5100 USA
[phone] (phone) -2307 (fax)
[e-mail]
Education
B.A., Harvard College, Cambridge, MA (1979, German Studies)
M.A., University of Rochester, Rochester, NY (1986, Psychology)
Ph.D., University of Rochester, Rochester, NY (1990, Psychology)
Professional positions
Chair of Cognitive Sciences, UC Irvine, 2005-present
Professor of Cognitive Sciences, UC Irvine, 1998-present
Visiting Professor, University Jean Monnet in St.-Etienne, 1995/96, 1997
Associate Professor of Cognitive Sciences, UC Irvine, 1994-98
Assistant Professor of Cognitive Sciences, UC Irvine, 1990-94
Fellowships and honors
American Psychological Assocation Distinguished Scientific Award
for Early Career Contribution to Psychology, 1998/99
Deutsche Akademischer Austauschdienst Scholarship, 1997
Bourse d'Accueil Fellowship, Region Rhone-Alpes, France, 1995/96
Society for Mathematical Psychology, New Investigator Award, 1993
IBM Graduate Student Fellowship, 1985-87
NEI-ARVO Young Investigators Travel Fellowship, 1984
Research interests
Vision, hearing, language, attention, brain imaging, and brain-computer interfaces
Publications
D'Zmura, M. & Lennie, P. (1986). Shared pathways for rod and cone vision. Vision Research 26, 1273-1280. [PubMed], [PDF]
D'Zmura, M. & Lennie, P. (1986). Mechanisms of color constancy. Journal of the Optical Society of America A 3, 1662-1672. [PDF]
Lennie, P. & D'Zmura, M. (1988). Mechanisms of color vision. Critical Reviews in Neurobiology 3, 333-400. [PubMed]
D'Zmura, M. (1991). Color in visual search. Vision Research 31, 951-966. [PDF]
D'Zmura, M. (1991). Shading ambiguity: reflectance and illumination. In Computational Models of Visual Processing, Landy, M.S. and Movshon, A.J. (Eds.) Cambridge: MIT, 187-207.
D'Zmura, M. (1992). Color constancy: surface color from changing illumination. Journal of the Optical Society of America A 9, 490-493. [PDF]
D'Zmura, M. & Iverson, G. (1992). Color constancy: adaptation to the illumination environment. Optical Society of America topical Meeting on Advances in Color Vision Technical Digest, 107-109.
Kakarala, R., Bennett, B., Iverson, G.J. & D'Zmura, M. (1993). Bispectral techniques for spherical functions. Proceedings of the IEEE Int'l Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, Minneapolis, IV, 216-220. [PDF]
D'Zmura, M. & Iverson, G. (1993). Color constancy. I. Basic theory of two-stage linear recovery of spectral descriptions for lights and surfaces. Journal of the Optical Society of America A 10, 2148-2165. [PDF]
D'Zmura, M. & Iverson, G. (1993). Color constancy. II. Results for two-stage linear recovery of spectral descriptions for lights and surfaces. Journal of the Optical Society of America A 10, 2166-2180. [PDF]
D'Zmura, M. & Iverson, G. (1994). Color constancy. III. General linear recovery of spectral descriptions for lights and surfaces. Journal of the Optical Society of America A 11, 2389-2400. [PDF]
Iverson, G. & D'Zmura, M. (1994). Criteria for color constancy in trichromatic bilinear models. Journal of the Optical Society of America A 11, 1970-1975. [PDF]
D'Zmura, M. & Mangalick, A. (1994). Detection of contrary chromatic change. Journal of the Optical Society of America A 11, 543-546. [PDF]
Singer, B. & D'Zmura, M. (1994). Color contrast induction. Vision Research 34, 3111-3126. [PDF]
Singer, B. & D'Zmura, M. (1995). Contrast gain control. A bilinear model for chromatic selectivity. Journal of the Optical Society of America A, 12, 667-685. [PDF]
D'Zmura, M., Iverson, G. & Singer, B. (1995). Probabilistic color constancy. In Luce, R.D., D'Zmura, M., Hoffman, D.D., Iverson, G. and Romney, K. (Eds.), Geometric Representations of Perceptual Phenomena. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 187-202.
Iverson, G. & D'Zmura, M. (1995). Color constancy: spectral recovery using trichromatic bilinear models. In Luce, R.D., D'Zmura, M., Hoffman, D.D., Iverson, G. and Romney, K. (Eds.), Geometric Representations of Perceptual Phenomena. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 169-185.
Luce, R.D., D'Zmura, M., Hoffman, D.D., Iverson, G. and Romney, K., Eds. (1995) Geometric Representations of Perceptual Phenomena. Articles in Honor of Tarow Indow's 70th Birthday. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
D'Zmura, M. & Singer, B. (1996). The spatial pooling of contrast in contrast gain control. Journal of the Optical Society of America A, 13, 2135-2140. [PDF]
D'Zmura, M. (1996). Bergmann on visual resolution, Perception 25, 1223-1234, translation of Bergmann, C., Anatomisches und Physiologisches ueber die Netzhaut des Auges. Zeitschrift fuer rationelle Medicin II, 1857,83-108.
D'Zmura, M., Colantoni, P., Knoblauch, K. & Laget, B. (1997). Color transparency. Perception 26, 471-492. [ PubMed]
D'Zmura, M., Lennie, P. & Tiana, C. (1997). Color search and visual field segregation. Perception & Psychophysics 59, 381-388. [ PubMed]
D'Zmura, M. (1997). Neural network for color contrast gain control. Proceedings of the European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks, Bruges, Belgium, April 1997, pp. 67-72.
Colantoni, P., D'Zmura, M., Knoblauch, K. & Laget, B. (1997) Detection of color transparency. In Rogowitz, B. & Allenbach, J. (Eds.) Human Vision and Electronic Imaging II, Vol. 3016, 360-368.
D'Zmura, M. & Knoblauch, K. (1998) Spectral bandwidths for the detection of color. Vision Research 38, 3117-3128. [PDF]
D'Zmura, M., Knoblauch, K., Henaff, M.-A. & Michel, F. (1998) Dependence of color on context in a case of cortical color vision deficiency. Vision Research 38, 3455-3459. [PDF]
D'Zmura, M. & Iverson, G. (1998). A formal approach to color constancy: the recovery of surface and light source spectral properties using bilinear models. In Dowling, C., Roberts, F. and Theuns, P. (Eds.) Recent Progress in Mathematical Psychology. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 99-132.
D'Zmura, M. (1998). Color contrast gain control. In Backhaus, W., Kliegl, R. & Werner, J. (Eds.) Color Vision. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 251-266.
Chen, V.J. & D'Zmura, M. (1998), Test of a convergence model for color transparency perception. Perception 27, 595-608. [ PubMed]
D'Zmura, M. & Singer, B. (1999) Contrast gain control. In Sharpe, L.T. & Gegenfurtner, K.R. (Eds.) Color Vision: From Genes to Perception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 369-385.
Hagedorn, J. & D'Zmura, M. (2000). Color appearance of surfaces viewed through fog. Perception 29, 1169-1184. [PDF]
D'Zmura, M., Rinner, O. & Gegenfurtner, K.R. (2000). The colors seen behind transparent filters. Perception 29, 911-926. [PDF]
D'Zmura, M., Colantoni, P. & Seyranian, G.D. (2000). Visualization of events from arbitrary spacetime perspectives. In Erbacher, R.F., Chen, P.C., Roberts, J.C. & Wittenbrink, C.M. (Eds.) Visual Data Exploration and Analysis VII 3860, 35-40. [PDF]
D'Zmura, M., Colantoni, P. & Hagedorn, J. (2001) Perception of color change. Color Research and Application S26, S186-S191. [PDF]
D'Zmura, M., Colantoni, P. & Seyranian, G. (2001). Virtual environments with four or more spatial dimensions. Presence 9, 616-631. [PDF]
Knoblauch, K. & D'Zmura, M. (2001). Lights and neural responses do not depend on choice of color space. Vision Research 41, 1683-1684.
D'Zmura, M. (2002). Psychology of colour perception. In Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. London: MacMillan.
D'Zmura, M. (2003). Color and the processing of chromatic information. In Mausfeld, R. and Heyer, R. (Eds.), Colour Perception: From Light to Object, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 143-152.
Ge, M. & D'Zmura, M. (2003). 4D structure from motion: a computational algorithm. Bouman, C.A. & Stevenson, R.L. (Eds.) Computational Imaging (Proc. SPIE/IS&T) 5016, 13-23. [PDF]
Ge,M. & D'Zmura, M. (submitted). Recovery of structure from motion in four or more dimensions. Journal of Mathematical Psychology.
Ge,M. & D'Zmura, M. (submitted). A hybrid model for color transparency perception. Journal of Vision.
Links
Cognitive NeuroSystems Lab