Satellite Surveillance including:
GPS Tracking
See through Wall
Reading your mind with implants
Reading your mind without an implants
Intrusive Brain Reading Surveillance Technology: Hacking the Mind
by Carole Smith
“Carole Smith describes claims that neuroscientists are developing brain scans that can read people’s intentions in the absence of serious discussions about the ethical issues this raises, despite the fact that the research has been backed by government in the UK and US.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“We need a program of psychosurgery for political control of our society. The purpose is physical control of the mind. Everyone who deviates from the given norm can be surgically mutilated.
The individual may think that the most important reality is his own existence, but this is only his personal point of view. This lacks historical perspective. Man does not have the right to develop his own mind. This kind of liberal orientation has great appeal. We must electronically control the brain. Someday armies and generals will be controlled by electric stimulation of the brain.
Dr José Delgado.Director of Neuropsychiatry, Yale University Medical School Congressional Record, No. 26, Vol. 118 February 24, 1974.
The Guardian newspaper, that defender of truth in the United Kingdom, published an article by the Science Correspondent, Ian Sample, on 9 February 2007 entitled:
‘The Brain Scan that can read people’s intentions’, with the sub-heading: ‘Call for ethical debate over possible use of new technology in interrogation”.
“Using the scanner, we could look around the brain for this information and read out something that from the outside there's no way you could possibly tell is in there. It's like shining a torch around, looking for writing on a wall”, the scientists were reported as saying.
At the same time, London’s Science Museum was holding an exhibition entitled ‘Neurobotics: The Future of Thinking’. This venue had been chosen for the launch in October 2006 of the news that human thoughts could be read using a scanner. Dr Geraint Rees’ smiling face could be seen in a photograph at the Neurobotics website[1], under the heading “The Mind Reader”. Dr Rees is one of the scientists who have apparently cracked the problem which has preoccupied philosophers and scientists since before Plato: they had made entry into the conscious mind. Such a reversal of human historical evolution, announced in such a pedestrian fashion, makes one wonder what factors have been in play, and what omissions made, in getting together this show, at once banal and extraordinary. The announcement arrives as if out of a vacuum. The neuroscientist - modern-style hunter-gatherer of information and darling of the “Need to Know” policies of modern government - does little to explain how he achieved this goal of entering the conscious mind, nor does he put his work into any historical context. Instead, we are asked in the Science Museum’s programme notes:
How would you feel if someone could read your innermost thoughts? Geraint Rees of UCL says he can. By using brain-imaging technology he's beginning to decode thought and explore the difference between the conscious and unconscious mind. But how far will it go? And shouldn’t your thoughts remain your personal business?
If Dr Rees has decoded the mind sufficiently for such an announcement to be made in an exhibition devoted to it, presumably somewhere is the mind which has been, and is continuing to be, decoded. He is not merely continuing his experiments using functional magnetic resolution scanning (fMRI) in the way neuroscientists have been observing their subjects under scanning devices for years, asking them to explain what they feel or think while the scientists watch to see which area lights up, and what the cerebral flow in the brain indicates for various brain areas. Dr Rees is decoding the mind in terms of conscious and unconscious processes. For that, one must have accessed consciousness itself. Whose consciousness? Where is the owner of that consciousness – and unconsciousness? How did he/she feel? Why not ask them to tell us how it feels, instead of asking us.
The Neurobotics Exhibition was clearly set up to make these exciting new discoveries an occasion for family fun, and there were lots of games for visitors to play. One gets the distinct impression that we are being softened up for the introduction of radical new technology which will, perhaps, make the mind a communal pool rather than an individual possession. Information technology seeks to connect us all to each other in as many ways as possible, but also, presumably, to those vast data banks which allow government control not only to access all information about our lives, but now also to our thoughts, even to our unconscious processing. Does anyone care?
One of the most popular exhibits was the ‘Mindball’ game, which required two players to go literally head-to-head in a battle for brainpower, and used ‘brainpower’ alone. Strapped up with headbands which pick up brain waves, the game uses neurofeedback, but the person who is calm and relaxed wins the game. One received the impression that this calmness was the spirit that the organisers wished to reinforce, to deflect any undue public panic that might arise from the news that private thoughts could now be read with a scanner.[2] The ingress into the mind as a private place was primarily an event to be enjoyed with the family on an afternoon out:
Imagine being able to control a computer with only the power of your mind. Or read people’s thoughts and know if they’re lying. And what if a magnetic shock to the brain could make you more creative…but should we be able to engineer our minds?
Think your thoughts are private? Ever told a lie and been caught red-handed? Using brain-scanning technology, scientists are beginning to probe our minds and tell if we’re lying. Other scientists are decoding our desires and exploring the difference between our conscious and unconscious mind. But can you really trust the technology?
Other searching questions are raised in the program notes, and more games:
Find out if you’ve got what it takes to be a modern-day spy in this new interactive family exhibition. After being recruited as a trainee spy, explore the skills and abilities required by real agents and use some of the latest technologies that help spies gather and analyse information. Later go on and discover what it’s like to be spied upon. Uncover a secret store of prototype gadgets that give you a glimpse into the future of spy technologies and finally use everything you’ve learnt to escape before qualifying as a fully-fledged agent!
There were also demonstrations of grateful paraplegics and quadriplegics showing how the gods of science have so unselfishly liberated them from their prisons: this was the serious Nobel Prize side of the show. But there was no-one representing Her Majesty’s government to demonstrate how these very same devices[3] can be used quite freely, and with relative ease, in our wireless age[4], to conduct experiments on free-ranging civilians tracked anywhere in the world, and using an infinitely extendable form of electrode which doesn’t require visible contact with the scalp at all. Electrodes, like electricity, can also take an invisible form – an electrode is a terminal of an electric source through which electrical energy or current may flow in or out. The brain itself is an electrical circuit. Every brain has its own unique resonating frequency. The brain is an infinitely more sensitive receiver and transmitter than the computer, and even in the wireless age, the comprehension of how wireless networks operate appears not to extend to the workings of the brain. The monotonous demonstration of scalps with electrodes attached to them, in order to demonstrate the contained conduction of electrical charges, is a scientific fatuity, in so far as it is intended to demonstrate comprehensively the capability of conveying charges to the brain, or for that matter, to any nerve in the body, as a form of invisible torture.
As Neurobotics claims: ‘Your brain is amazing’, but the power and control over brains and nervous systems achieved by targeting brain frequencies with radiowaves must have been secretly amazing government scientists for many years. The problem that now arises, at the point of readiness when so much has been achieved, is how to put the technology into action in such a way, as it will be acceptable in the public domain. This requires getting it through wider government and legal bodies, and for that, it must be seen to spring from the unbiased scientific investigations into the workings of the brain, in the best tradition of the leading universities. It is given over to Dr Rees and his colleague, Professor Haynes, endowed with the disclosure for weightier Guardian readers, to carry the torch for the government. Those involved may also have noted the need to show the neuroscientist in a more responsible light, following US neuroengineer for government sponsored Lockheed Martin, John Norseen’s, ingenuous comment, in 2000, about his belief about the consequences of his work in fMRI:
‘If this research pans out’, said Norseen, ‘you can begin to manipulate what someone is thinking even before they know it.’ And added: “The ethics don’t concern me, but they should concern someone else.”
While the neuroscientists report their discovery (without even so much as the specific frequency of the light employed by this scanner/torch), issuing ethical warnings while incongruously continuing with their mind-blowing work, the government which sponsors them, remains absolutely mute. The present probing of people’s intentions, minds, background thoughts, hopes and emotions[5] is being expanded into the more complex and subtle aspects of thinking and feeling. We have, however, next to no technical information about their methods. The description of ‘shining a torch around the brain’ is as absurd a report as one could read of a scientific endeavour, especially one that carries such enormous implications for the future of mankind. What is this announcement, with its technical obfuscation, preparing us for?
Writing in Wired[6] contributing editor Steve Silberman points out that the lie-detection capability of fMRI is ‘poised to transform the security system, the judicial system, and our fundamental notions of privacy’. He quotes Cephos founder, Steven Laken, whose company plans to market the new technology for lie detection. Laken cites detainees held without charge at Guantanamo Bay as a potential example. ‘If these detainees have information we haven’t been able to extract that could prevent another 9/11, I think most Americans would agree that we should be doing whatever it takes to extract it’. Silberman also quotes Paul Root Wolpe, a senior fellow at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, who describes the accelerated advances in fMRI as ‘ a textbook example of how something can be pushed forward by the convergence of basic science, the government directing research through funding, and special interests who desire a particular technology’. Are we to believe that with the implied capability to scan jurors’ brains, the judiciary, the accused and the defendant alike, influencing[7] one at the expense of the other, that the legal implications alone of mind-accessing scanners on university campuses, would not rouse the Minister for Justice from his bench to say a few words about these potential mind weapons?
So what of the ethical debate called for by the busy scientists and the Guardian’s science reporter?[8] Can this technology- more powerful in subverting thought itself than anything in prior history – really be confined to deciding whether the ubiquitously invoked terrorist has had the serious intention of blowing up the train, or whether it was perhaps a foolish prank to make a bomb out of chapatti flour? We can assume that the government would certainly not give the go-ahead to the Science Museum Exhibition, linked to Imperial College, a major government-sponsored institution in laser-physics, if it was detrimental to surveillance programs. It is salutary to bear in mind that government intelligence research is at least ten years ahead of any public disclosure. It is implicit from history that whatever affords the undetectable entry by the gatekeepers of society into the brain and mind, will not only be sanctioned, but funded and employed by the State, more specifically by trained operatives in the security forces, given powers over defenceless citizens, and unaccountable to them.[9]
The actual technology which is now said to be honing the technique ‘to distinguish between passing thoughts and genuine intentions’ is described by Professor John-Dylan Haynes in the Guardian in the most disarmingly untechnical language which must surely not have been intended to enlighten.
The Guardian piece ran as follows:
A team of world-leading neuroscientists has developed a powerful technique that allows them to look deep inside a person’s brain and read their intentions before they act.
The research breaks controversial new ground in scientists’ ability to probe people’s minds and eavesdrop on their thoughts, and raises serious ethical issues over how brain-reading technology may be used in the future.
‘Using the scanner, we could look around the brain for this information and read out something that from the outside there's no way you could possibly tell is in there. It's like shining a torch around, looking for writing on a wall,’ said John-Dylan Haynes at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany, who led the study with colleagues at University College London and Oxford University.
We know therefore that they are using light, but fMRI has been used for many years to attempt the unravelling of neuronal activity, and while there have been many efforts to record conscious and unconscious processes, with particular emphasis on the visual cortex, there has been no progress into consciousness itself. We can be sure that we are not being told the real story.
Just as rats and chimpanzees have been used to demonstrate findings from remote experiments on humans, electrode implants used on cockroaches to remotely control them, lasers used to steer fruit-flies[10] [11], and worms engineered so that their nerves and muscles can be controlled with pinpricks of light[12], the information and techniques that have been ruthlessly forged using opportunistic onslaughts on defenceless humans as guinea pigs - used for myriad purposes from creating 3D haptic gloves in computer games to creating artificial intelligence to send visual processing into outer space - require appropriate replication for peer group approval and to meet ethical demands for scientific and public probity.
The use of light to peer into the brain is almost certainly that of terahertz, which occurs in the wavelengths which lie between 30mm and 1mm of the electromagnetic spectrum. Terahertz has the ability to penetrate deep into organic materials, without (it is said) the damage associated with ionising radiation such as x-rays. It can distinguish between materials with varying water content – for example fat versus lean meat. These properties lend themselves to applications in process and quality control as well as biomedical imaging. Terahertz can penetrate bricks, and also human skulls. Other applications can be learnt from the major developer of terahertz in the UK, Teraview, which is in Cambridge, and partially owned by Toshiba.
Efforts to alert human rights’ groups about the loss of the mind as a place to call your own, have met with little discernible reaction, in spite of reports about over decades of the dangers of remote manipulation using technology to access the mind[13], Dr Nick Begich’s book, Controlling the human mind[14], being an important recent contribution. A different approach did in fact, elicit a response. When informed of the use of terahertz at Heathrow and Luton airports in the UK to scan passengers, the news that passengers would be revealed naked by a machine which looked directly through their clothes produced a small, but highly indignant, article in the spring 2007 edition of the leading human rights organisation, Liberty.[15] If the reading of the mind met with no protest, seeing through one’s clothes certainly did. It seems humans’ assumption of the mind as a private place has been so secured by evolution that it will take a sustained battle to convince the public that, through events of which we are not yet fully informed, such former innocence has been lost.
Trained light, targeted atomic spectroscopy, the use of powerful magnets to absorb moisture from human tissues, the transfer of radiative energy – these have replaced the microwave harassment which was used to transmit auditory messages directly into the hearing.[16] With the discovery of light to disentangle thousands of neurons and encode signals from the complex circuitry of the brain, present programs will not even present the symptoms which simulated schizoid states. Medically, even if terahertz does not ionise, we do not yet know how the sustained application of intense light will affect the delicate workings of the brain and how cells might be damaged, dehydrated, stretched, obliterated.
This year, 2007, has also brought the news that terahertz lasers small enough to incorporate into portable devices had been developed.[17]
Sandia National Laboratories in the US in collaboration with MIT have produced a transmitter-receiver (transceiver) that enables a number of applications. In addition to scanning for explosives, we may also assume their integration into hand-held communication systems. ‘These semiconductor devices have output powers which previously could only be obtained by molecular gas lasers occupying cubic meters and weighing more than 100kg, or free electron lasers weighing tons and occupying buildings.’ As far back as 1996 the US Air Force Scientific Advisory Board predicted that the development of electromagnetic energy sources would ‘open the door for the development of some novel capabilities that can be used in armed conflict, in terrorist/hostage situations, and in training’ and ‘new weapons that offer the opportunity of control of an adversary … can be developed around this concept’.[18]
The surveillance technology of today is the surveillance of the human mind and, through access to the brain and nervous system, the control of behaviour and the body’s functions. The messaging of auditory hallucinations has given way to silent techniques of influencing and implanting thoughts. The development of the terahertz technologies has illuminated the workings of the brain, facilitated the capture of emitted photons which are derived from the visual cortex which processes picture formation in the brain, and enabled the microelectronic receiver which has, in turn, been developed by growing unique semi-conductor crystals. In this way, the technology is now in place for the detection and reading of spectral ‘signatures’ of gases. All humans emit gases. Humans, like explosives, emit their own spectral signature in the form of a gas. With the reading of the brain’s electrical frequency, and of the spectral gas signature, the systems have been established for the control of populations – and with the necessary technology integrated into a cell-phone.
‘We are very optimistic about working in the terahertz electromagnetic spectrum,’ says the principal investigator of the Terahertz Microelectronics Transceiver at Sandia: ‘This is an unexplored area, and a lot of science can come out of it. We are just beginning to scratch the surface of what THz can do to improve national security’.
Carole Smith was born and educated in Australia, where she gained a Bachelor of Arts degree at Sydney University. She trained as a psychoanalyst in London where she has had a private practice. In recent years she has been a researcher into the invasive methods of accessing minds using technological means, and has published papers on the subject. She has written the first draft of a book entitled: “The Controlled Society”.
NOTES
[1] <a href="http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/antenna/neurobotics/private/121.asp" target="_blank">"">http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/antenna/neurobotics/private/121.asp</a>;
At the time of writing it is still accessible. The exhibition ran from October 2006 to April 2007.
[2] Where are the scanners? Who controls them? Are they guarded by police to avoid them being stolen by terrorists? How many are they in number? Are they going into mass production? Do we have any say about their deployment? It is perhaps not unduly paranoid to want to have some answers to these questions.
[3] There is insufficient space here to deal with microchips, the covert implantation of radio transmitting devices which were referred to in Senator Glenn’s extraordinary speech to Congress on the occasion of his attempt to introduce the Human Research Subject Protection Act in 1997:
<a href="http://www.ahrp.org/InformedConsent/glennConsent.php" target="_blank">"">http://www.ahrp.org/InformedConsent/glennConsent.php</a>;
[4] Ref: The Coming Wireless revolution: When Everything Connects: The Economist: 26 April 2007.
<a href="http://www.economist.com/opinion/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=9080024" target="_blank">"">http://www.economist.com/opinion/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=9080024</a>;
[5] Guardian: ‘The Brain Scan that can read people’s intentions’: 9 February 2007. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,2009229,00.html" target="_blank">"">www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,2009229,00.html</a>;
[6] <a href="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.01/lying_pr.html" target="_blank">"">http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.01/lying_pr.html</a>;
[7] I say, ‘influencing’, advisedly since the technology that enables thoughts to be accessed, certainly also allows for the dulling of mental processes, the interference of memory, the excitation of mental or bodily processes, the infliction of pain on any organ or nerve, the increase of blood pressure, breathing or the slowing down of these, as well as the activation of rage, sadness, hysteria, or inappropriate behaviour. Ref:John Norseen’s work: Images of Mind: The Semiotic Alphabet. The implantation of silent messages, experienced as thoughts arising in the mind, is now possible.
[8] Despite three letters to the Guardian science correspondent, and Editor, I had no reply from them, having asked them to consider my points, as psychoanalyst and researcher, for the ethical debate which was called for. Nor was there any response from my approach to the Cambridge ethicists and scientists who were said to be forming a committee. I have seen no correspondence nor reference to the whole matter since February, 2007. There was some marked regression in the New Scientist about worms being used for experiments for remote control
See: Douglas Fox, ‘Remote Control Brains: a neuroscience revolution’, New Scientist, 18 July 2007.
[9] The covert action group in the newly formed CIA recommended to President Eisenhower in 1954 that the US must pursue “a fundamentally repugnant philosophy”, and that they must learn to “subvert, sabotage and destroy” its enemies by “more clever and more ruthless methods” than those of its opponents:
Ref: James Doolittle et al: “The Central Intelligence Agency: History and Documents (Univ.Alabama Press, 1984.
[10] Fruit flies share to a remarkable degree, the DNA of humans.
[11] Fruit Flies and You: NASA sends fruit flies into Space:
<a href="http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/03feb_fruitfly.htm" target="_blank">"">http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/03feb_fruitfly.htm</a>;
[12] Ref: New Scientist, 18 July 2007: ‘Remote Control Brains: a neuroscience revolution’:
<a href="http://www.science.org.au/nova/newscientist/040ns_003.htm" target="_blank">"">http://www.science.org.au/nova/newscientist/040ns_003.htm</a>;
[13] See author’s paper: <a href="http://www.btinternet.com/~psycho_social/Vol3/V3.html" target="_blank">"">http://www.btinternet.com/~psycho_social/Vol3/V3.html</a>;
[14] Nick Begich, Controlling the human mind: the technologies of political control or tools for peak performance, Earthpulse Press Publications.
[15] Liberty, and Lawyers for Liberty have staunchly maintained a thorough-going campaign against the protracted government plan to issue biometric ID cards, taking the case to the House of Lords where they have gained support. In view of the undisclosed work being carried out which will enable direct access to the brain through the technology coming to light, and using light, one cannot but suspect that the biometric ID card is but an adjunct to the tracking and data sourcing of citizens, and as such has fulfilled the function of a very effective smokescreen, having deflected the energies of the protectors of individual liberties in terms of thousands of hours of concentrated protest effort, with enormous expenditure spent on their campaign.
[16] Human subjects, once computers for research experiments program them, remain targeted, even if the original reasons for their usage have become obsolete. Some have been continuously abused for over thirty years.
[17] Thz Lasers Small Enough for Screening Devices:
<a href="http://www.photonics.com/content/" target="_blank">"">www.photonics.com/content/</a>; news/2007/February/7/86317.aspx
<a href="http://www.whatsnextnetwork.com/technology/index.php/2007/01/23/miniaturized_terahertz_transmitter_recei" target="_blank">"">http://www.whatsnextnetwork.com/technology/index.php/2007/01/23/min...</a>;
[18] <a href="http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/vistas/vistas.htm" target="_blank">"">http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/vistas/vistas.htm</a>;
Global Research Articles by Carole Smith
Please go to LAST PAGE OF "Replies to this Discussion" to read NEWEST Information
Replies
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/news-conference-gang-stalking-electr...
http://www.examiner.com/human-rights-in-national/video-ron-paul-def...
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2013150,00.html?xid=...
8/25/2010 By ADAM COHEN Adam Cohen – 2 hrs 33 mins ago
Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway - and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements.
That is the bizarre - and scary - rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants - with no need for a search warrant. (Read about one man's efforts to escape the surveillance state.)
It is a dangerous decision - one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.
This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle's underside.
After Pineda-Moreno challenged the DEA's actions, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in January that it was all perfectly legal. More disturbingly, a larger group of judges on the circuit, who were subsequently asked to reconsider the ruling, decided this month to let it stand. (Pineda-Moreno has pleaded guilty conditionally to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and manufacturing marijuana while appealing the denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained with the help of GPS.)
In fact, the government violated Pineda-Moreno's privacy rights in two different ways. For starters, the invasion of his driveway was wrong. The courts have long held that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their homes and in the "curtilage," a fancy legal term for the area around the home. The government's intrusion on property just a few feet away was clearly in this zone of privacy.
The judges veered into offensiveness when they explained why Pineda-Moreno's driveway was not private. It was open to strangers, they said, such as delivery people and neighborhood children, who could wander across it uninvited. (See the misadventures of the CIA.)
Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who dissented from this month's decision refusing to reconsider the case, pointed out whose homes are not open to strangers: rich people's. The court's ruling, he said, means that people who protect their homes with electric gates, fences and security booths have a large protected zone of privacy around their homes. People who cannot afford such barriers have to put up with the government sneaking around at night.
Judge Kozinski is a leading conservative, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, but in his dissent he came across as a raging liberal. "There's been much talk about diversity on the bench, but there's one kind of diversity that doesn't exist," he wrote. "No truly poor people are appointed as federal judges, or as state judges for that matter." The judges in the majority, he charged, were guilty of "cultural elitism."
The court went on to make a second terrible decision about privacy: that once a GPS device has been planted, the government is free to use it to track people without getting a warrant. There is a major battle under way in the federal and state courts over this issue, and the stakes are high. After all, if government agents can track people with secretly planted GPS devices virtually anytime they want, without having to go to a court for a warrant, we are one step closer to a classic police state - with technology taking on the role of the KGB or the East German Stasi.
Fortunately, other courts are coming to a different conclusion from the Ninth Circuit's - including the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That court ruled, also this month, that tracking for an extended period of time with GPS is an invasion of privacy that requires a warrant. The issue is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.
In these highly partisan times, GPS monitoring is a subject that has both conservatives and liberals worried. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit's pro-privacy ruling was unanimous - decided by judges appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
Plenty of liberals have objected to this kind of spying, but it is the conservative Chief Judge Kozinski who has done so most passionately. "1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it's here at last," he lamented in his dissent. And invoking Orwell's totalitarian dystopia where privacy is essentially nonexistent, he warned: "Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we're living in Oceania."
Cohen, a lawyer, is a former TIME writer and a former member of the New York Times editorial board.
Can A Satellite Read Your Thoughts? - Physics Revealed
Tue Jul 13, 2010 4:28 PM EDT
By Deep_Thought
Figure 1: QED viewpoint of a moving charge.
Figure 2: Formula to calculate the power density in the far field at a given radius.
Figure 3: ELF satellite array.
Most people, when they hear of Synthetic Telepathy, especially by means of satellite, jump to the immediate conclusion that such things are not possible. If they were, we would have heard of them, right?
Looking back at the history of classified technology, places and events shows a wide range of time periods where things are kept secret. Stealth aircraft are just one example, the F-117 Nighthawk was not publicly acknowledged until 1988 although it had been in operation for over six years. Documents sealed for "National Security" purposes can be hidden away for up to 70 years. So, it would be really surprising if certain technologies were not classified as you read this.
Whilst you can hide certain technology to an extent, what becomes very difficult to hide as time passes is the physics of a given technology. An example would be a nuclear device. Whilst you could, in theory, hide a given nation's development of a nuclear bomb, the physics still shows that nuclear fission/fusion is possible. Thus, if you weigh up the various factors that are required to create a nuclear device, you can make an educated guess as to the likelihood a nation has such technology.
With this in mind, I decided to look at the transceiver and the physics involved in that process. Its all well and good claiming that a satellite can read thoughts, but how does the physics stack up?
Does The Brain Transmit Like A Radio
To understand this, we first need to look at how antennas work, its relationship to neurons and what similarities, if any, exist. Coming from a QED angle, if you take a look at figure 1 we can get a better viewpoint of how a moving charge creates an EM wave. As the electrical field moves towards the bottom of the picture, virtual photons are radiating magnetic energy into free space. As per Maxwell's equations, a changing magnetic field will induce a changing electrical field resulting in a free standing EM wave. This is a good applet that shows how a moving charge produces electromagnetic radiation.
So, what is the connection with neurons? Information is processed by the brain in the form of electro-chemical interactions. That is, every perception you have sends electrical signals to the brain that are routed to specific areas that deal with them. The neuron has a long strand called an axon, along this axon propagates an electrical charge. With a resting potential of -70mV an action potential moves along the axon, in a millisecond, elevating it to a voltage of +30mV which drops off over a few milliseconds. This makes an action potential a form of alternating current with an almost triangular waveform. As such, this produces a very weak form of modulated electromagnetic radiation or radio source.
For the astute reader, it means that a neuron is a type of transducer.
Can You Hear Me Now?
So, whenever you have a thought, feeling, speak or our heart beats, tiny little radio emissions are being made by the brain that emanate into free space. The real questions are, given modern technology can these signals be detected and does a method exist of associating them with particular functions? That is, whilst signals in this power range may be detectable, is there something unique about the signals that can be used to differentiate between different roles?
Let's deal with first problem, detection. I tracked down an example of satellite sensitvity to radio frequencies that should act as a baseline. The following data is from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab:
The sensitivity of our deep-space tracking antennas located around the world is truly amazing. The antennas must capture Voyager information from a signal so weak that the power striking the antenna is only 10 exponent -16 watts (1 part in 10 quadrillion). A modern-day electronic digital watch operates at a power level 20 billion times greater than this feeble level.
So, does the brain emit radio waves at a power level greater than 0.0000000000000001 Watts after several hundred miles?
To answer this we must turn to this scientific paper. From this paper, we can observe the charge per square centimeter which is around 22-29 microamperes. We can perform some rough math on these figures that will reveal the answer to our question. The equations are rough and leave out a lot of additional factors, that said, the final figures will not be far from the truth and will probably under-estimate the capabilities of current classified technology.
So, using the formula Watts = Voltage x Amperage, we get the following peak power:
0.003 V x 0.0000029 A = 0.0000000087 Watts/cm2
So, at source, the weak radio emission of a cubic centimeter of brain matter is well within the detectable limits of the satellite. We now need to project that into space and determine the signal strength at orbital distances. To do this, we need to apply the inverse square law to the emission and the formula is provided in figure 2. So, the formula would be (disregarding gain):
(0.000087 Watts/m2) / (4PI x (500000m^2)) =
0.000087 / 3141592653589.7932384626433832795 =
2.7692960097989788423785774826817e-17 Watts/m2
This is fine, its somewhat larger than our baseline, but nothing that cannot be accounted for. Firstly, we need to identify the frequency range. As noted before, due to Maxwell's equations the motion of the action potential results in a changing electrical field. In turn, this results in a changing magnetic field and thus a free space radio wave.
Typical frequencies for an action potential are in the range of 0-500Hz which will result in free space waves in this range, known as the SLF and ELF Band. This somewhat matches up with experimental evidence that shows humans do broadcast signals on the ELF band. This scientific paper and others show that SLF/ELF reception gear and antennas are of a practical form factor to be placed upon a satellite. An array of such satellites (see figure 3) would use the principle of aperture synthesis to create a type of space-born Very Large Array.
Given that the Ohio State's radio telescope had a sensitivity, in 1977, of 2 ×10^-22 W m-2 per channel and the VLA is described as being 100 times as sensitive, any signals we are producing could be heard loud-and-clear by a space-borne array. This arrangement would provide for a very high resolution of brain activity.
What's more, the development time line for this technology places the capability to detect brainwaves as far back as the early 1970's. Given an average lifespan for a satellite as 5 years, with an initial deployment during 1970, the satellite technology would be in its 8th generation today.
So, we can detect the signals but now it must be processed.
Information Overload
There is a significant difference between detecting a signal, or signal range, and being able to process that information and make sense of it. To do this, we need to find unique patterns in a signal that would allow us to isolate individuals and isolate neural activity we can categorize.
The three main characteristics of a wave are its amplitude, frequency and phase. To be able to detect a single person, in a crowd for example, we need to find something unique about the waves the are emanating. This allows us to eliminate the noise and only have information regarding a single person. There are a number of ways this can be achieved. In a satellite array, examining the timing of signals received across the array, on a given frequency range, will provide you with both the location (in 3D) and the coding of the neuron structure. From this, the function of the cluster can be inferred by comparison with generalizable signals in a database.
A cluster of neurons will broadcast across a given range of frequencies, slightly out of phase and with slight variation in amplitude. The characteristics are dictated to by the rate of neuronal firing, the timing of neuronal firing and the amount of energy in the neuron at the time. Given that neurons are biological and the unique structure of a cluster, the statistical likelihood of the wave characteristics being identical between different people would be quite low. Thus, from a technical viewpoint, pattern analysis lies at the heart of the development of a lexicon.
Now, we have our signals, we know what they mean, all that's left is to scale the process up, allowing us to track thousands of targets in real-time. The only real limit here is processing horse power and satellites.
Conclusion
In answer to our original question, it is technically possible for a satellite to detect your thoughts, your emotions and your perceptions and pass that information to a computer for interpretation. I bet that comes as quite a shock.
The only ever real restriction was the receiver sensitivity in the SLF/ELF band. The whole tinfoil hat brigade will be pleased, but will ultimately feel stupid as waves in the SLF/ELF band cannot be blocked by tinfoil hats. Even in the deepest tube stations, you would be heard perfectly from orbital distances.
Do you see the benefit to intelligence gathering?
So, given that it is technically possible, the questions now become which governments are using it and why was the public not informed?
There will be a lot of raised eyebrows in the world tonight.
It's very interesting about the ear itch and the scratching as an indicator
but it is doubtful this stuff can be done by satellite. When you're laying
in bed & you feel yourself being hit by a concentrated beam of energy
with a "Voice of God" (a guy with earphones) saying you are being
deprogrammed, and you feel your lobes being hit etc where is this
coming from? Satellites? Another apartment overhead? Parked Van?
A temporally empty apt I think. I've felt directed energy coming from underneath.
Where is that coming from, China? I think from an apartment somewhere below me, MAYBE.
Cell phone towers are another possibility when outside. Nearby stations might act
as a relay from satellites and probably do not need a human operator.
V2K from overhead does not mean your upstairs neighbor is in on anything
as much as you are made to believe otherwise. Never accuse anyone
based on what you hear even if you think you're hearing that person
through a wall etc. If that person tells you face to face then believe it.
Posted by Jeremy on 1st September 2010
http://areyoutargeted.com/2010/09/federal-surveillance-abuse-gets-m...
Warrantless GPS tracking
The EFF and ACLU prevailed against warrantless GPS tracking in the District of Columbia in early August. A few days later, an apellate court in California ruled that federal agencies have the right to covertly place GPS trackers on a car, without a warrant:
The judges ruled that because [the surveilled party] had not taken specific steps to exclude passersby from his driveway — by installing a gate or posting no trespassing signs, for instance — he could not claim reasonable privacy expectations.
The Ninth Circuit panel ruled that the actions by the agents were comparable to the delivery of newspapers to the house, or the retrieval of a ball accidently thrown under the vehicle by a neighbor.
Dissenting Judge Kozinski, however, contended that most people in the U.S don’t expect that a car parked in their driveway “invites people to crawl under it and attach a [tracking] device. There is something creepy and un-American about such clandestine and underhanded behavior.”
This issue is going to the Supreme Court.
More on: http://areyoutargeted.com/2010/09/federal-surveillance-abuse-gets-m...
http://www.pdf-finder.com/pdf/Satellite-Surveillance:-Domestic-Issu... Sat Surveillance Domestic Issues MANY GOV PDF'S
http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=Intellectual_Freedom_Issues... NSA
Surveillance in America with Links
http://torinmonahan.com/media/CLAS_story.pdf Brochure on Surveillance
http://www.surveillance-source.com/Electronic_Surveillance.htm Electronic Surveillance: A Matter of Necessity?
http://www.iasc-culture.org/HHR_Archives/Fear/5.3GLyon.pdf Fear Surveillance and Consumption
http://www.nyclu.org/pdfs/surveillance_cams_report_121306.pdf NYC Surveillance Cam's Report
http://www-video.eecs.berkeley.edu/papers/avz/MMS-Chapter15-zakhor-... Multimodal Air and Ground Sensors
http://info.publicintelligence.net/DHSGoogleEarthTerror.pdf US Dept of Homeland Security Internet Sites Allow Detailed Surveillance and Pre Attack Planning
http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/articles4(3)/streetlevel.pdf Street level surveillance Human Agency adn Electronic Monitoring of Offenders
http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1476-072X-9-1.pdf Enhancing Spatial detection accuracy for sybdromic surveillance at street level
http://elderlab.yorku.ca/3DSN/GEOIDE/pilotProjectIntro.pdf Three Dimensionalising Surveillance Networks
http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2010/January28/2872.html Surveillance Society are you being watched
Posted by Annie Svensson on December 7, 2010 at 3:05am
https://peacepink.ning.com/profiles/blogs/satellite-surveillance
The War and an Analysis of Conflict in Society
Shocking Menace of Satellite Surveillance
John Fleming
Unknown to most of the world, satellites can perform astonishing and often menacing feats. This should come as no surprise when one reflects on the massive effort poured into satellite technology since the Soviet satellite Sputnik, launched in 1957, caused panic in the U.S. A spy satellite can monitor a person’s every movement, even when the “target” is indoors or deep in the interior of a building or traveling rapidly down the highway in a car, in any kind of weather (cloudy, rainy, stormy). There is no place to hide on the face of the earth. It takes just three satellites to blanket the world with detection capacity. Besides tracking a person’s every action and relaying the data to a computer screen on earth, amazing powers of satellites include reading a person’s mind, monitoring conversations, manipulating electronic instruments and physically assaulting someone with a laser beam. Remote reading of someone’s mind through satellite technology is quite bizarre, yet it is being done; it is a reality at present, not a chimera from a futuristic dystopia! To those who might disbelieve my description of satellite surveillance, I’d simply cite a tried-and-true Roman proverb: Time reveals all things (tempus omnia revelat).
As extraordinary as clandestine satellite powers are, nevertheless prosaic satellite technology is much evident in daily life. Satellite businesses reportedly earned $26 billion in 1998. We can watch transcontinental television broadcasts “via satellite,” make long-distance phone calls relayed by satellite, be informed of cloud cover and weather conditions through satellite images shown on television, and find our geographical bearings with the aid of satellites in the GPS (Global Positioning System). But behind the facade of useful satellite technology is a Pandora’s box of surreptitious technology. Spy satellites–as opposed to satellites for broadcasting and exploration of space–have little or no civilian use–except, perhaps, to subject one’s enemy or favorite malefactor to surveillance. With reference to detecting things from space, Ford Rowan, author of Techno Spies, wrote “some U.S. military satellites are equipped with infra-red sensors that can pick up the heat generated on earth by trucks, airplanes, missiles, and cars, so that even on cloudy days the sensors can penetrate beneath the clouds and reproduce the patterns of heat emission on a TV-type screen. During the Vietnam War sky high infra-red sensors were tested which detect individual enemy soldiers walking around on the ground.” Using this reference, we can establish 1970 as the approximate date of the beginning of satellite surveillance–and the end of the possibility of privacy for several people.
The government agency most heavily involved in satellite surveillance technology is the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), an arm of the Pentagon. NASA is concerned with civilian satellites, but there is no hard and fast line between civilian and military satellites. NASA launches all satellites, from either Cape Kennedy in Florida or Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, whether they are military-operated, CIA-operated, corporate-operated or NASA’s own. Blasting satellites into orbit is a major expense. It is also difficult to make a quick distinction between government and private satellites; research by NASA is often applicable to all types of satellites. Neither the ARPA nor NASA makes satellites; instead, they underwrite the technology while various corporations produce the hardware. Corporations involved in the satellite business include Lockheed, General Dynamics, RCA, General Electric, Westinghouse, Comsat, Boeing, Hughes Aircraft, Rockwell International, Grumman Corp., CAE Electronics, Trimble Navigation and TRW.
The World Satellite Directory, 14th edition (1992), lists about a thousand companies concerned with satellites in one way or another. Many are merely in the broadcasting business, but there are also product headings like “remote sensing imagery,” which includes Earth Observation Satellite Co. of Lanham, Maryland, Downl Inc. of Denver, and Spot Image Corp. of Reston, Virginia. There are five product categories referring to transponders. Other product categories include earth stations (14 types), “military products and systems,” “microwave equipment,” “video processors,” “spectrum analyzers.” The category “remote sensors” lists eight companies, including ITM Systems Inc., in Grants Pass, Oregon, and Satellite Technology Management of Costa Mesa, California. Sixty-five satellite associations are listed from all around the world, such as Aerospace Industries Association, American Astronautical Society, Amsat and several others in the U.S.
Spy satellites were already functioning and violating people’s right to privacy when President Reagan proposed his “Strategic Defense Initiative,” or Star Wars, in the early 80s, long after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 had demonstrated the military usefulness of satellites. Star Wars was supposed to shield the U.S. from nuclear missiles, but shooting down missiles with satellite lasers proved infeasible, and many scientists and politicians criticized the massive program. Nevertheless, Star Wars gave an enormous boost to surveillance technology and to what may be called “black bag” technology, such as mind reading and lasers that can assault someone, even someone indoors. Aviation Week & Space Technology mentioned in 1984 that “facets of the project [in the Star Wars program] that are being hurried along include the awarding of contracts to study…a surveillance satellite network.” It was bound to be abused, yet no group is fighting to cut back or subject to democratic control this terrifying new technology. As one diplomat to the U.N. remarked, “‘Star Wars’ was not a means of creating heaven on earth, but it could result in hell on earth.”
China Tracking Citizens With GPS Enabled Phones
http://spie.org/x648.html?product_id=171270
here is an interesting find on "Holographic Surveillane"
-
1
-
2
-
3
-
4
of 4 Next