A team of UC Irvine scientists has been awarded a $4 million grant from the U.S. Army Research Office to study the neuroscientific and signal-processing foundations of synthetic telepathy.
The brain-computer interface would use a noninvasive brain imaging technology like electroencephalography (the measurement of electrical activity produced by the brain as recorded from electrodes placed on the scalp) to let people communicate thoughts to each other. For example, a soldier would “think” a message to be transmitted and a computer-based speech recognition system would decode the EEG signals. The decoded thoughts, in essence translated brain waves, are transmitted using a system that points in the direction of the intended target.
It starts with a grant at a university; the concept becomes real; it is picked up for further black op research that no one knows has occurred and before you know it, it is in use at airports, sporting events, political conventions and in boardrooms. It might be great on a date but that concept leads to some unsavory ideas. Could you imagine…?
I don’t think I should be wearing one of these ‘noninvasive’ brain imaging devices in some of the meetings I attend. Could you imagine the thoughts emanating from your brain onto to the screen projected on the wall with the LCD?
In light of the new research, I’m going to give Dan Geer a call at In-Q-Tel to see if I can get funding for a telepathy firewall concept that is organic in nature protecting brainwaves down to the neurons, dendrites and providing synapse VPN tunnels to protect my thoughts.
I wonder how access rights will be managed here? Will there be connection standards with other VPN tunnels and other people? I’ll probably have to deploy some out-of-date, signature-based anti-virus solution to protect my thoughts but, could you imagine the initial cleanup effort just to get to a steady state?
This explains why so many of the members of full disclosure wear tin foil hats.
I am disappointed that a seasoned security expert like yourself would propose a bandaid solution like a firewall to protect something as complex as your brain. Obviously the brain's operating system needs to be hardened itself, and possibly replaced altogether. I am guessing your brain's OS is somewhere between 40-50 years old and has never been patched.
You've got me there Jim. In following standard security practices, we would only bandaid initially leaving the embarrassment of greater breaches as the catalyst to expand to brain OS hardening, black listing, behavior based and anomalous intrusion prevention. Moreover, I would tend to throw them all out and protect data in my brain at its inception (forgoing the wasted dollars on outdated protection strategies).
I'd have to say that over the years I have had several patchings that would qualify as such, while demonstrating repetitive requests to the C-suite for enhanced security controls I liken to insanity expecting a different result. This truly demonstrates that somewhere along the way, a successful intrusion occurred with a lobotomy payload that is timed for periodic release based upon specific triggers that slowly eats away at and erodes normal brain functions.