Mental Espionage, A New Risk
Mind spying is no longer a science fiction topic, it is a reality that is here and advances day after day. Neurosciences evolve and digital technologies do the same. Together, they generate great benefits, but, as is often the case with many advances, they also carry risks that are sometimes staggering.
We have reached a point where it is indeed possible to do mind spying. There are devices that can reveal what is on your mind, but also identify your emotions. Some examples of what they can do is to know if you know someone or not, identify the passwords that you have memorized, detect if you are related to a government or are against it, etc.
Today, more than ever, we could be facing the possibility that mind espionage will become a reality on a large scale.
Antecedents of mental espionage
At the beginning of the 20th century, a great discovery was made: the brain emits waves , that is, physical signals of its activity. Based on this great discovery, various devices began to be developed to capture such waves and better understand brain function. After many years, and much research, they came up with sophisticated devices to read this data.
The entire EEG and the world of brain imaging is based on these advancements. Brain waves provide data on what and how this organ is working. From a medical point of view, this has been of great help to establish or confirm diagnoses and to better understand that wonderful apparatus that we have in our heads.
Magnetic resonance imaging began to be used systematically in various experiments. Through these it is possible to monitor what happens in the mind before certain stimuli. It is possible to observe which regions are activated, which are not, and in what way this process occurs. All these data are interpreted and lead to conclusions such as that the person felt fear, anxiety, confusion, etc.
On the other hand, technologies such as the polygraph or “lie detector” capture other types of signals such as heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate, etc. Combined and interpreted these physiological signals it is possible to know if someone is lying with a high degree of reliability.
The headbands and the thoughts
A few years ago, headbands or helmets began to appear that allow anyone to activate electronic devices just by thinking of doing so. Initially it had applications in medicine, basically for people with paralysis. Currently, it is already a fact that someone lacking mobility can start a bionic hand just thinking about it, for example, with one of those headbands.
The most surprising thing is that this is a technology that is available to anyone and for a very low price. There are already several devices on the market, especially helmets, so that even a child can control a video game just by thinking about it. They are available from 70 euros in many electronics stores.
What is not said much is that these devices are as susceptible as any other to being hacked . This means that anyone with the right knowledge can attack these devices, just like attacking a smartphone or PC. And also that information can be stolen, which, in this case, is the information we have in mind. This was already proven by a group of Oxford researchers, in 2012.
Big brother
During an eventual cyber attack, what a hacker does is convert brain waves into bits and then this into effective information. Several companies that produce antivirus are already warning about this new form of espionage and attacks.
It is clear that it is already possible to do mental espionage through devices such as those of which we have spoken.
Big Brother dystopia is becoming more and more feasible. Mind spying also involves mental vigilance. If the power, or the powers, know our physiological reactions, they will also have key data to know how we think and how we act. In fact, they may have more information about us than we do.
