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I remember some tweets from DJB. https://twitter.com/hashbreaker/status/709314886384427008 https://twitter.com/hashbreaker/status/709314886384427008 > Fun gam

I remember some tweets from DJB. https://twitter.com/hashbreaker/status/709314886384427008 https://twitter.com/hashbreaker/status/709314886384427008 > Fun game to play: Take statements from Comey et al. Replace "smartphones" with "brains"/"memories"/"thoughts". Technology will get us there! > "Everybody is walking around with a Swiss bank account in his brain if government can't get in. You cannot take an absolutist view on this." > "How do we solve or disrupt a terrorist plot if law enforcement can't access the memories and thoughts inside suspected terrorists' brains?" Both funny and scary. Time to rewatch the TV animation version of Ghost in the Shell [0] again. Released in 2000s, it portrayed and predicted our world remarkably well, and it'll give you a lot of inspirations of what would the future society look like when everyone uses an electronic brain. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell:_Stand_Alone_Complex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell:_Stand_Alon...

marmaduke 7y ago
> Technology will get us there! Perhaps but not quickly. Decoding brain activity is still a hard thing to do.
- JrProgrammer 7y ago
  (Insert any cipher) was too at its time.
  - marmaduke 7y ago
    Brain activity isn't a cipher.
    - segfaultbuserr 7y ago
      There can be a cipher, if we are talking about electronic brains from GiST. But it doesn't change the issue nor the jokes.
  - segfaultbuserr 7y ago
    You should remember that the context of the jokes was about the statements from ex-FBI's head James Comey on encryption backdoor in the middle of the Crypto War 2 back in 2016. > "(with encryption) Everybody is walking around with a Swiss bank account in his smartphone if government can't get in. You cannot take an absolutist view on this (, and we must add backdoors)." Replace "smartphones" with "brains". > "(with encryption) Everybody is walking around with a Swiss bank account in his brain if government can't get in. You cannot take an absolutist view on this (, and we must add backdoors)." Get the joke now?
- wisty 7y ago
  Lie detectors are already a thing that some studies have shown with up to 100% accuracy (using fMRI and machine learning) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie_detection#FMRI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie_detection#FMRI Yes there's countermeasures, but these seem to be security through obscurity (can the detector spot the use of counter measures?).
  - y4mi 7y ago
    > fMRI was 21% more likely to detect a lie than the polygraph. 20% more likely than polygraph isn't very inspiring though. their success rate is abysmal.
    - meowface 7y ago
      It'll likely remain only marginally better than polygraphs for decades or longer, but it seems probable that eventually it's going to become so effective that law enforcement organizations will feel like they need to use it to keep up with other law enforcement organizations. Once one or two big organizations see high success rates with it, many will feel like they're letting a lot of criminals get off scot free because they're behind on technology, and most departments/agencies will have very strong incentives to jump on board as they start to see more and more of their peers adopting it (just like with DNA collection and testing). Even if consent is required, it'll just be like traffic stop no-win situations: if they ask you to consent to a search due to suspicion of drug possession and you say yes, they'll search, and if you say no, they'll wait until a drug dog comes, and then the dog will effectively conduct the search and/or will be used as a tool to permit a full search. Or if you refuse to take a breathalyzer test, they essentially presume guilt and treat you like you took the test and failed. Anyone who refuses to consent to the Truth-O-Matic test will probably suffer similar consequences. It's mostly an illusion of consent. I think this future is inevitable without some very serious legislation; perhaps a constitutional amendment. A counter-point is that one could imagine a potential distant future exigent circumstance where some sophisticated criminal might have information that could truly prevent an imminent attack that'll very likely kill millions of people, or something, and which could be discovered through such a detector. In those fanciful scenarios I honestly do find myself wanting to agree with Comey: fuck privacy, siphon those fucking thoughts. It's certainly a much more ethical and effective alternative to torture, at least, which is how the US government would currently handle such a scenario (if they could cover it up). Security and privacy/liberty are always a tradeoff, but even if you weigh privacy exponentially higher, there's always still some theoretical risk that would tip the scale back towards security, in my view. Nuclear armageddon, for example. The privacy hill to die on shouldn't be Mega-Corpse Mountain. This scenario is absurdly far-fetched in 2019, of course, but in 2079? 2119? Who knows? If Aum Shinrikyo and ISIS can do what they did and plan what they planned in the 1990s and 2010s, what about new incarnations of zealous death cults in a world that may have extremely intelligent AIs and/or DIY-potential for almost anything? Even a single instance of losing the final bastion of privacy is such an incredibly slippery slope that it's hard to imagine any safe way to allow its use in very extreme situations like these without setting up the conditions for horrific abuse and a Stasi/1984-esque kowtowing of all of society. But I think this aspect of the law enforcement perspective needs to be taken into consideration as well, even while simultaneously acknowledging that law enforcement will inevitably cry wolf and exaggerate the likelihood or impact of imminent threats. Of course this'll happen, but what happens if they do see an actual wolf one day?
- etrautmann 7y ago
  The hardware is the difficult part. Decoding is actually quite easy once you can record neural activity. Apply your favorite Kalman filter, dimensionality reduction algorithm, or increasingly some flavor of neural network.
- bhouston 7y ago
  Even a decade ago they had the ability to flash images at a brain and detect when one of those images caused a recognition peak. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P300_(neuroscience) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P300_(neuroscience)
etherael 7y ago
This is why at the end of the day come what may the state must die. Technology won't stop advancing, and if it's possible the state will push it with the exact arguments you just modded correctly. It's simply too dangerous to allow that level of control to exist in the hands of a proven malevolent actor that will use it to ensure the extension and maintenance of its power. That power must be seen for the intolerable burden it's becoming before that point and destroyed, replaced with other structures which have no right to make any such unreasonable intrusions.
- point78 7y ago
  So you prefer to go back to kings and emperors? Without the state we will all be slaves to someone.
  - Kenji 7y ago
    Nice strawman. Citation needed.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- xg15 7y ago
  And what would make CEOs of private corporations any more likely to deal with this power responsibly? At least government agencies are in theory bound to laws, moral obligations and a democratic process. Meanwhile, private entities don't even have to pretend to work in anyone else's interest than their own. And "you don't have to buy it" is no excuse. If you seriosly want to abolish the state completely, then the same problems that are currently solved by public infrastructure will still exist. You'll be just as unable to opt-out of private roads are you are currently unable to opt-out of public roads. Of course we're actually talking about chips in your brain, not roads. So good luck opting out of that.
  - etherael 7y ago
    > And what would make CEOs of private corporations any more likely to deal with this power responsibly? The same reason none of the previous quotes apply to actors without political power. They do not have the ability to compel people to surrender to unlimited search on penalty of death. This is only reserved and pursued by holders of political authority. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_of_Political_Authority https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_of_Political_Aut... Removing the duty to obey and the right to coerce is the only solution to this problem in the long term. Anything less and they will keep pushing for it loudly and outright doing it as long as they believe they can get away with it. Which, let's be honest in reference to the way rubber stamping of anything that is requested in the name of national security, is basically always, in practice.
xg15 7y ago
To play devil's advocate, one important difference is that brains are not (yet) networked. We don't have telepathy, you can't communicate with other people using your brain alone, so you cannot use it to coordinate terrorist attack either - whereas with encrypted messengers, you absolutely can. ... not that I'd expect this point to make any difference if the technology to inspect brains were on the horizon.
- ignoramous 7y ago
  The thought experiment does well to answer 'I have nothing to hide, only criminals do' mindset, imo.
- mnem 7y ago
  Surely language is how brains communicate? Terrorists were (and still are) quite capable of coordinated attacks without digital technologies.
  - xg15 7y ago
    Well, I was talkig about literally "the brain". Even for language, you need a mouth attached to that. My point is that having a brain is not enough to communicate - you also need some kind of transmission medium that connects you to other brains. So even if you would agree to the opinion that any and all communication must be monitored (because terrorists), that would still no allow you to monitor the brain, because the brain itself is not what enables communication. Monitoring a smartphone would be more justified because you legitimately need access to it to monitor an end-to-end-encrapted connection. (My "devil's advocate" was to note that brains and smartphones are not equivalent, not that monitoring brains should be allowed. On the contrary, my point is that even if you were ok with monitoring smartphones, there are still arguments against monitoring brains.)
- coldtea 7y ago
  >you can't communicate with other people using your brain alone, so you cannot use it to coordinate terrorist attack either You can use it to plan and carry one on your own though. And of course you'll know about an attack if your team is organizing one. Shouldn't all people get brain-screened (from experienced TSA brain scanning operators) to ensure the government gets that information?
keiferski 7y ago
The original link's idea is pretty much the plot of Psycho Pass, I think. It's been awhile since I've seen it, though.
tiborsaas 7y ago
In Ghost in the shell it was striking to me that it began with the conflict about taking a programmer out of the country :) https://imgur.com/yVL0ODF https://imgur.com/yVL0ODF
- segfaultbuserr 7y ago
  Well, the TV version I linked (Stand Alone Complex, which comes later) and the original 1995 movie are two independent timelines. The movie is philosophical in comparison, while the TV version focuses on exploring the practical consequences of a brain-networked society, which was why I mentioned it. Definitely watch it if you have time and haven't seen it yet.
petre 7y ago
Also read Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man where the main character comissions a songwriter to write an earworm song so that it would jam the telepaths reading his thoughts. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demolished_Man https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demolished_Man

marmaduke 7y ago

> Technology will get us there! Perhaps but not quickly. Decoding brain activity is still a hard thing to do.

JrProgrammer 7y ago
(Insert any cipher) was too at its time.
- marmaduke 7y ago
  Brain activity isn't a cipher.
  - segfaultbuserr 7y ago
    There can be a cipher, if we are talking about electronic brains from GiST. But it doesn't change the issue nor the jokes.
- segfaultbuserr 7y ago
  You should remember that the context of the jokes was about the statements from ex-FBI's head James Comey on encryption backdoor in the middle of the Crypto War 2 back in 2016. > "(with encryption) Everybody is walking around with a Swiss bank account in his smartphone if government can't get in. You cannot take an absolutist view on this (, and we must add backdoors)." Replace "smartphones" with "brains". > "(with encryption) Everybody is walking around with a Swiss bank account in his brain if government can't get in. You cannot take an absolutist view on this (, and we must add backdoors)." Get the joke now?
wisty 7y ago
Lie detectors are already a thing that some studies have shown with up to 100% accuracy (using fMRI and machine learning) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie_detection#FMRI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie_detection#FMRI Yes there's countermeasures, but these seem to be security through obscurity (can the detector spot the use of counter measures?).
- y4mi 7y ago
  > fMRI was 21% more likely to detect a lie than the polygraph. 20% more likely than polygraph isn't very inspiring though. their success rate is abysmal.
  - meowface 7y ago
    It'll likely remain only marginally better than polygraphs for decades or longer, but it seems probable that eventually it's going to become so effective that law enforcement organizations will feel like they need to use it to keep up with other law enforcement organizations. Once one or two big organizations see high success rates with it, many will feel like they're letting a lot of criminals get off scot free because they're behind on technology, and most departments/agencies will have very strong incentives to jump on board as they start to see more and more of their peers adopting it (just like with DNA collection and testing). Even if consent is required, it'll just be like traffic stop no-win situations: if they ask you to consent to a search due to suspicion of drug possession and you say yes, they'll search, and if you say no, they'll wait until a drug dog comes, and then the dog will effectively conduct the search and/or will be used as a tool to permit a full search. Or if you refuse to take a breathalyzer test, they essentially presume guilt and treat you like you took the test and failed. Anyone who refuses to consent to the Truth-O-Matic test will probably suffer similar consequences. It's mostly an illusion of consent. I think this future is inevitable without some very serious legislation; perhaps a constitutional amendment. A counter-point is that one could imagine a potential distant future exigent circumstance where some sophisticated criminal might have information that could truly prevent an imminent attack that'll very likely kill millions of people, or something, and which could be discovered through such a detector. In those fanciful scenarios I honestly do find myself wanting to agree with Comey: fuck privacy, siphon those fucking thoughts. It's certainly a much more ethical and effective alternative to torture, at least, which is how the US government would currently handle such a scenario (if they could cover it up). Security and privacy/liberty are always a tradeoff, but even if you weigh privacy exponentially higher, there's always still some theoretical risk that would tip the scale back towards security, in my view. Nuclear armageddon, for example. The privacy hill to die on shouldn't be Mega-Corpse Mountain. This scenario is absurdly far-fetched in 2019, of course, but in 2079? 2119? Who knows? If Aum Shinrikyo and ISIS can do what they did and plan what they planned in the 1990s and 2010s, what about new incarnations of zealous death cults in a world that may have extremely intelligent AIs and/or DIY-potential for almost anything? Even a single instance of losing the final bastion of privacy is such an incredibly slippery slope that it's hard to imagine any safe way to allow its use in very extreme situations like these without setting up the conditions for horrific abuse and a Stasi/1984-esque kowtowing of all of society. But I think this aspect of the law enforcement perspective needs to be taken into consideration as well, even while simultaneously acknowledging that law enforcement will inevitably cry wolf and exaggerate the likelihood or impact of imminent threats. Of course this'll happen, but what happens if they do see an actual wolf one day?
etrautmann 7y ago
The hardware is the difficult part. Decoding is actually quite easy once you can record neural activity. Apply your favorite Kalman filter, dimensionality reduction algorithm, or increasingly some flavor of neural network.
bhouston 7y ago
Even a decade ago they had the ability to flash images at a brain and detect when one of those images caused a recognition peak. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P300_(neuroscience) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P300_(neuroscience)

etherael 7y ago

This is why at the end of the day come what may the state must die. Technology won't stop advancing, and if it's possible the state will push it with the exact arguments you just modded correctly. It's simply too dangerous to allow that level of control to exist in the hands of a proven malevolent actor that will use it to ensure the extension and maintenance of its power. That power must be seen for the intolerable burden it's becoming before that point and destroyed, replaced with other structures which have no right to make any such unreasonable intrusions.

point78 7y ago
So you prefer to go back to kings and emperors? Without the state we will all be slaves to someone.
- Kenji 7y ago
  Nice strawman. Citation needed.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
xg15 7y ago
And what would make CEOs of private corporations any more likely to deal with this power responsibly? At least government agencies are in theory bound to laws, moral obligations and a democratic process. Meanwhile, private entities don't even have to pretend to work in anyone else's interest than their own. And "you don't have to buy it" is no excuse. If you seriosly want to abolish the state completely, then the same problems that are currently solved by public infrastructure will still exist. You'll be just as unable to opt-out of private roads are you are currently unable to opt-out of public roads. Of course we're actually talking about chips in your brain, not roads. So good luck opting out of that.
- etherael 7y ago
  > And what would make CEOs of private corporations any more likely to deal with this power responsibly? The same reason none of the previous quotes apply to actors without political power. They do not have the ability to compel people to surrender to unlimited search on penalty of death. This is only reserved and pursued by holders of political authority. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_of_Political_Authority https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_of_Political_Aut... Removing the duty to obey and the right to coerce is the only solution to this problem in the long term. Anything less and they will keep pushing for it loudly and outright doing it as long as they believe they can get away with it. Which, let's be honest in reference to the way rubber stamping of anything that is requested in the name of national security, is basically always, in practice.

xg15 7y ago

To play devil's advocate, one important difference is that brains are not (yet) networked. We don't have telepathy, you can't communicate with other people using your brain alone, so you cannot use it to coordinate terrorist attack either - whereas with encrypted messengers, you absolutely can. ... not that I'd expect this point to make any difference if the technology to inspect brains were on the horizon.

ignoramous 7y ago
The thought experiment does well to answer 'I have nothing to hide, only criminals do' mindset, imo.
mnem 7y ago
Surely language is how brains communicate? Terrorists were (and still are) quite capable of coordinated attacks without digital technologies.
- xg15 7y ago
  Well, I was talkig about literally "the brain". Even for language, you need a mouth attached to that. My point is that having a brain is not enough to communicate - you also need some kind of transmission medium that connects you to other brains. So even if you would agree to the opinion that any and all communication must be monitored (because terrorists), that would still no allow you to monitor the brain, because the brain itself is not what enables communication. Monitoring a smartphone would be more justified because you legitimately need access to it to monitor an end-to-end-encrapted connection. (My "devil's advocate" was to note that brains and smartphones are not equivalent, not that monitoring brains should be allowed. On the contrary, my point is that even if you were ok with monitoring smartphones, there are still arguments against monitoring brains.)
coldtea 7y ago
>you can't communicate with other people using your brain alone, so you cannot use it to coordinate terrorist attack either You can use it to plan and carry one on your own though. And of course you'll know about an attack if your team is organizing one. Shouldn't all people get brain-screened (from experienced TSA brain scanning operators) to ensure the government gets that information?

keiferski 7y ago

The original link's idea is pretty much the plot of Psycho Pass, I think. It's been awhile since I've seen it, though.

tiborsaas 7y ago

In Ghost in the shell it was striking to me that it began with the conflict about taking a programmer out of the country :) https://imgur.com/yVL0ODF https://imgur.com/yVL0ODF

segfaultbuserr 7y ago
Well, the TV version I linked (Stand Alone Complex, which comes later) and the original 1995 movie are two independent timelines. The movie is philosophical in comparison, while the TV version focuses on exploring the practical consequences of a brain-networked society, which was why I mentioned it. Definitely watch it if you have time and haven't seen it yet.

petre 7y ago

Also read Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man where the main character comissions a songwriter to write an earworm song so that it would jam the telepaths reading his thoughts. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demolished_Man https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demolished_Man