Why Didn't I Think of That; Research in Thought Crime

Last week there was a really interesting article by Nita Farahany in the Washington Post. The article talks about DARPA research into remote brainwave analysis and it's applicability for crime prevention. The article spends most of it's time talking about the technology but there are a few short references made to the civil liberty issues that this research raises. Of particular privacy concern is the 4th amendment protections from unreasonable search and seizure as scanning someone's brain certainly falls into the area most of us would consider private. There is also the possibility that there are 5th amendment issues of self-incrimination from asking questions and then looking at the brain scans of the suspect to define guilt (or perhaps just reasonable suspicion for more questions or a more invasive search). An argument can also be made that there is a lack of due process in such actions. as guilt could be decided based upon nothing more than a machines output. These are definitely some interesting things to question, and ones we should answer before we introduce such technologies; but I don't think that it's quite time to call for tinfoil hats.

The best analogy I can think of is the polygraph (Lie detector) machine. Such machines are banned for compulsory use in prosecutions and have questionable use in defense or civil proceedings. Employers are also banned from using them though that came about via federal law (Employee Polygraph Protection Act of 1988 (EPPA)). The danger in such a thing might come from its "illegal" use in pointing law enforcement in the right direction or if covered up by gag rule legislations (like that which accompanies NSLs).

Perhaps the part of this article that bothers me most is the scenarios that are presented. For some reason the "ticking timebomb" example gets evoked with alarming frequency these days. Forgive my naive nature but how frequent an occurrence is someone in custody who knows about a time bomb that we are so willing to curtail our rights for it? I would think it would be much more common for people with anxiety disorders to be detained and questioned because their condition might create a "false positive" reading. Is this the balance of liberty we want?

Of course this is also assuming that those in power only ever use their power for the good of the society. If someone with such a device were much more unscrupulous (#2). In such a situation authority figures could use such tools to detect which people would pay a bribe; or even worse who might not report an illegal action like a beating or rape by that official.

The real danger is that in such a society, it’s not the though reading that is the end result; it's just the start. Thought reading necessarily leads people to thought control where people are afraid to even think certain thoughts (and in this it sounds quite Orwellian). Just think if everyone around you could read your mind, you would probably think very different thoughts. Such coerced thought control is antithetical to a society that believes in liberty.

If the best reasons for such a technology is to catch a person with knowledge of a "ticking timebomb" then I think it's time we really evaluated the risk/benefit trade off. We debate the safety of Mercury in fish, BPA in bottles and alcohol in drivers; each of these impacts many more people a year than "ticking timebombs". Still; people get angry when police set up "sobriety checkpoints"; why would we want something that stops far less crime and is far more invasive?