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April 30, 2001
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Cat's eyes

Nessie says they just might be watching you

By nessie

For self-evident reasons, mastery of synthetic telepathy has long been a goal of the powers-that-be. As my regular readers already know, technological developments over the last fifty years have made it possible to project voices, images, and emotions into the human mind by electronic and acoustic methods. The rest of you should get up to speed. You can start by checking out the work of Frey, Persinger (see links at the end of this column) and White.

The ability to extract voices, images, and emotions from the human mind is even more valuable. Development has proven somewhat more problematic. Nevertheless, significant advances have been made. It greatly behooves us to be familiar with them and cognizant of their implications.

The eyes, they say, are the windows of the soul. As any competent poker player can tell you, even the staunchest of poker faces can reveal much about the holder's hand and mind set. Involuntary pupil dilation is one dead give away. So are eye movements, both voluntary and involuntary.

Traditionally, skill at noting this was acquired the hard way, by losing money at the table. These days, the process has been computerized. Technology has been developed which automates the process of eye gaze analysis. It is being marketed as a "revolutionary communication tool." The Eye-Gaze Response Interface Computer Aid (ERICA ) system interfaces with a standard Windows computer to capture a person's eye movements as they view a computer screen. Web page designers and marketing engineers no longer have to guess what captures their audience's attention.

That the machines of our masters can see into our eyes is disturbing enough. But it gets worse. Now they want to be able to see out of our eyes. To that end, a team of U.S. scientists have wired a computer to a cat's brain and created videos of what the animal was seeing. Garrett Stanley, Yang Dang and Fei Li, from the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, reported in the Journal of Neuroscience that they attached electrodes to 177 cells in the thalamus region of the cat's brain and monitored their activity. They recorded the patterns of firing from the cells in a computer. They then used a technique they describe as a "linear decoding technique" to "reconstruct natural scenes with recognizable moving objects."

This technology presents some disturbing possible scenarios to any political activist, investigative journalist, or garden variety paranoid who lives with a cat. If you can't trust your cat, who can you trust? Hint: It's a very short list. But can you trust your cat? Thanks to modern wireless technology, and decades of implant research, that now depends on a number of factors. Has your cat ever disappeared, then miraculously reappeared days, weeks, even months later? Did you check her for strange scars? Does she like to watch the computer screen while you type? When fellow activists come over for a meeting, does she attend? When you have sex, does she take unnatural interest? How do you know for sure that her thalamus hasn't been wired, and certain people are not even now watching you through her eyes, by way of a surgically implanted transponder and wires in her brain?

How do you know that Jose Delgado-type implants, a decades old technology, are not being used to aim her eyes in your direction? How do you know if a transponder has not been also wired to miniature microphone implants (According to Victor Marchetti the CIA first attempted this years ago. Radio implants were attached to a cat's cochlea, to facilitate the pinpointing of specific conversations, freed from extraneous surrounding noises. The cat was run over by a taxi on its first assignment. As Martin Cannon points out, though, there was nothing to stop the Agency from getting another cat, or from using a human being.), so they can also listen in on your conversations? You don't know. You can't know, not for sure, not unless you get her x-rayed. So go to you nearest vet immediately. Tell him you want him to x-ray your cat because you think that your enemies might have wired her brain so they could watch you through her eyes. See what happens.

E-mail me an account later. I'll add it to my collection.

Then there's the commonplace technology that enables the powers-that-be, or even a clever stalker, to sense your emotional state from a distance. It turns out that a cell phone reveals two vital signs: a person's pulse and breathing rate. The person does not even have to answer the phone. While the phone must be switched on, you do not have to answer it for the system to work. Just making it ring generates enough of a signal to allow the heart and lung data to be piggybacked onto the signal that tells the caller your phone is ringing.

Bell Labs engineers noticed that some of the microwaves transmitted by a cell phone's antenna bounce back to the phone from the user's chest, heart, and lungs. As those organs move, the frequency of the reflected radiation is Doppler-shifted by a tiny amount. If the lung is expanding, the radiation bouncing off it is pushed closer together, slightly raising the frequency. A contracting lung lowers the frequency. The variation is tiny: one hertz in a billion. The signals are very low-frequency. They are easy to separate from a voice.

Bell Labs, which is owned by Lucent Technologies Inc., now plans to modify the mobile phone with a circuit that detects the Doppler shift in the reflected signal picked up by its antenna. The phone then sends this data on to the base station, where further processing extracts the user's vital signs.

Doctors could also use the Bell Labs technology routinely to monitor a patient's heart or breathing – just by calling the patient's cell phone. Researchers used a radio with similar frequency and power to a typical mobile phone to demonstrate the effect in their lab. They are now building a prototype detector.

Or so they say. For all we know, though, this is merely a cover story. The military and intelligence communities could easily have been in possession of this technology for quite some time and it is only now that they are breaking it to us gently. This is often the case with technological innovations that have military and/or intelligence applications. This is particularly true for technology that enables covert tracking and experimentation on unwitting human guinea pigs.

One clue that the U.S. government is interested in developing this specific kind of technology is a report entitled "Measurement of Heart and Breathing Signals of Human Subjects through Barriers with Micro-Wave Life Detections Systems," which was prepared for the 1988 International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, under P.O. #19Y-CC519V for the Department of the Navy and Oak Ridge Y-12 Plant, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Oak Ridge Y-12 Plant is operated by noted defense contractor Martin Marietta Energy Systems, Inc.

Then there's the matter of brain waves. Gary Selden, in an article entitled "Machines that Read Minds," in Science Digest, October 1981, noted:

. . . in scores of laboratories throughout the world researchers (are) using a new computer technology to read and record portions of the brain's vast internal hubbub. From this electronic mind reading they are beginning to learn which brain waves appear consistently with which sights, sounds and other stimuli.

The waveform that the brain characteristically emits after absorbing an external event is called an evoked potential or an event-related potential. . .

Evoked potentials may constitute one of the most complex languages humans have ever tried to decipher, but even the limited vocabulary we already have is a versatile diagnostic tool and a guide to formerly uncharted aspects of the brain's activity. No one knows where a complete dictionary of the mind could take us.

Two decades later we are finally beginning to find out. Research has gone far beyond mere logging of evoked potential signatures. Brain wave patterns associated with words, even with sentences, can now be recognized. According to a report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, dated Dec. 1998:

Electrical and magnetic brain waves of two subjects were recorded for the purpose of recognizing which one of 12 sentences or 7 words auditorily presented was processed. . . . Recognition rates . . . varied, but the best were above 90 percent. The first words of prototypes of sentences also were . . . test(ed) . . . The best result was above 80 percent correct recognition.

Machines that read minds have now developed to the point that they can be used in legal proceedings. An Iowa judge ruled that Dr. Lawrence Farwell's proprietary and patented technique of Brain Fingerprinting is admissible in court.

Brain Fingerprinting is (supposedly) a "revolutionary new technology for investigating crimes and exonerating innocent suspects, with a record of 100 percent accuracy in research on FBI agents, research with U.S. government agencies, and field applications." Brain Fingerprinting (supposedly) "determines objectively what information is stored in a person's brain by measuring brain-wave responses to relevant words or pictures flashed on a computer screen."

Brain Fingerprinting (supposedly) "solves the central problem by determining scientifically whether a suspect has the details of a crime stored in his brain. It has received extensive media coverage around the world." Coverage has included TV magazine show 60 Minutes, CBS Evening News, and US News and World Report. If you missed it, you weren't paying enough attention. The technology is (supposedly) fully developed and available for application.

Farwell conducted a Brain Fingerprinting test on Terry Harrington, who is serving a life sentence in Iowa for a 1977 murder. The test showed that the record stored in Harrington's brain did not match the crime scene and did match the alibi. Harrington filed a petition for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence, including Brain Fingerprinting. In a ruling on March 5, Pottawattamie County District Court Judge Tim O'Grady admitted Dr. Lawrence Farwell's Brain Fingerprinting test of Terry Harrington as evidence in the case.

That electronic mind reading is now admissible in a court of law should give us all pause. The potential for abuse is enormous. That the FBI, a known terrorist organization, is involved in the research should be particularly disturbing. That your own hard-earned tax money is being used to develop the technological means to steal the most intimate thoughts from your mind should provoke nothing short of outrage. But what are you going to do about it? You'd better do something, and soon, before it's too late.

Whatever it is, e-mail me an account later. I'll add it to my collection.

– – –

Frey and Persinger links:

www.spunk.org/texts/pubs/openeye/sp000944.txt

www.raven1.net/v2succes.htm

www.raven1.net/frey.htm

www.spunk.org/texts/pubs/openeye/sp000944.txt

www.brooks.af.mil/AFRL/HED/hedr/reports/human_exposure/humtb31.html

abcnews.go.com/sections/living/SecondOpinion/secondopinion_6.html

www.jps.net/brainsci/

users.lycaeum.org/~martins/M2/helmets.html

www.sightings.com/politics5/mindcontrols.htm

www.focus.org.uk/alien.htm

The nessie files runs alternate Mondays.

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Copyright © 2000 San Francisco Bay Guardian.