The Companies That Want To Harvest Your Brainwaves

"You'll get nothing from me, copper..." 

—The Mentalist: Blood Feud

From MIT's Technology Review:

A new law in California protects consumers’ brain data. Some think it doesn’t go far enough.
Tech companies collect brain data that could be used to infer our thoughts—so it’s vital we get legal protections right.

This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here.

On September 28, California became the second US state to officially recognize the importance of mental privacy in state law. That pink, jelly-like, throbbing mass under your skull—a.k.a. your brain—contains all your thoughts, memories, and ideas. It controls your feelings and actions. Measuring brain activity can reveal a lot about a person—and that’s why neural data needs to be protected.

Regular Checkup readers will be familiar with some of the burgeoning uses of “mind-reading” technologies. We can track brain activity with all sorts of devices, some of which measure brain waves while others track electrical activity or blood flow. Scientists have been able to translate this data into signals to help paralyzed people move their limbs or even communicate by thought alone.

But this data also has uses beyond health care. Today, consumers can buy headsets that allow them to learn more about how their brains work and help them feel calm. Employers use devices to monitor how alert their employees are, and schools use them to check if students are paying attention.

Brain data is precious. It’s not the same as thought, but it can be used to work out how we’re thinking and feeling, and reveal our innermost preferences and desires. So let’s look at how California’s law might protect mental privacy—and how far we still have to go.

The new bill amends the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, which grants consumers rights over personal information that is collected by businesses. The term “personal information” already included biometric data (such as your face, voice, or fingerprints). Now it also explicitly includes neural data.

The bill defines neural data as “information that is generated by measuring the activity of a consumer’s central or peripheral nervous system, and that is not inferred from nonneural information.” In other words, data collected from a person’s brain or nerves....

....MUCH MORE

Also from the famous trade school down the river from Harvard:

MIT: "On the Effectiveness of Tin-Foil Helmets: An Empirical Study"
Being MIT they called them helmets rather than hats.
And since no-one seems to manufacture tin-foil for consumer use they use aluminum foil despite the accepted tin-foil nomenclature.

A repost from July 2011.
I was just told that the post immediately below, "Uh oh: The DJIA's Highest Priced Components Are the Ones That Are Up (IBM; DIA)" sounded "a little tin-foil hat-ish".
Ha!

From MIT via Moses Moore:

 Ali Rahimi¹, Ben Recht ², Jason Taylor ², Noah Vawter ²
17 Feb 2005
1: Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department, MIT.
2: Media Laboratory, MIT. 

[scientist - note electronicy looking stuff]

Abstract

Among a fringe community of paranoids, aluminum helmets serve as the protective measure of choice against invasive radio signals. We investigate the efficacy of three aluminum helmet designs on a sample group of four individuals. Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets may in fact enhance the government's invasive abilities. We speculate that the government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason.

Introduction
It has long been suspected that the government has been using satellites to read and control the minds of certain citizens. The use of aluminum helmets has been a common guerrilla tactic against the government's invasive tactics [1]. Surprisingly, these helmets can in fact help the government spy on citizens by amplifying certain key frequency ranges reserved for government use. In addition, none of the three helmets we analyzed provided significant attenuation to most frequency bands. We describe our experimental setup, report our results, and conclude with a few design guidelines for constructing more effective helmets.

Experimental Setup
We evaluated the performance of three different helmet designs, commonly referred to as the Classical, the Fez, and the Centurion. These designs are portrayed in Figure 1. The helmets were made of Reynolds aluminium foil. As per best practices, all three designs were constructed with the double layering technique described elsewhere [2].

A radio-frequency test signal sweeping the ranges from 10 Khz to 3 Ghz was generated using an omnidirectional antenna attached to the Agilent 8714ET's signal generator....

...Results

For all helmets, we noticed a 30 db amplification at 2.6 Ghz and a 20 db amplification at 1.2 Ghz, regardless of the position of the antenna on the cranium. In addition, all helmets exhibited a marked 20 db attenuation at around 1.5 Ghz, with no significant attenuation beyond 10 db anywhere else.

Conclusion

The helmets amplify frequency bands that coincide with those allocated to the US government between 1.2 Ghz and 1.4 Ghz. According to the FCC, These bands are supposedly reserved for ''radio location'' (ie, GPS), and other communications with satellites (see, for example, [3]). The 2.6 Ghz band coincides with mobile phone technology. Though not affiliated by government, these bands are at the hands of multinational corporations.

It requires no stretch of the imagination to conclude that the current helmet craze is likely to have been propagated by the Government, possibly with the involvement of the FCC. We hope this report will encourage the paranoid community to develop improved helmet designs to avoid falling prey to these shortcomings....MORE

Rebuttal From ZPi:

A recent MIT study [1] calls into question the effectiveness of Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanies. However, there are serious flaws in this study, not the least of which is a complete mischaracterization of the process of psychotronic mind control. I theorize that the study is, in fact, NWO propaganda designed to spread FUD against deflector beanie technology, and aluminum shielding in general, in order to disembeanie paranoids, leaving them open to mind control.

First and foremost, Rahimi et al. only considered simple radio frequencies. As I explained in detail in chapter 4 ("Psychotronic and AFDB Theory") of my book [2], only psychotronic energy can affect the brain in any coherent manner. Simple EM fields have only trivial effects -- such as causing indistinct sensations of a supernatural presence [3] -- over short distances. Only by converting electromagnetic energy into psychotronic energy using a psychotron-based device can the forces of mind control access from afar the neural network of a brain to both implant and extract thought complexes.

FIGURE 1: An AFDB-covered brain (A) is shielded by a repulsive resonance buffer (B), which deflects psychotronic fields (C). Coherent psychotronic rays (D) are defected at the aluminum surface (E) and decoherently scattered (F). The resonance buffer encapsulates the brain (G), providing basal protection against fields and glancing rays.

As illustrated in Figure 1, unlike with the mere attenuation of EM fields, aluminum deflects psychotronic fields and coherent psychotronic rays. The operational modalities of AFDBs for EM and psychotronic energies are completely different, and thus the experiment conducted by Rahimi et al. is inappropriate to test the effectiveness of deflector beanie technology in stopping mind control.

Besides the experiment's unsuitability, the experimental procedures themselves appear flawed. The measuring of the signal was described by Rahimi et al. as follows:

The receiver antenna was placed at various places on the cranium of 4 different subjects: the frontal, occipital and parietal lobes. Once with the helmet off and once with the helmet on.

FIGURE 2: (A) Excessively pointy omnidirectional antenna. (B) Chef's Pride brand foil (photo enhanced).

But the antenna shown in Figure 2 on their site would not possibly be able to fit under the helmets while on a head, at least not without awk­wardly balancing the helmet counter to best practices or punc­turing the foil. If the antenna was instead placed on the outside of the helmets, as seems most likely from the description, then that calls into question the entire conclusion: If the amp­lifi­cation effect is measured only on the helmet outside, then that suggests that the helmet is reflecting the EM radiation away from the wearer's brain.

Oddly, Rahimi et al. make a great deal about the price of their equipment, noting the US$250,000 price tag of their Agilent 8714ET network analyser three times in their short paper. What relevance is this to the conclusion? I believe its a subtle way of discouraging people from replicating the experiment at home....MORE