Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Spies for Hire: Key Officers at Booz Allen Hamilton

As a key player in the Intelligence-Industrial Complex that spawned artificial telepathy, Booz Allen Hamilton deserves special attention.

The central importance of BAH becomes clear when one considers some of the stunning information unearthed by reporter Tim Shorrock in his new book Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing (Simon & Schuster: New York, 2008).

In Chapter 2, titled "Booz Allen Hamilton and the Shadow IC," Shorrock informs us that the spy business is booming, and BAH enjoys top ranking among those contractors who serve the "intelligence community."

In 2002, Booz Allen had more than 1000 former intelligence officers on its staff, and its government contracts rose dramatically after 911,
"from $626,000 in 2000 to $1.6 billion in 2006. Most of the latter figure, $932 million, was with the Department of Defense, where Booz Allen's major customers included the NSA, the Army, the Air Force, the Defense Logistics Agency, and the National Guard. In 2006, it was one of seven firms awarded a ten-year contract to bid on up to $20 billion worth of work in command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaisance -- a mouthful of a term usually referred to as C4ISR -- for the Army's Communications and Electronics Command, which is based in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.

The term C4ISR is a perfect descriptor for Artificial Telepathy -- a powerful fusion of signal processing technologies that allows technicians to remotely gather and collect human intelligence (HUMINT) from the brain signals (SIGINT) of other human beings. As with C4ISR, Artificial Telepathy automates "signals collection" (eavesdropping) and "intelligence analysis" (figuring out what people intend to do) by utilizing satellites and computers, and the overall goal is military command and control.

Indeed, one might define Artificial Telepathy as a subset of C4ISR with a special focus on neurology, psychology and mind control. Artificial Telepathy is an exotic form of C4ISR that allows warriors to communicate nonvocally with soldiers in the field, enables spies and intelligence agents to perform reconnaisance and surveillance nonlocally by means of "remote viewing," and allows military officers to command and control the behavior of human minds at a distance, with the artificial aid of carefully networked satellite and computer technology.

Booz Allen Hamilton certainly has close ties to the contractors who worked on the Pentagon's "Stargate" program for psychic spying in the 1990s, and it took a lead role in development of the NSA's "Total Information Awareness" projects, mentioned in earlier posts.

BAH must certainly be on the short list of firms capable of designing and launching a system of space-based, mind-invasive weaponry. It has all the people, pull and know-how needed to put an "electronic concentration camp system" in place.


A Gallery of Rogues


This collection of biographical profiles below is largely based the Wikipedia article at this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booz_Allen_Hamilton

Photographs have been added (where possible) and additional materials illustrate the links between each person and artificial telepathy. In other words, any significant article that turns up from a Google search on the Booz Allen officer's name + "Artificial Telepathy" or "psychotronics" or "mind control" is listed and hyperlinked beneath the person's profile.

Notable colleagues and alumni

Jonathan S. Bush - CEO and founder of AthenaHealth, a "healthcare technology" company, Mr. Bush is the first cousin of President George W. Bush and the nephew of President George H.W. Bush.

Jonathan's father, also named Jonathan Bush, is the brother of George H.W. Bush. With regard to CIA mind control programs, it must be noted that George H.W. Bush was briefly the director of CIA in 1975, a year when the Church Committee first exposed the role of the CIA in mind control and assassination programs.
http://www.the7thfire.com/bush15.htm

Jonathan himself has no known connection to any such program. He was a founding member of Booz-Allen's Managed Care strategy group, and presently works as a consultant to Agilence Health Advisors.
http://www.agilenceadvisors.com/team_bios.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_S._Bush

http://www.athenahealth.com/

BUSH JONATHAN S

Council on Foreign Relations. Membership Roster. 2004
Executive Intelligence Review 2000-02-25 (47)
Hatfield,J.H. Fortunate Son. 2000 (287)
Lewis,C. The Buying of the President 2000. 2000 (197-8)
Lewis,C. The Buying of the President 2004. 2004 (137, 140)
San Antonio Express-News 1999-07-11 (1J, 3)
Tarpley,W.G. Chaitkin,A. George Bush. 1992 (130, 132)
Unger,C. House of Bush, House of Saud. 2004 (116)
Washington Post 1991-07-27 (F6)
Washington Times 1989-12-13 (A6) pages cited this search: 14


George Bush, The CIA, Mind Control and Child Abuse:
http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/littleboys.html

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Art Collins - Chairman and CEO, Medtronic, Inc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_D._Collins,_Jr.

Mr. Collins serves on the Board of Directors of The Boeing Company, Cargill, Inc. and U.S. Bancorp. He is a member of the Board of Overseers of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania [6] and the Board of Visitors for the Farmer School of Business at Miami University[7]. He also was a previous Chairman of AdvaMed, the medical technology industry association, and has served on the boards of numerous civic organizations.

The people at Mind Control Forums consider Medtronics Inc. of Minneapolis, MN, to be among the foremost producers of deep-brain implant devices:
http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/news/fda-approves-implant-parkinsons.htm

The application of brain implant devices to Artificial Telepathy and mind control is obvious:

If computer power continues to develop rapidly, while physical processors continue to shrink in size, future enhancement might easily allow a person to attain "network enabled telepathy," or the ability to immediately access and manipulate massive amounts of information with a simple thought.
http://www.aaas.org/spp/sfrl/projects/human_enhancement/achievingHEindex.shtml

Medtronic has certainly developed brain chips, notably one that was approved for treatment of Parkinson's Disease by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1997. According to journalist Adam Keiper:

The implant is often called a “brain pacemaker” or a “neurostimulator”; Medtronic uses brand names like Soletra and Kinetra. The treatment goes by the straightforward name “Deep Brain Stimulation.” In the procedure, a tiny electrode with four contacts is permanently placed deep in the brain. It is connected by subcutaneous wire to a device implanted under the skin of the chest; this device delivers electrical pulses up the wire to the electrode in the brain. (Many patients are given two electrodes and two pulse generating devices, one for each side of the body.) The device in the chest can be programmed by remote control, so the patient’s doctor can pick which of the four contacts get triggered and can control the width, frequency, and voltage of the electrical pulse. Patients themselves aren’t given the same level of control, but they can use a handheld magnet or a remote control to start or stop the pulses.

For Adam Keiper's excellent history of "neuroelectronics" and brain implants, see:
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-age-of-neuroelectronics
http://www.eppc.org/programs/bioethics/news/newsID.2598,programID.35/news_detail.asp

For more on the CIA's experiments with Electronic Brain Stimulation (EBS), see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_brain_stimulation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Manuel_Rodriguez_Delgado

Please note that in addition to serving Booz-Allen Hamilton and Medtronics, Mr. Collins also serves as a member of the board at Boeing. The folks at Mind Control Forum consider Boeing to be a "CIA Front Company": http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/cia500.htm

Headquartered in St. Louis, MO, Boeing is certainly a major defense contractor -- a $32.4 billion company with 72,000 employees worldwide. Together with L-3 Communications it helped the Air Force Research Laboratory at Kirtland AFB, New Mexico, develop an Advanced Tactical Laser system that can be mounted on a C-130H aircraft: http://aftermathnews.wordpress.com/2007/12/12/boeing-installs-high-energy-death-ray-on-c-130-gunship/


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Thomas S. Moorman Jr. - Commander, Air Force Space Command (1990-92); Vice Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force (1994-1997)























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- Director of Central Intelligence Agency (1993-95)
















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Keith R. Hall




- Director, National Reconnaissance Office (1997-2001); formerly Executive Director for Intelligence Community Affairs







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General Frederick Frank Woerner, Jr. - Retired United States Army general and former commander of United States Southern Command.

Edward C. Davies (Ted) - Managing Partner, Unisys Federal Systems

Rhonda Germany - Vice President of Strategy and Business Development, Honeywell

Raymond J. "Ray" Lane - General Partner at Kleiner Perkins Venture Capital Firm; Carnegie Mellon University Trustee, former President and Chief Operating Officer of Oracle Corporation, and inducted to West Virginia Business Hall of Fame

Edward J. O'Hare - Chief Information Officer for the U.S. General Services Administration's's Federal Acquisition Service; former Assistant Commissioner, General Services Administration, and former vice president at Dynanet

Mark DeSantis, PhD - Chief Executive Officer of ANGLE Technology Consulting and Management and former CEO and President of Formation3 LLC

Stan Scoggins - Vice President of Worldwide Digital Assets, Universal Studios

Michael Wolf - Former president and COO of MTV Networks

Wendy Alexander - Labour Party Leader and Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP).

Karol Joseph "Bo" Bobko - Retired United States Air Force officer and a former USAF and NASA astronaut.

Steve Isakowitz - Department of Energy Chief Financial Officer. Former Deputy Associate Administrator, NASA, 2002-2005

William Benjamin "Bill" Lenoir (Ph.D.) - Former NASA astronaut.

George E. Little - Media Relations, Central Intelligence Agency (2007-)

Michael C. Mullen - Assistant Commissioner, U.S. Customs and Border Protection

Patrick Gorman - Chief Information Officer (CIO), and Assistant Deputy Director National Intelligence (ADDNI), Strategy, Plans, and Policy, ODNI

Andrew Turnbull - Member, House of Lords (upper Parliament), United Kingdom (2005-); Head of British Civil Service (2002-2005)

Melissa Hathaway - Director, National Cyber Security Initiative

Dov Zakheim - U.S. government advisor

Other

Patricia A. Morrissey - Commissioner, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (presidential appointee)

Bruce Pasternack - Former President and CEO of Special Olympics International, former Director of Energy Policy for the Federal Energy Administration, Former board member BEA Systems (NASDAQ: BEAS), currently on the board of trustees of Cooper Union and serves as a board member for Codexis, Quantum Corporation (NYSE: QTM) and Symyx Technologies as well. Also, was the author of Results and The Centerless Corporation, books on strategy and business.

Michael Schearer - Author and computer security researcher

Michael D. Smith - Professor at Carnegie Mellon University

Monday, June 29, 2009

Booz Allen, Mind Control and the USAF Space Command

In the last two posts we have established the following:


1) Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH) is a major consultant for NSA, and is intimately involved in the development of "terrorist tracking" programs such as TANGRAM

2) BAH works closely on TANGRAM with two other key contractors, SRI International and SAIC, both of whom played a major role in the Defense Intelligence Agency's Project STARGATE

3) Project Stargate was a highly classified unit of psychic spies, described by Jim Marrs in his book PSI Spies: The True Story of America's Psychic Warfare Program

Booz Allen Hamilton therefore acts as a key link between NSA, the Pentagon's psychic spies, and the U.S. Air Force Space Command, which operates a network of highly sophisticated spy satellites and beam weapons.

If one buys the assumption that the USAF Space Command uses microwave towers, antenna farms and space-based brain-zappers to affect the moods and behaviors of people on Earth, then it would seem that Booz Allen Hamilton acts as a major architect of the military mind control network.

Just how deeply Booz Allen has inserted itself into U.S. Air Force "black" programs may be seen from the following description of key Air Force contracts held by BAH. These selections have been taken from Booz Allen's own website, found at this link:
http://www.boozallen.com/consulting/defense-consulting/air-force-consulting

Perhaps one should begin by noting that Booz Allen Hamilton maintains an office at 121 S. Tejon Street, Colorado Springs, CO, and this office holds an $11 million contract with Peterson Air Force Base, headquarters of the U.S.A.F. Space Command. For the details: http://www.governmentcontractswon.com/department/defense/booz_allen_hamilton_inc_004679015.asp?yr=06

The BAH website gives the following overview of it other Air Force contracts:

United States Air Force
"Booz Allen provides integrated strategy and technical services to Air Force headquarters and every Air Force Major Command. Some of our main clients include Air Combat Command, Air Force Space Command, Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC), Air Mobility Command (AMC), Air Force Special Operations Command, Air Force Cyber Command, Air Force Pacific Command and the U.S. Air Forces (USAF) in Europe. We also help organizations such as the Air Force Research Lab and the Aeronautical Systems Center stay on technology’s leading edge and support the Air Force’s work with the National Security Space Community."

Booz Allen gives further details on its work with National Security Space technology at this web address: http://www.boozallen.com/consulting/defense-consulting/space

Booz Allen Hamilton works across the space industry, helping defense, civil, and intelligence community clients apply new technologies, integrate space operations, and use innovative strategies to address the technical, cost, schedule, and risk of space systems development to help clients maximize the probability of program success.

Booz Allen Hamilton would certainly never list "brain zapping" as a major mission objective, but it gladly advertises the fact that it is now working on the following major space projects:

Transformational Satellite Communications System (TSAT)—Booz Allen serves as TSAT’s lead SE&I contractor across the space, network, and terminal segments.

International Space Station (ISS) Program Integration and Control—Booz Allen works with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) helping it to realize higher efficiency through assembly, transition, and steady-state operations.

Constellation Program—Booz Allen provides a broad spectrum of support to NASA’s next manned flight missions to the Moon and on to Mars.

Department of Defense (DoD) Teleport—Booz Allen is the systems engineering and program management lead for the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) teleport program.

Mobile User Objective System (MUOS)—Booz Allen serves the Navy as the program’s lead National Security Space Acquisition Policy (NSSAP) 03-01 program management consultant.

Global Broadcast Service (GBS)—Booz Allen helps DISA and the Air Force ensure effective GBS-Defense Information Systems Network (DISN) integration while significantly reducing costs through standards-based, commercial technologies.

Commercial Satellite Communications (SATCOM)—Booz Allen conducted the congressionally directed spend analysis and helps DISA realize business process efficiencies and improve market awareness.

Conclusion: If there is one spooky consultant capable of helping the U.S. Air Force beam a "cell phone call" into the center of an unwilling target's brain, that would be Booz Allen Hamilton.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Focus On: The U.S. Air Force Space Command



In this post we will begin a closer examination of U.S. Air Force mind control operations. Why Air Force? And why start with a focus on the Air Force Space Command? For several reasons:
  • The U.S. Air Force imported dozens of Luftwaffe scientists during the 1940s and 1950s under Operation Paperclip
  • Many of these Nazi scientists worked at the School of Aviation Medicine near Randolph Air Force Base, San Antonio, TX during the 1950s, conducting (among other things) pilot stress tests, experiments in radiobiology and Human Radiation Experiments
  • Hubertus Strughold, a Nazi doctor who worked at SAM, went on to work for NASA, developing remote telemetry sensors that could monitor the vital signs of astronauts travelling to the Moon --a mind-boggling feat of precision that suggests remote neural monitoring is indeed quite possible
  • Today, SAM and the Human Effects Center of Excellence (HECOE) at Brooks Air Force Base help the Air Force Research Laboratory test its next generation of non-lethal weapons, including lasers, masers and microwave weapons used for crowd control
  • The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has done extensive research into microwave hearing and voice-to-skull devices, according to a Washington Post article on voice hearers at this link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/10/AR2007011001399.html
  • AFRL is also one of the main sponsors of HAARP, a huge antenna farm near Fairbanks, AK, that is reportedly broadcasting in the 8-12 MHz (brainwave) range, and capable of delivering signals to almost any point on the globe
  • HAARP is technically part of the Air Force's Ballistic Missile Early Warning System, designed to detect missile launches coming from Russia
  • HAARP therefore falls under the direct command and control of NORAD, the U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) and the U.S. Space Command in Colorado Springs, CO
  • US Space Command also operates spy satellites for several other agencies of the Department of Defense, including the NSA, NASA, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

No matter how one slices the pie, the hub of all "artificial telepathy" operations appears to be the Air Force Space Command (AFSC), headquartered at Peterson Air Force Base, just south of Colorado Springs, CO.

It's the "mission control"center where rocket scientists, AFRL, HAARP, spy satellites, radar dishes, microwave towers, beam weapons, human experimentation and spooky intelligence agencies like NSA, NRO and DIA all come together.

An Alarming Shift of Focus

During the Cold War, the Air Force used most of its surveillance gear to guard against nuclear missile attacks from Russia. Since the Gulf War of 1991, however, the mission of NORAD and the Air Force Space Command has shifted. See the Mission Statement for NORTHCOM (which is also headquartered at Peterson AFB) here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northcom

As the Wikipedia article at the link above indicates,

"USNORTHCOM has become the object of concern among civil libertarians and others that it could be used to implement martial law in the United States during an actual or perceived emergency.[2] The Military Commissions Act of 2006 effectively nullifies most restrictions placed on the military to support civilian administration by the Posse Comitatus Act, while the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 H.R. 5122 (2006) effectively nullifies the limits of the The Insurrection Act [3].

"Beginning Oct. 1, 2008, the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team will be assigned to U.S. Northern Command, marking the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to Northern Command."

More importantly, it may be the first time in recent history that an active armored brigade of the United States military has been specifically tasked to suppress dissent among Unites States civilians.

"The force will be known for the first year as a CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force, and will serve as an on-call federal response force for terrorist attacks and other natural or manmade emergencies and disasters.[4]. On 1 Dec 2008 The Pentagon ordered 20,000 troops to patrol streets of USA by 2011[5]"

For more information, see this article on Operation Garden Plot, a plan for military control of the United States during times of civil disturbance. The master plan for martial law clearly puts control into the hands of commanders at NORTHCOM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Garden_Plot

The commanders at NORTHCOM, meanwhile, do not seem to be content with spy satellites that provide "Google Maps" in real time. Sure, the telescopes show people walking around like ants on city streets, but what good is that? What good is watching people if you have no idea how to tell the good ones from the bad ones?

What the generals at NORTHCOM and Space Command want is a domestic surveillance system that provides Total Information Awareness. They want to get inside the target's phone calls and email. They want to get inside the target's bank accounts and spending patterns. They want to get inside the target's family network, social network, business network.

They want to get inside the target's head.

To do all this, they are hooking their space satellites to the massive data-mining programs run by NSA (see the last post). They are paying scientists at UC-Irvine and dozens of other brain labs to show them how they can monitor and read the subtle "electronic signals intelligence" that goes on inside a person's brain (see the links at left). And they are putting together an electronic surveillance system so powerful that no human can escape its watchful, infrared eyes.

The result is a surveillance society that is rapidly growing to be every bit as nighmarish as the fictional version presented in The Matrix.

To fully grasp the size, scope, and amazing power of the AFSC's world-wide surveillance network, it helps to start with the big picture. Here's an overview.

Size

The Air Force Space Command employs approximately 40,000 people, including 25,400 active-duty military and civilians, and 14,000 contractor employees. See the Wikipedia article here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_Space_Command

Missions

AFSPC has four primary mission areas:

1. Space forces support "involves launching satellites and other high-value payloads into space using a variety of expendable launch vehicles and operating those satellites once in the medium of space. " Translation: Like NASA, the Space Command builds rockets and oversees construction of the highly sophisticated spy satellites, telescopes and beam weapons put into orbit by the Department of Defense.

2. Space control "ensures friendly use of space through the conduct of counterspace operations encompassing surveillance, negation, and protection." Translation: They build space weapons and zappers that can take out enemy missiles. They target enemy launch sites. And they have a license to monitor any and all enemies, terrorists or "suspicious civilians" who may be lurking around their own facilities. In fact, a rather broad definition of "space control" might involve controlling, um, your back yard. Or even the space between your ears.

3. Force enhancement "provides weather, communications, intelligence, missile warning, and navigation. Force enhancement is support to the warfighter. " Translation: They supply weather reports, mapping and GPS service to their buddies on the ground. They supply phone and secure communication service through communication satellites. And sometimes they share some of the fun "intelligence" stuff their telescopes and sensors snorfed up from, um, your back yard.

4. Force application "involves maintaining and operating a rapid response, land-based ICBM force as the Air Force's only on-alert strategic deterrent." Translation: Despite the apparent end of the Cold War, they remain ready to launch nuclear missiles and obliterate entire cities (millions of people) at a moment's notice. One can only speculate what their target list includes these days.

Locations

Peterson Air Force Base is the central HQ for the Space Command.
A Google map may be seen below:



For a blow-up map: http://www.peterson.af.mil/shared/media/ggallery/hires/AFG-080512-016.jpg

In addition to command headquarters at Peterson AFB, the Space Command operates support activities at nine "host" bases:


1. Buckley AFB, Colorado -- a base near Denver with an surveillance wing and a special focus on the research and development of biomedical sensors. Lockheed Martin, an Air Force contractor deeply involved in the development of artificial telepathy, lives nearby in Littleton.

Among other things, Lockheed Martin runs Sandia National Weapons Laboratory, Albuquerque, NM, which in turn has a Cognitive Sciences laboratory deeply devoted to probing the human mind.

2. Francis E. Warren AFB, Wyoming (Soon to be transferred to the Global Strike Command)


3. Los Angeles AFB, California maintains the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center , the Military Satellite Communications Systems Wing , the Global Positioning Systems Wing, the
Space-Based Infrared Systems Wing, the Launch and Range Systems Wing and the
Space Superiority Systems Wing

This base is right next door to some key players in Artificial Telepathy, including

4. Space Development and Test Wing (Kirtland AFB, New Mexico) interfaces with the Air Force Research Laboratory, also located at Kirtland AFB.

5. 526th ICBM Systems Group (Hill AFB, Utah)
6. Malmstrom AFB, Montana (Soon to be transferred to the Global Strike Command)
7. Minot AFB, North Dakota (Soon to be transferred to the Global Strike Command)
8. Patrick AFB, Florida
821st Air Base Group (Thule Air Base, Greenland)
Schriever AFB, Colorado
Space Innovation and Development Center
Vandenberg AFB, California

AFSPC also operates several Air Force Stations for launch support and early warning missions:
Cape Cod Air Force Station, Massachusetts
6th Space Warning Squadron
Cavalier AFS, North Dakota
10th Space Warning Squadron
Cheyenne Mountain AFS, Colorado
Clear Air Force Station, Alaska
13th Space Warning Squadron
New Boston AFS, New Hampshire
23d Space Operations Squadron
Onizuka AFS, California
21st Space Operations Squadron

Commander

AFSC's current commander is General C. Robert "Bob" Kehler. The general "oversees a global network of satellite command and control, communications, missile warning and launch facilities, and ensures the combat readiness of of America's Intercontinental Ballistic Missile force."


A full biography of Gen. Kehler may be found at this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Robert_Kehler

Monday, May 25, 2009

TANGRAM: Artificial Telepathy as a form of "Total Information Awareness"


Does the Unites States government use Artificial Telepathy and remote viewing to track terrorists? Signs point to yes.

In fact there are fascinating connections between the National Security Agency and three spooky defense contractors who have played key roles in the development of artificial telepathy, remote viewing and the TANGRAM terrorist tracking system.

The Big Three in Telepathy

These three firms have played key roles in the government's psychic spying programs:

Stanford Research Institute (SRI International)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRI_International

Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH),
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booz_Allen_Hamilton

and Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_Applications_International_Corporation

The same three firms also serve as key players in TANGRAM -- the U.S. government's "Total Information Awareness" program for tracking terrorists via computer.

Mind reading as a form of "Total Information Awareness"?

As mentioned in the last post, the Department of Defense launched a "Total Information Awareness" (TIA) program shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Despite efforts by the United States Congress to kill the TIA in 2003, the core of this massive data-mining program has been renamed TANGRAM and moved quietly to an office on the campus of the National Security Agency, the "Puzzle Palace" where some of the nation's brightest mathematicians break codes and ciphers.

The NSA is exactly where one would expect the government to park a spy program focussed intensely on sorting out massive amounts of puzzling information. The United States undoubtedly needs to track terrorists.

The only problem is, the NSA spymasters do not seem to be satisfied with merely tracking foreign nationals who pose a clear and present danger to the security of the United States. Civil rights activists claim that the NSA has begun digging far too deeply into the private communications and private lives of domestic civilians who pose little or no threat at all.

In fact, from the information gathered by this blog, it would appear that the NSA's concept of "Total Information Awareness" involves not only spying on domestic telephone traffic, bank transactions, email and computer communications, but also electronically penetrating the inner most thoughts of "suspects" via artificial telepathy and remote neural monitoring.

For an article on remote neural monitoring, see this link: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_remote_neural_monitoring_a_reality

For legal documentation of the claim that NSA is using remote neural monitoring to perform surveillance on U.S. citizens, see the case of John St. Clair Akwei vs. NSA, here:
http://www.angelfire.com/or/mctrl/akwei.html

For an article on the original "Information Awareness Office" (IAO - a mass surveillance and terrorist tracking program established by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency back in 2002) see the Wikipedia article at this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office

Attempts to Kill the TIA Failed

The article at the link above clearly indicates that Congress defunded the TIA program in 2003, partially in response to a firestorm of civil rights complaints. However, the article also states unequivocally that TIA was not killed: "the core of the project survived."

The key programs within TIA were simply renamed and relocated. They were moved to "hundreds" of shadowy R&D units overseen by the National Security Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

One such unit is now working on a mass data-mining and surveillance program called TANGRAM. And, as noted above, three of the major contractors working on TANGRAM were deeply involved in the development of artificial telepathy and remote viewing.

TANGRAM: A Chinese Puzzle

According to the National Journal, the lead subcontractors for the Tangram terrorist tracking system are Stanford Research Institute International, Booz Allen Hamilton, and 21st Century Technologies.

The name "Stanford Research Institute" will immediately set off alarm bells and flashing lights to anyone familiar with Remote Viewing and the Pentagon's Stargate program for psychic spying. The role played by SRI is well documented in Jim Marrs' book PSI Spies: The True Story of America's Psychic Warfare Program (Franklin Lake, NJ: New Page Books, 2007). See Chapter 6: "Penetrating the Impenetrable."

See also this overview article on Stargate:
http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/stargate.htm

Booz Allen Hamilton: Shadow Government Inc.

The roles of Booz Allen Hamilton (a major CIA contractor) and 21st Century Technologies of Austin, TX, deserve further exploration. They will be examined in future posts.

For now, it is sufficient to note that Booz Allen and 21st Century both were contractors on the original Total Information Awareness program and BAH certainly brings together, under one roof, several key players in artificial telepathy programs, including former directors of the CIA, the NSA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the U.S. Space Command.

This last point cannot be emphasized enough: Booz Allen acts as an important "black box," a sort of Shadow Government Inc., that links the folks at NSA, the National Reconnaisance Office (NRO), NASA and the U.S. Air Force -- all key players in the research and development of Artificial Telepathy. Each of these agencies use the sophisticated supercomputers, space platforms and satellites run by the U.S. Space Command.

For a refresher on the use of military satellites as Psychotropic Space Weapons, see:
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_nonlethalweapons08.htm

For an overview of the vast number of defense contracts run by Booz Allen Hamilton, see the defense page of their website:

http://www.boozallen.com/consulting/defense-consulting

The 21st Century Technologies website may be found here:

http://www.21technologies.com/

More on TANGRAM: A Key Piece to the Puzzle

The survival of the "outlawed" TIA program and the existence of its replacement -- TANGRAM -- were revealed by Shane Harris in a February 2006 article for the National Journal titled "TIA Lives On."

See the original article at this link: http://www.nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2006/1020nj3.htm

Mr. Harris clearly identifies SRI, BAH and 21st Century Technologies as the main contractors for research and design on the new TANGRAM team overseen by the National Security Agency. Documents undearthed by the National Journal also show that TANGRAM performs essentially the same "information extraction" functions as the Total Information Awareness system that was defunded.

More importantly, Mr. Harris identifies the office that now serves as the secret hub of the all new and improved TIA system.

The Secret Hub: ARDA

According to Harris, 'Two of the most important components of the TIA program were moved to the Advanced Research and Development Activity, housed at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Md., documents and sources confirm. One piece was the Information Awareness Prototype System, the core architecture that tied together numerous information extraction, analysis, and dissemination tools developed under TIA. The prototype system included privacy-protection technologies that may have been discontinued or scaled back following the move to ARDA.

"A $19 million contract to build the prototype system was awarded in late 2002 to Hicks & Associates, a consulting firm in Arlington, Va., that is run by former Defense and military officials. Congress's decision to pull TIA's funding in late 2003 'caused a significant amount of uncertainty for all of us about the future of our work,' Hicks executive Brian Sharkey wrote in an e-mail to subcontractors at the time. 'Fortunately,' Sharkey continued, 'a new sponsor has come forward that will enable us to continue much of our previous work.' Sources confirm that this new sponsor was ARDA."

The Role of SAIC - Another firm linked to Remote Viewing

Students of Artificial Telepathy will be fascinated to learn that Hicks & Associates of Arlington, VA, the firm mentioned above as the designers of Tangram's computer prototype, became the "policy and analysis" branch of Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC) in 1991. SAIC is the California-based firm that took over the Defense Intelligence Agency's Stargate remote viewing program in 1991.

Put another way: The Stargate guys are now building the computer "brain" of TANGRAM, the new Total Information Awareness system.

For the link between Hicks and SAIC, see this webpage:
http://www.saic.com/natsec/policy-analysis-consulting.html

An interesting Wikipedia article on SAIC may be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_Applications_International_Corporation


This article clearly states:

"The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) transitioned a Remote Viewing Program to SAIC in 1991 and it was renamed Stargate Project"

Further links between SAIC, the company that ran Stargate, and the Tangram "information extraction" program are spelled out in the Wikipedia article on the Information Awareness Office and its surviving components:

" TIA's two core projects are now operated by Advanced Research and Development Activity (ARDA) located among the 60-odd buildings of "Crypto City" at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, MD. ARDA itself has been shifted from the NSA to the Disruptive Technology Office (run by to the Director of National Intelligence). They are funded by National Foreign Intelligence Program for foreign counterterrorism intelligence purposes.

BASEBALL

"One technology, now codenamed Baseball is the Information Awareness Prototype System, the core architecture to integrate all the TIA's information extraction, analysis, and dissemination tools. Work on this project is conducted by SAIC through its Hicks & Associates, consulting arm that is run by former Defense and military officials and which had originally been awarded US$19 million IAO contract to build the prototype system in late 2002.[24]

TOPSAIL

"The other project has been re-designated TopSail (formerly Genoa II) and would provide IT tools to help anticipate and preempt terrorist attacks. SAIC has also been contracted to work on Topsail, including a US$3.7 million contract in 2005."


Conclusions: When we piece together the parts of the Tangram puzzle, above, we may deduce that Artificial Telepathy "black" programs are probably



  • run as submodalities or adjuncts to a much larger Total Information Awareness program -- an information-sucking vortex run by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Security Agency, and the Advanced Research Development Agency

  • funded and fielded under cover of "legitimate" counterterrorism programs

  • researched, developed and designed by large, spooky and well-established defense consulting firms with a presence in the D.C. beltway, notably Stanford Research International, Booz Allen Hamilton, 21st Century Consultants, Hicks & Associates, and Scientific Applications International Corporation.


Saturday, February 14, 2009

Thought Police: The Next Logical Step in a Total Surveillance Society


George Orwell introduced the concept of the "Thought Police" in his dystopian novel 1984. See the Wikipedia article on Thought Police here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_Police

According to Kathleen Taylor in her own book, Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control (Oxford University Press, 2006) "It is the job of the Thought Police to uncover and punish thoughtcrime and thought-criminals, using psychology and omnipresent surveillance from telescreens to find and eliminate members of society who were capable of the mere thought of challenging ruling authority."

Does such a system exist in the United States today? Signs point to yes.

Granted, the United States remains a republic, and it has just completed a new cycle of elections. Its liberal constitution and principles of democratic representation seem to be standing firmly in place. Its flag waves proudly.

But there is a growing body of evidence that this country, once "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal," has devolved into a paranoid police state, much like the authoritarian state described by George Orwell in 1984.

One may find, simply by searching the internet, plenty of evidence that the United States government is actively involved in all the basic activities of the "Thought Police" exactly as listed above:

1. The uncovering and punishment of thought crime and thought criminals
2. The use of psychology to profile and identify "potential" criminals, terrorists and subversives within society; and
3. the use of "omni present surveillance from telescreens" to create what Harlan Girard calls "an Electronic Concentration Camp System" -- a grid or matrix from which no person can escape.

In each of these activities, the new mind-invasive technologies known collectively as artificial telepathy play a key role.

Uncovering and Punishing Thought Crime

As documented in many other posts on this blog, mind-invasive technologies have begun to play a key role in the uncovering and punishment of "thoughtcrime."

The prime example is the Department of Homeland Security's new Malintent program mentioned in the previous post (q.v.) By scanning the faces of people at airports and reading other vital signs like heart rate, temperature and blood pressure, new sensors and computer algorithms can be used to read the intentions of airplane passengers -- and presumably to prevent "potential terrorists" from boarding planes by means of "pre-emptive arrest."

One must emphasize here that reading a person's intentions with a camera and a computer is probably not much more reliable than a classic lie detector test, and very little scientific evidence exists to support the claims that these machines are accurate. The important thing to note is that the Department of Homeland Security seriously intends to use these machines as a pretext for pre-emptive arrest -- that is, they intend to arrest people for crimes not yet committed.

Arresting a person for a crime not yet committed, on the basis of perceived intent, amounts to arresting people for thought crimes.

Use of Psychological Profiling to Detect and Detain "Potential" Criminals

As Jim Marrs points out in his new book The Rise of The Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over America (William Morrow, 2008), these "mind reading" computer systems are "reminiscent of prewar Nazi plans to preempt crime and dissent." (p. 333)

For example, Nazi psychologists used pseudo-scientific examinations and the doctrine of preemption to remove "uneducable" children from grade schools. If a number of symptoms indicated that a child was "bad student material," their name would be registered on a list. It was stated that "genetic and national health considerations recommend their preventative registration."

"Of course," says Marrs, "such registration led to the euthanasia centers."

Marrs rightly calls "disturbing" the new trend to identify and detain potential troublemakers before they have actually committed a crime.


Terrorist Watch List -- or Black List?

In its efforts to intercept "suspected terrorists," the Department of Homeland Security has added more than one million names to its terrorist watch list. The American Civil Liberties Union suggests this number is way too high.

"Terrorist watch lists," it says, "must be tightly focused on true terrorists who pose a genuine threat. Bloated lists are bad because they ensnare many innocent travelers as suspected terrorists, and because they waste screeners' time and divert their energies from looking for true terrorists."

Among the individuals whose names were found on the list by 60 Minutes and other media organizations: Sen. Edward Kennedy, Nelson Mandela, Bolivian President Evo Morales, Saddam Hussein (in custody at the time), Rep. John Lewis, James Moore (author of Bush's Brain), and John William Anderson, age 6.

http://www.aclu.org/privacy/spying/watchlistcounter.html

Now one must admit that certain children really are terrible brats, who ought to be watched more closely by their parents, but is it really necessary for the secret police to become involved? And if a United States Senator can be listed as a "suspect," then who is above suspicion?

A "terrorist" watch list that includes the names of more than one million people seems to be clear evidence that the Department of Homeland Security is either a) very paranoid indeed, or b) very interested in using terrorism as a pretext for spying on U.S. citizens who have committed no crimes.

That is, they have established a system that allows them to "find and eliminate members of society who are capable of the mere thought of challenging existing authority."

FTAC: The Fixated Threat Assessment Center

Psychological profiling, black listing and preemptive arrests are "Thought Police" tactics used in Europe, too, not just in the U.S. The British have their own system, called FTAC.

In a chapter titled "Psychology and Public Control," Jim Marrs writes: "The British government, in May 2007, responding to news accounts, acknowledge it had secretly established a new national antiterrorist unit to protect VIPs by first profiling, then arresting persons considered to be potentially dangerous. Amazingly, this power to detain suspects even before they actually committed a crime was based on mental health laws."

Marrs cites a news story by London Times reporter Joanna Bale. She reports that "until now it has been up to mental health professionals to determine if someone should be forcibly detained, but the new unit uses the police to identify suspects, increasing fears that distinctions are being blurred between criminal investigations and doctors' clinical decisions."

Experts believe that this arrangement "is set to reignite controversy over the detention of suspects without trial."

"There is grave danger of this being used to deal with people where there is insufficient evidence for a criminal prosecution," said Gareth Crossman, policy director for Britain's National Council for Civil Liberties.

"This blurs the line between medical decisions and police actions. If you are going to allow doctors to take people's liberty away, they have to be independent. That credibility is undermined when the doctors are part of the same team as the police. This raises serious concerns. First, that you have a unit that allows police investigation to lead directly to people being sectioned without any kind of criminal proceedings. Secondly, it is being done under the umbrella of antiterrorism at a time when the government is looking for ways to detain terrorists without putting them on trial."

Scotland Yard has refused to discuss how many suspects have been forcibly hospitalized by the team, because of "patient confidentiality." Meanwhile, conservative members of the British government have hailed FTAC as the first joint mental health - police unit in the United Kingdom and a "prototype for future joint services" in other areas. They are introducing legislation to broaden the definition of mental disorders to give doctors -- and now police -- more power to detain people.


Mass Surveillance and the 'Electronic Concentration Camp'

Jim Marrs worries that joint psychologist-police units like the FTAC in Britain might serve as a prototype for similar units in the U.S. "Is this coming to America soon?" Marrs asks.

Harlan Girard would probably answer: "It's already here!"

Mr. Girard is the Managing Director of the International Committee Opposing Microwave Weapons (ICOMW), and he firmly believes that the United States government has already established what he calls an "Electronic Concentration Camp System."

See the homepage of his website here: http://www.icomw.org/

Essentially, the ECCS is a network of microwave towers and broadcast centers that can virtually imprison any citizen of the United States that the Thought Police wish to target. It's a people zapping system, used to track, torture and psychologically harrass inconvenient people who, for one reason or another, have been placed on the government's long list of enemies.

To support this claim, Girard has amassed an impressive collection of documents, posted at the website's archive, here: http://www.icomw.org/archive.asp

The documents in this archive clearly indicate that the U.S. government has no need of the small FTAC units used by the British Government. The number of peace protestors and politically "inconvenient" people who have suddenly begun to hear voices in their heads strongly suggests that the U.S. government has built and fielded something much bigger, much more powerful, and much more scary: a fully developed and fully operational Electronic Concentration Camp System.
If the secret police, operating under the umbrella of counterterrorism, wish to "section" an inconvenient citizen "without any criminal proceedings," they simply enroll that individual into the ECCS.

Technically, the "Targeted Individuals" remain free, but they are tortured 24/7 with microwave weapons, often to the point of losing their minds. They hear voices and experience a wide variety of horrible sensations. If they voluntarily turn themselves in to a psychiatric hospital, they are immediately diagnosed as schizophrenic and sectioned. Thus they are discredited and stigmatized for life. Those who turn to mainstream media are openly mocked.

In 2007, The Washington Post did a profile on Mr. Girard and other voice hearers, who are commonly called "wavies." (See the link among the News links lists to the left.)

While the reporter kept a skeptical distance from Mr. Girard, she did at least do some background research on mind-invasive technologies. The Post filed an FOIA request with the U.S. Air Force and did manage to obtain documents showing that the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has conducted several "voice to skull" experiments during the past decade.

It may be interesting to note that AFRL is also one of the primary research sponsors (along with the Navy) for the High-Frequency Active Auroral Reasearch Project (HAARP) -- a 35-acre antenna farm near Fairbanks, Alaska, that is powerful enough to focus microwave beams anywhere on the face of the earth.

According to Dr. Nick Begich, author of the book Angels Don't Play This HAARP (http://www.earthpulse.com/), the Air Force can broadcast from these antennae at frequencies that match the frequency range of the human brain.

In Chapter 23 "Psychocivilized Society and the CIA," Dr. Begich explores "the use of electromagnetic waves for mind manipulation," and concludes that it would be very possible to use HAARP as a non-lethal weapon that could be rationalized as an alternative to military force.

Whether HAARP acts as the hub of the ECCS is another question. HAARP certainly operates as part of the Air Force's "Star Wars" ballistic missile early warning system, scanning for Soviet Missile launches. That means it is a subordinate wing of NORAD, the North American Air-Defense Command -- an underground city buried beneath Cheyenne Mountain near Colorado Springs.

NORAD is a "hardened" and extremely secure underground site, equipped with supercomputers and direct uplinks to a wide variety of top secret space platforms and space-based beam weapons. It makes an excellent candidate for the HQ of the kind of "Electronic Concentration Camp" that Harlan Girard has envisioned.

NORAD certainly does have full access to the kinds of spy satellites and laser beams that worry the "wavies." It may incorporate many other systems besides HAARP, and it may be no accident that the Sci-Fi series "Stargate" is supposedly set in NORAD's underground bunker.

Given NORAD's vast array of high-tech toys and its direct links to the Pentagon and the NSA, the possiblity that it might be HQ for a top secret "Thought Police" unit does not seem to be entirely out of the question.






Total Information Awareness

Civil liberties groups cried "Thought Police" in 2002 when they first discovered the U.S. Defense Department's Information Awareness Office and its Total Information Awareness doctrine. Run for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) by former Vice Adm. John Poindexter, the TIA "counterterrorism" program caused quite a brouhaha because it advocated pre-emptive policing through use of a massive data mine that would interconnected a wide array of powerful surveillance systems:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office

DARPA's own website tells us that "The goal of the Total Information Awareness program is to revolutionize the ability of the United States to detect, classify and identify foreign terrorists -- and decipher their plans -- and thereby enable the U.S. to take timely action to successfully pre-empt and defeat terrorist acts."

http://infowar.net/tia/www.darpa.mil/iao/TIASystems.htm

See also this article on the "Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act" from Project Censored (The Top 25 Censored Stories of 2009):
http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/6-the-homegrown-terrorism-prevention-act/

Under this act, which nearly became law in 2007, local police departments might have been given legal cover for the use of nonlethal, mind-invasive technology against their own populace. They could zap "suspects" in the name of preventing "homegrown terror."

Indeed, pre-emptive policing can be used to rationalize almost every form of privacy violation. One need simply argue that the rights of the individual can and must be overriden by police in order to protect and defend the physical safety of society as a whole. It's for the greater good.

Conclusion

What Orwell did was simply to carry the twin doctrines of total information awareness and preemptive policing to their logical extreme. He imagined a world in which no one had any right to privacy whatever. None. All personal privacy is sacrificed on the altar of national security -- for the greater good.

In the sacred name of "national security," the technocrats who run the nightmarish police state of 1984 arrogantly assume the right to invade the inner sanctum of the mind itself. They read the thoughts of every citizen, dabble their fingers in the stuff that souls are made of, and sit in arrogant, authoritarian judgement over all.

Perhaps the vision of such a police state being realized in 1984 may cause people to smirk. That was, after all, more than 25 years ago, and we don't have such a police state now, do we?

To those who smirk, however, one might call attention to the many patents on mind-invasive technology that may be found listed in the left-hand column of this blog. One must also point out that the U.S. Department of Defense did not necessarily do away with DARPA's Information Awareness Office or its Total Information Awareness doctrine.

As with most black programs that are discovered by Congress and the media, these programs have been given new names and parked under the camouflage of other departments within the intelligence community. They still exist.

See Schneier on Security "Total Information Awareness Is Back"

www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/10/total_informati.html

"Report: NSA's Warrantless Spying Resurrects Banned Total Information Awareness Program" http://www.blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/03/nsas-warrantles.html


Now consider this: If the doctrines of pre-emptive policing and total information awareness remain in place, can the massive use of mind-invasive technology be far behind?

Orwell may have been off by a few years. But his understanding of the basic arrogance of intelligence agencies and his vision of a nightmarish police state were frightfully accurate. With the quiet advent of mind-reading technologies, the chilling age of the Thought Police has secretly, stealthily and finally arrived.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

MALINTENT: Homeland Security Gets Inside Your Head

"Homeland Security is now testing the next generation of security screening -- a body scanner that can read your mind," reports Allison Barrie of FOX News ("Homeland Security Detects Terrorist Threats by Reading Your Mind," foxnews.com, 23 Sept 2008).
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,426485,00.html

This is no polygraph, Barrie says. Subjects do not get hooked up or strapped down for a careful reading. The machine is "like an X-ray for bad intentions," with its "series of sensors and imagers that read your body temperature, heart rate and respiration for unconscious tells invisible to the naked eye -- signals terrorists and criminals may display in advance of an attack."










Photo Credit: The Telegraph (UK)


The photo above, from the (London) Telegraph's 24 September 2008 article on MALINTENT, suggests that one simply walks through a standard scanner. But Barrie's report indicates that the experimental equipment was housed in a long trailer truck, where more than 144 (mostly unwitting) subjects were tested.

A better picture of the system may be seen in an article by Liz Hazleton of the London Daily Mail, "The Airport Security Scanner That Can Read Your Mind" (24 Sept 2008):


Hazleton says that a series of sensors, like the one shown below, read body temperature, heart rate and respiration. "Analyzed together, these factors can lead security services to potential terrorists. Any suspects are pulled aside for questioning, and then subjected to a second scan, which involves microfacial scanning."

This equipment "is able to read minute muscle movements which give further indications of criminal intent.

"So far it can read seven primary emotions and emotional clues and will eventually have equipment which can analyze body movement, an eye-scanner and a pheromone reader."

MALINTENT' has been described as the "brainchild of the cutting-edge Human Factors Division in Homeland Security's directorate for Science and Technology." It apparently uses facial scanners and body scanners, referred to as Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST). By reading the expression on one's face and comparing that expression to other faces on a database, computers can presumably read one's mood and mental intentions.

The homepage for the DHS Directorate of Science and Technology may be found here:

http://www.dhs.gov/xabout/structure/editorial_0530.shtm

An organizational overview of their Human Factors and Behavioral Sciences Division may be found at this link:

http://www.dhs.gov/xres/programs/gc_1218480185439.shtm

There one finds the following DHS description of the program dubbed "MALINTENT":


Homeland Innovation Prototypical Solutions - Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) Project

Project Manager: Bob Burns

Project Overview: The Homeland Security Advanced Research Project Agency (HSARPA) and S&T Directorate Human Factors Behavior Sciences (HFBS) Division Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) Project is an initiative to develop innovative, non-invasive technologies to screen people at security checkpoints. FAST is grounded in research on human behavior and psychophysiology, focusing on new advances in behavioral/human-centered screening techniques. The aim is a prototypical mobile suite (FAST M2) that would be used to increase the accuracy and validity of identifying persons with malintent (the intent or desire to cause harm). Identified individuals would then be directed to secondary screening, which would be conducted by authorized personnel. This project is part of the HFBS innovations portfolio (Homeland Security Advanced Research Project Agency Program).

No description or photo of the scanner is provided. However, we do have an image of analysts using the system, taken from the UK Daily Mail article cited above:

















The DHS website offers an abundance of additional information on similar "mind reading" projects, lumped under the general heading of Hostile Intent Detection. For example:

Hostile Intent Detection – Training & Simulation Project

Project Manager: Larry Willis

Project Overview: The S&T Directorate Human Factors Behavior Sciences (HFBS) Division Hostile Intent Detection – Training and Simulation Project develops computer-based simulation to train behavior-based stand-off detection for future hostile intent using indicators from the interactive screening environment (Hostile Intent Detection – Automated Prototype) and the observational environment (Hostile Intent Detection – Validation) to support screening and interviewing interactions at air, land, and maritime portals. This project is part of the HFBS social behavioral threat analysis thrust area and suspicious behavior detection program.

Translation: DHS is funding several programs, just like MALINTENT, aimed at reading the mental intentions of individuals whose behavior is deemed "suspicious."

For further reference, see the MALINTENT Wikipedia article at this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MALINTENT

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Silent Speech: How To "Read Thoughts" with SVR

Photo Credit: NASA Ames Research Laboratory
Can thoughts be read by artificial means?

Short answer: yes.

See the NewScientist video demonstration here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyN4ViZ21N0&feature=related

You may not realize it, but when you think to yourself, your subconscious mind often forms the words, as if trying to speak. These "subvocal" words are then sent to the voice box, where they make the vocal chords hum.

Here's the spooky part: NASA has developed sensors that can read the vibrations made by silent, said-to-self speech. The digital signals from these sensors can be fed to a computer software program that interprets the vibrations and translates them into artificial speech or into written text. The text, in turn, can be sent by phone line to a person hundreds of miles away.

See NASA's Subvocal Demo Page here:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2004/subvocal/subvocal.html

For all practical purposes, these machines can be used to hear or "read" the unspoken thoughts of another human being. It amounts to artificial mind reading.

For a Wikipedia article on subvocal recognition (SVR), see the link here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocal_recognition

For an interesting article published by Forbes magazine in 2006 titled "The Silent Speaker":

http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2006/0410/084.html

As one might imagine, the device has many practical applications for astronauts, scuba divers or people with disabilities. The Ambient Corporation, for example, is now marketing a device called the Audeo that helps people speak:

http://www.theaudeo.com/

On February 26, 2008 the Ambient Corporation demonstrated what it called the world's first voiceless phone call:

http://www.theaudeo.com/display_news.php?id=29

The covert applications of "silent speech" technology are also fairly obvious. To communicate secretly at a business meeting, one could potentially wear sensors under a turtle neck and transmit one's thoughts to a business partner wearing a bluetooth phone. Such a device could also be used to cheat at cards, to steal any data that can be seen and read, or to give silent orders among soldiers on a battlefield.

Alarmingly, the perfection of such equipment implies that at some time in the near future, remote sensors might be able to read silent, said-to-self thoughts without the target's knowledge or consent.

Researcher Nick Begich discusses the bioethics of using such "brainphones" and Neurophone-like devices in this 8-minute video, titled "The Battle for Your Mind":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMtI_k-ahIM&feature=PlayList&p=E25229553A65821B&index=9