With our attention focused on the NSA, what if non-government groups begin using new eavesdropping?

[Jeffersons Ghost]

CNN tests Muse, the mind-reading headband

The Muse headband was unveiled this week at LeWeb and CNN caught up with founder of Interaxon Ariel Garten for a demonstration of the brainwave-sensing headband.

Garten says Muse works using the same technology used in hospitals known as Electroencephalography (EEG), which records electrical activity along the scalp.

Muse is embedded with four sensors that allows you to see and track your brain's activity, in the same way a heart rate monitor gives information about your physical activity. You can also use your mind to control games and applications supplied with the headband, Garten says.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/06/tech/ariel-garten-muse-interaxon/index.html

What if this type technology is advanced to pick up electronic signals using a sensor in our ceilings, without the use of inexpensive headbands?

[PoliticAverse]

1. That's what an aluminum foil hat is to prevent. n/t

[HappyMe]

2. Prepare your tinfoil hat!

[MineralMan]

3. Silliness.

In the first place, this headband doesn't allow anyone to listen to your thoughts. With training, the user is able to control stuff with the mind. Outsiders can't read anything from it.

In the second place, it's impossible to detect brainwaves without electrodes actually on the scalp. so your ceiling sensors won't detect bupkis.

What you're doing is saying stuff that the technology can't do. Give yourself a break. It's not time for that kind of worry.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

4. thanks f0or the advice...

But I spend little or no time worrying about things like this, because what is currently unreal, will become real. Are we underestimating science with previous comments? I do see a trend developing to advance this kind of research in the near future.

[MineralMan]

5. Do you? I'm not seeing it. What I'm seeing is

research in using our own brain waves to control machines. That technology is developing, and is actually in use in some areas. However, surface electrodes simply cannot detect thought patterns or anything of the sort. They're quite crude.

As far as I know, no progress has been made in learning what someone is thinking based on brainwave activity. I doubt that will ever be possible.

Even less likely would be doing that without actual contact from electrodes attached to the scalp. That's silly, if you understand anything about how brainwaves are monitored.

It's not something to be concerned about, unless you are, say, a paraplegic or quadriplegic. Progress is being made in controlling prosthetic devices with brainwaves. That's very promising. Also, people who play video games may get the ability to control their games that way before too long. All are the person controlling something else. There's nothing that reads people's minds, nor will there be. Brainwaves are too crude for that use.