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Comment by mhuffman | Hacker News Reader

I expect this to be streamlined and used by law enforcement as an alternative for polygraphs.

By 'streamlined' you mean hastily developed, badly tested, (on purpose) rushed to market, and then hailed as the 'new DNA testing'?

By the time anyone questions its efficacy it will be too late.

I can tell by your antagonistic language that you are hiding something!

To the thought-extractor citizen -- we'll get to the bottom of this!

Yours must be a terrifying world in which to live. I'm sorry.

I don't want to sound alarmist, but if mind reading can be made to work reasonably well, it could be a golden age for dictators.

"Law enforcement" in most of the world is not on the side of regular citizens.

Or it could be used to create brain computer interfaces. Or for "uploading".

I expect someone to figure out a way to exfiltrate upcoming passwords by analyzing the EM radiation of these aptly named CNiFERs. Imagine, an attacker knowing your next password before you begin to type it for the first time }:)

Or, more practically, an interrogator could just remind you of a time when you logged in to a particular account, and then try to capture a password as you relive the memory.

There seems to be a huge push against using any type of nuero-tech to build "ultimate" lie detectors, which I often find puzzling.

Lie detectors do not have a good track record for making things better. If you want to catch criminals there are many other ways. If there was a murder near you would you want people trying nuero-tech on you?

Imagine this being used on homosexuals in the middle east. Or imagine it being used on the modern day equivalents who most view similar to how homosexuals are viewed in the middle east. To take away the ability to pass is extremely dangerous for at risk minorities.

And everyone should fear because such tech could also be abused to falsely accuse you of being in some hated group. Police lie about drugs often enough to be a threat to liberty; they need less tools they can lie about, not more.

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