Neuroscience has, for the first time, demonstrated that there may be ways to directly access human thought--even, perhaps, without the thinker's consent. While the research is still preliminary, the science is advancing at an astonishing rate. While many obstacles need to be overcome and the technology is not yet practicable, the implications for our current state of knowledge are profound. [. . .]
While our abilities in these areas are still quite limited, and while there is always the possibility that the technology will never progress to the point where it can extract truly useful information from anyone, the time to think about the implications of this endeavor is now, before the technology is upon us. The appeal of the technology to the state is obvious. So we need to ask ourselves: What are the limits of the use of this technology? Should we ever allow the courts, or the state, to demand access to the recesses of our minds?
Reminds me of the time Scotty was accused of murder on Star Trek and they tried to retrieve his memories with a techno-thingamajig. I love their gadgets:
The psychotricorder was a Starfleet tricorder specifically programmed for a psychologist's use in analyzing a patient. This version of the tricorder scanned specific brainwave patterns during questioning of the patient, and was helpful in diagnosis and treatment of mental ailments and disorders. It may have possessed a hypnosis-assist subroutine, as well as subroutines for lie-detection and amnesia analysis. The device was normally operated by an assistant technician while the attending psychologist directed the patient.
A psychotricorder and medical technician were once requisitioned by Kirk and McCoy to help analyze the apparently amnesic Scotty when he became a suspect in several murders on Argelius II.
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