Mind reading helmet will help US military pick the right enemy

How easy would it be if you were a platoon leader on the border and you had all the people trying to cross the border rounded up and by simply putting a helmet on each one of them you could classify who is a friend and who is a foe? Well, this is what a company called Veritas Scientific is trying to do by developing mind reading helmets for the U.S. Military. Veritas is working on a motorcycle-type helmet embedded with metal brush sensors that’ll peek into a person’s brain and read his brain activity as images, which will be displayed only centimeters from the eyes.

Scientists have proven that familiar faces bring about noticeable spikes in brain activity indicating recognition. Tapping on this, Veritas plans to develop helmets (that can be used on perpetrators of terror) to show slideshow of images to reliably help the Armed force personals to identify the enemy. Veritas says, when a person sees a face his brain puts a name to it, means he recognizes it, which brings about a dip in the EEG levels, which the helmet will help identify.

Veritas hopes to ready a prototype of the helmet by fall this year, which the company plans to provide to the U.S. Military to help them pick the right enemies from the captured people. Later Veritas believes their brain spying technique could also be used by law enforcement agencies in criminal trials and eventually in apps for cellphones. The only issue with Veritas’ helmet is that we know EEG indications are hard to pick and reading can be faulty therefore, when the question about a person’s life or freedom is at stake, what is margin of error we can accept?

[Image used only for depiction] Via: IEEESpectrum