A report by the secretary-general warned that new technologies could be used to access and criminalize people’s innermost thoughts.
The scenarios sound like science fiction: Police officers accessing data contained in suspects’ brains to forcefully extract information, or to predict if offenders might plan to commit future crimes.
But the secretary-general of the United Nations warned on Thursday for the first time that neurotechnologies are advancing so rapidly that governments’ ability to access and manipulate people’s brains could one day pose a threat to fundamental human rights.
Neurotechnologies have also become powerful clinical tools for patients who have suffered severe brain or spinal cord injuries. Brain-computer interfaces have helped paralyzed patients to write sentences by imagining handwriting, as well as to move robotic limbs and to play chess online just by thinking.
Full article here (Gift Article):
