Saturday, March 10, 2007

ScienceDaily: Subliminal Advertising Leaves Its Mark On The Brain University College London researchers have found the first physiological evidence that invisible subliminal images do attract the brain's attention on a subconscious level. The wider implication for the study, published in Current Biology, is that techniques such as subliminal advertising, now banned in the UK but still legal in the USA, certainly do leave their mark on the brain. Using fMRI, the study looked at whether an image you aren't aware of -- but one that reaches the retina -- has an impact on brain activity in the primary visual cortex, part of the occipital lobe. Subjects' brains did respond to the object even when they were not conscious of having seen it. Dr Bahador Bahrami, of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and the UCL Department of Psychology, said: "What's interesting here is that your brain does log things that you aren't even aware of and can't ever become aware of. We show that there is a brain response in the primary visual cortex to subliminal images that attract our attention -- without us having the impression of having seen anything. These findings point to the sort of impact that subliminal advertising may have on the brain. What our study doesn't address is whether this would then influence you to go out and buy a product. I believe that it's likely that subliminal advertising may affect our decisions -- but that is just speculation at this point." 11:21:41 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Subliminal Messages Might Actually Work. Subliminal Messages Might Actually Work.   GrumpySimon writes  "New research indicates that subliminal messages may actually work. In a paper titled Attentional Load Modulates Responses of Human Primary Visual Cortex to Invisible Stimuli, Bahrani et al. demonstrate that even though stimuli may not be available to consciousness, they are processed by the visual cortex. While I'm sure that marketing agencies all over the world are rubbing their hands in glee at this news, the authors report that there's no evidence that this can make people buy things against their will. So with any luck the use of subliminal messages in advertising will remain an urban legend." [Slashdot: Your Rights Online] 11:18:58 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Big Brother State: surveillance society animation. Big Brother State: surveillance society animation. Another slick animation outlining the threats of our growing surveillance society: Big Brother State (YouTube version here) [via Jeremy Hunsinger] [michaelzimmer.org] 11:08:05 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Big Brother State - An animated short about public surveillance by David Scharf please also download using Bit Torrent: (Xvid Version, ca. 50 MB, 768 px x 432 px) ---> CLICK HERE (Big FLV Version, 55 MB, 768 px x 432 px, use FLV Player to view) ---> CLICK HERE Check the Internet Archive for other resolutions and formats:  CLICK HERE 11:06:35 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

EFF Calls For Aggressive Congressional Hearings on National Security Letter Misuse. EFF Calls For Aggressive Congressional Hearings on National Security Letter Misuse. EFF is calling for Congress to hold aggressive hearings on the FBI's domestic intelligence authority after the release of a Justice Department report [PDF] showing the Bureau abusing its power to collect telephone, Internet, financial, credit, and other personal records about Americans without judicial approval. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vermont, has said the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold hearings into the report's findings. But the widespread abuse detailed in the report requires more than just a cursory examination. "The Bureau's misuse of its intelligence authority is an ongoing critical problem," said EFF Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. "Congress must use its investigative power to find out what's really going on at the FBI -- and then rein in the Bureau's investigative authority to where is was before the USA PATRIOT Act." In the report, the Justice Department's inspector general identifies four dozen instances in which demands for personal information -- known as National Security Letters -- may have violated laws and agency regulations. The report also found that the Bureau lied to Congress about its use of the letters. The FBI has had limited authority to issue National Security Letters for many years. However, a controversial provision of the PATRIOT Act greatly expanded the Bureau's ability to use them to gather information about anyone, as long as the agency believes the information could be relevant to a terrorism or espionage investigation. Today's report follows the inspector general's findings last year that the Bureau had disclosed more than 100 instances of possible intelligence misconduct to the Intelligence Oversight Board in the preceding two years, a number of which were "significant." In 2005, EFF argued in a friend of the court brief that the FBI's "unfettered authority" to issue National Security Letters "is ripe for abuse." The danger of such abuse has now been documented. "This is not simply about errors in 'oversight,'" said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Lee Tien. "This is about disregard for the law. For example, FBI terrorism investigators ignored their own lawyers' advice to stop using so-called 'exigent' letters for about two years." For more information, read the full report from the Justice Department, as well as this brief description of National Security Letters . [EFF: Deep Links] 10:52:46 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Justice Department Says F.B.I. Misused Patriot Act. Justice Department Says F.B.I. Misused Patriot Act. In what should not come as that big of a surprise, AP reports: The FBI improperly and, in some cases, illegally used the USA Patriot Act to secretly obtain personal information about people in the United States, a Justice Department audit concluded Friday. And for three years the FBI underreported to Congress how often it forced businesses to turn over the customer data, the audit found. [sigma]The audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine found that FBI agents sometimes demanded personal data on individuals without proper authorization. The 126-page audit also found the FBI improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances. [sigma]Fine[base ']s annual review is required by Congress, over the objections of the Bush administration. The audit released Friday found that the number of national security letters issued by the FBI skyrocketed in the years after the Patriot Act became law. In 2000, for example, the FBI issued an estimated 8,500 letters. By 2003, however, that number jumped to 39,000. It rose again the next year, to about 56,000 letters in 2004, and dropped to approximately 47,000 in 2005. Over the entire three-year period, the FBI reported issuing 143,074 national security letters requesting customer data from businesses, the audit found. But that did not include an additional 8,850 requests that were never recorded in the FBI[base ']s database, the audit found. [sigma]The FBI also used so-called [OE][base ']exigent letters,'[base '] signed by officials at FBI headquarters who were not authorized to sign national security letters, to obtain information. In at least 700 cases, these exigent letters were sent to three telephone companies to get toll billing records and subscriber information. [OE][base ']In many cases, there was no pending investigation associated with the request at the time the exigent letters were sent,'[base '] the audit concluded. Unbelievable. The full 199-page report can be downloaded here (PDF). And more coverage is available at Boing Boing and 27B Stroke 6. [michaelzimmer.org] 10:49:18 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

NASA Describes Quantum Chip. NASA Describes Quantum Chip. A custom chip powered a disputed demonstration of quantum computing by D-Wave Systems. [PC World: Latest Technology News] 10:46:12 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []

Newly Revealed FBI Data Abuses and the Data Retention Red Flag. Newly Revealed FBI Data Abuses and the Data Retention Red Flag. Greetings. The release of a new report detailing massive FBI abuses of the PATRIOT Act (particularly in regard to National Security Letters), now confirms concerns that I and others have been long expressing about the potential abuse of retained Internet and other data, e.g.: Sounding the Alarm on Government-Mandated Data Retention An Open Letter to Google: Concepts for a Google Privacy Initiative Broad abuses of retained data are now demonstrated to be real, not theoretical, as described in this Washington Post story. We don't yet really know the full extent of these violations, but what has already been revealed is bad enough as a starting point. I hope that these events will not only trigger considerable soul-searching by those firms who voluntarily retain user activity data, but also cause a renewed recognition of how broad mandated data retention can facilitate, and inevitably will facilitate, such abuses in the future. --Lauren-- [Lauren Weinstein's Blog] 10:43:18 PM  PermaLink   / trackback []