Is this serious or is it bullshit? I don't know enough about British media to know if _The Independent_ is a sensationalist rag or not, but it's reporting about something published by what looks like a reputable journal.
The jist of it is this: New technology that makes your mind/your personality/your memories as easily accessible as the filesystem of a Windows XP box without the victim knowing is starting to *not* be something only found in dystopian science fiction movies anymore. The ability for one individual, a government entity or corporate entity to use a computer to access your brain and do stuff like:
* view memories
* delete a memory
* implant a new memory
* copy a memory to storage
* view personality aspects
* alter personality aspects
* delete personality aspects
* add new personality aspects
* copy personality aspects to storage
are all things that are, as the article says, in the starting stages now and will be very much achievable in the not-so-distant future. The academics who authored the paper are, instead of calling for a ban on outright opposition to such technology, proposing new laws, human rights laws, which would basically be Article 12 for the brain, to make it against the law to do these things to a person without both their knowledge and consent. But if current reality is any evidence, laws and rights don't do jack shit. Article 12 still exists and yet every last bit of data on the internet is watched and recorded by the NSA & GHCQ, so what good would an Article 12 for our brains be?
