WE WERE TALKING ABOUT THIS IN MY LAW, SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR A DECADE AGO, AND NOW IT’S REAL: Brain Scanning Just Got Very Good—and Very Unsettling. “The HCP project has also moved brain scanning into the realm of the feature film Minority Report by showing that a person’s brain activity is as unique as a fingerprint and that it can be used to identify a person with 99 percent accuracy. HCP data has also enabled researchers to use a brain scan to predict how a person will perform on an intelligence test and during a memory or reading task. ‘This may be a bit scary,’ admitted Roderic Pettigrew, director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, during introductory remarks at the symposium.”

They’ll soon be able to tell if you know things without even asking you.