What Does a Future with Consent Look Like?

What is suggested to be happening

In the author's speculation, the world's population could be experiencing telepathic communication that no one has consented to. It is not limited to words. It can reach any of the physical senses.

• —Verbal communication. It can be heard aloud on the neurotech bullhorn.
• —Inside the skull. With the ears held shut, it can still be experienced internally, through voice-to-skull (V2K) technology.
• —Phantom sensations. Something felt on or in the body that has no visible cause.
• —Augmented reality visuals. Images added to what a person sees (see The Diving Ecosystem, Capability 9).

None of it has been consented to.

Statements suggest that most of it is weapons development, carried out by certain organizations within a union of approximately 200 organizations that has been sold access to the population of the United States, and of other countries. That rests on statements alone and is unverified.

On the record: the microwave auditory effect is documented in laboratory research: pulsed microwaves can be heard as clicks or buzzes that seem to come from inside the head. No published research shows it delivering speech to a person at a distance. The feeling of something crawling on the skin, and brief glimpses of things that are not there, have many known medical causes and are worth a doctor's assessment (see The Diving Ecosystem, Capability 9).

What the technology is suggested to be able to do

From the author: "Wouldn't a mobile app that lets you know who's communicating be really helpful right now, and hold people accountable?"

From the distance, in paraphrase: "Law enforcement already has that technology."

The author's view is that the technology is a miracle.

Based on statements, and on mental visualizations that have been shared with the author, it is suggested that from a control room, or from a computer, someone can know:

• —who is connected to another human being;
• —who is communicating, and with whom;
• —a person's vitals;
• —and much more.

It is also suggested that there are applications that hold a person's identity together with their mental fingerprint: the brain's own fingerprint.

With all that communication power comes the ability to observe a crime while it is happening, and to discover someone's intention: their thoughts, and even the space before a thought, the efference copy space (Capability 4), which is said to be out there and accessible.

On the record: research has identified individuals from their brain activity, through functional MRI "connectome fingerprinting" (Finn et al., 2015) and EEG "brainprint" studies, but both need a scanner or electrodes on the head. Radio signals can measure breathing and heart rate without contact: MIT's Vital-Radio (2015) did it from up to 8 metres away, including from another room, but not across a city. The furthest a machine has come toward reading thought is a 2023 decoder that reconstructed the gist of what a person heard or imagined, but only inside an fMRI scanner, after many hours of training on that one person, and only while that person cooperated (see Can a machine read what you are thinking?). "Efference copy" is an established neuroscience term for the brain's internal copy of an outgoing command. None of this shows that the system described above exists.

What happens if we keep going down this road?

So, with that context: what happens if we continue down this road?

The author's question is whether the absence of consent, and the absence of an explanation, is contributing to an increase in suicide and crime internationally (see Does the explanation itself do harm?).

On the record: between 2000 and 2021, on the WHO's age-standardised estimates, the suicide rate in the United States rose 40%, while the world's fell 27%. South Korea's rate more than doubled to a peak in 2011, then fell; across the whole period it rose 83%. Russia's fell 60% (see The world's suicide rate fell. The United States' rose.). These figures describe what happened, not why. Two things rising at the same time does not show that one caused the other (see Next to each other is not because of each other), and part of Russia's fall may reflect deaths being recorded as "undetermined intent" instead (see The numbers under the numbers). Nothing in this data links these changes to the experiences this archive describes.

What does a future with consent look like?

On the record: consent already has a foundation to build on. The Nuremberg Code, written in 1947, opens by stating that the voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. In 2024 Colorado amended its privacy act to require express consent before neural data is collected or used (see Why did legislatures write laws for neural data?). And the brain-computer interfaces in clinical trials today are implanted with consent (see An Incredible Opportunity).

What follows is the author's hypothetical picture of that future.

A mobile app, and a reason to join

Imagine there are incentives to subscribe to a government cloud system. There is a mobile app. It might work like a voice assistant: you speak into your phone, and it learns the sound of your voice. Then you are asked to read something silently, and the app captures your telepathic voice.

You get your whole family on board. Imagine your eyesight, or your child's eyesight, available in a home-security app like Ring, alongside the cameras on your front door. And everyone knows that this is possible.

The incentives could be Amazon credit, or airline miles. They could be healthcare: unlimited MRI scans, and the actual care a person needs when they are experiencing something like voice-to-skull communication.

On the record: no such app exists. Ring, Amazon's home-security camera service, has no feature of this kind. Research on silent speech is real but limited: MIT's AlterEgo (2018) recognised words a person said silently to themselves, but only from electrodes worn on the face and jaw that pick up faint muscle signals, and only from a small vocabulary. No published research captures an inner voice through a phone.

On the record: what a government cloud is. A government cloud offers the same kind of computing businesses use (storage, computing power and, increasingly, artificial intelligence) in separate regions built for government work. In the United States a cloud service must pass FedRAMP, the federal security authorization program set up in 2011, before agencies can use it, and police records stored in one must meet the FBI's CJIS Security Policy. This site's Government Cloud research maps where these services are used and what they do. A government cloud stores and processes the data agencies put into it. Nothing on record shows one capturing an inner voice or a person's eyesight; that part of this picture is the author's speculation.

Who benefits first

Right out of the gate, single mothers, single-parent families, the elderly and children would have an immediate, extra layer of personal and physical safety.

Artificial intelligence that is always observing

Imagine that artificial intelligence is always observing. You go on a first date, and the AI is observing the other person's thoughts. Anyone you come in contact with through eyesight, it begins to look at their intention. Automations are present: if a negative intention is detected, an automation is triggered.

On the record: in the United States, a thought alone is not a crime. To be charged with attempting a crime, a person must both intend it and take a substantial step toward carrying it out. A system that acts on detected intention would raise new legal questions, and that is part of why consent matters.

A hypothetical: the schoolyard

Imagine you have a seven-year-old daughter. She is out in the schoolyard, playing with her friends, and teachers are standing nearby. A few hundred feet away, behind the fence, a vehicle pulls up, and the driver starts looking at your daughter.

His eyesight, resting on your daughter, triggers an automation that inspects his thoughts. It finds his intention for her, and his past behaviour. He has been watching your family on social media. Now he is parked outside the school, and he intends to abduct her and do her serious harm.

Immediately, the automation brings in a human being. The system speaks to the driver at once. He receives exactly the right kind of communication and is put in contact with a social worker. He is identified as a registered sex offender. He drives away.

What happens next is very important. A string of communication begins between you, the parent, the teachers and the child. The driver's physical description is shared, through the mobile app and telepathically, with everyone who needs to know.

And the part the author appreciates most: the badge number and identity of the law enforcement officer, and the government cloud system that intervened, are available to you, and you can leave a review.

Afterwards

How do you feel at this point, as a parent? In the author's own words: deeply concerned, but also relieved, and blown away, because this technology did not exist. Fifty years ago, what would have happened? Would your daughter have lost her life?

How does the law enforcement officer feel reading your five-star review, which says: This government cloud system saved our family today?

How does the teacher who was notified feel? The school system, with access to its students' eyesight metrics?

How does the registered sex offender feel? Does he get the help he needs?

This is a hypothetical example of solving a crime before it happens.

A second hypothetical: the college student

Imagine you are a college student. You have signed up for the government cloud, and you are going to buy narcotics on the street.

You walk into an area known for drug dealing, and you get a notification on your phone, and one neurologically. Someone lets you know that you are in an area known for drug dealing, and that they can see you intend to buy narcotics. Would you be open to scheduling a doctor's appointment, to be given a safe, legitimate replacement for what you were about to buy? It could be a prescription such as Xanax, something that gives an adequate result.

That lets healthcare pay for the relief, whether from suffering or from boredom. It lets the FDA control what the person actually takes. And it keeps the student's money away from global narcotics organizations that are, in effect, enemies of America.

The story continues. The app, and the voice speaking to the student, could add: If we see you in this neighbourhood buying narcotics a few more times, we may intervene. But we care about you. We see you're a student, and we want you to be successful in school.

That could happen whether the student has consented or not. In fact, a moment like that could open the door to consent: If you consent to monitoring, we will supply your prescription.

This invites many questions.

On the record: replacing street drugs with prescribed medicine is an established treatment for some addictions. Methadone and buprenorphine, prescribed for opioid use disorder, reduce overdose deaths. Xanax (alprazolam) is a different case: it is a controlled substance that can cause dependence, and it is especially dangerous taken with opioids, so whether to prescribe it would be a doctor's decision. In 2025 the US government designated several drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. The Nuremberg Code holds that consent must be given freely, without coercion; whether consent offered in exchange for a prescription is free is one of the questions this scenario raises.

Citizens and the police: what is the relationship?

What is the historical relationship between the general population and the law enforcement community? Is it healthy? Is there a relationship at all?

What comes to mind is a stigma: that police keep to their own circles, apart from a public they associate with drug use.

What happened to the local beat cop who walked down the street, introduced themselves and spent time with the community? Does that person still exist?

What would happen if, all of a sudden, crime were being solved before it happened, and citizens were leaving five-star reviews for a badge number and a government cloud system? Would it change how we see each other? Would it be a historic change, one that has never happened before?

And what is being experienced today: is it retaliation by a foreign adversary? Or is it evidence of brutality by a relatively small group within the law enforcement community?

On the record: foot patrol has been tested. In the Philadelphia Foot Patrol Experiment, in the summer of 2009, officers walked beats in 60 high-crime locations, and violent crime there fell by about 22% compared with similar areas without foot patrols. Nothing on record answers whether what this archive describes comes from a foreign adversary or from within law enforcement; both are questions.

What happens to someone who does not consent?

This is a serious question. Would a person who does not consent experience something similar to what is described across this archive today, with any organization able to access their neural data, communicate with them, gain entry to their home, and euthanize them illegally?

Would they have the same level of protection as someone who consents? In the author's view, the observational system would need to continue for all human beings. But without consent, the author believes a person could be left exposed to being robbed and murdered, or worse. They might also go without the benefits.

Neurotechnology is here to stay

Neurotechnology is here to stay. If America is not one of the leaders, the thought leaders, in neuroethics and neurotechnology, will it not become one of its victims?

On the record: other places have already moved. In 2021 Chile became the first country to protect mental integrity in its constitution. In the United States, Colorado, California and Montana have written neural data into their privacy laws (see Why did legislatures write laws for neural data?).

It only works if it is made known

But it only works if the law enforcement community makes the government cloud system known. A crime-preventing layer of transparency does not exist yet. It could exist the minute the information is shared. Would people still even think about breaking the law if they had this explanation?

In the author's view, it would be far better to face the blowback from sharing that information, and to give people options, to consent or not to consent, than to face the blowback from protests and rioting driven by harassment on the neurotech bullhorn, where statements suggesting beheadings have gone on for over a year.

If anyone tries to get you to open your door or come outside, do not go. In an emergency, call 911. If you are struggling, call or text 988.

Topics: Proposed solutions · Speculation · Technology · Surveillance & memory access · Law enforcement & government