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Personal Space InvadersThe top science-and-tech privacy threats of 2007.

By William Saletan
Posted Thursday, Dec. 27, 2007, at 12:10 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

6. Naked body scanners. In February, the U.S. government began screening airline passengers with a scanner that sees through clothing. The scanner uses low-energy X-rays to generate an image of your body outline and any items you're carrying, including liquid and plastic explosives, which evade metal detectors. This was followed in October by plans for a new scanner that does the same thing with virtually no radiation. The government insists the scans are no big deal because 1) you won't be scanned unless you're selected for extra screening, 2) the scans don't really show your naughty bits, 3) they blur your face so nobody can link your identity to the image, 4) the viewing machine is separated from the screening area, so the viewing officer can't see who you are, and 5) a virtual search is less invasive than the current alternative: a manual pat-down. Human Nature's advice: Let them see you naked, as long as they can't see your face. (Related: The bomb-hiding arms race between terrorists and airport screeners.)

7. Phone-surveillance ads. If you thought terrorist-hunters were the people most interested in your phone conversations, think again. A company has begun tailoring ads to monitored phone calls. The offer: Advertisers subsidize your (Internet-based) calls by paying for ads on your computer screen during the conversation. The catch: The ads you get are determined by voice-recognition software that monitors your conversation and shows you products related to it. The company argues that 1) the software ignores naughty words, 2) it doesn't keep records of what you said, and 3) it's no different from Google's practice of scanning your e-mail box and tailoring ads to the topics it finds there. Civil libertarians worry that tech-industry intrusions have become so common that we've lost our expectation of privacy. Businesses agree—and cite that as a reason to plow ahead.

8. Human chip implants. Radio-frequency identification chips were initially implanted in consumer goods and animals for commercial tracking. Now they're coming to humans. The FDA has approved a chip for people to encode your medical history so doctors can call it up if you can't speak. A company has required some of its workers to accept chip implants. Several Mexican officials were chip-implanted for access to restricted premises. In China, the government is requiring chip-implanted identity cards that show your religion and "reproductive history" (to facilitate enforcement of the country's one-child policy). All told, at least 2,000 people have been implanted. Implant proponents argue that if you let people wear the chips externally, on ID cards or badges, they can be transferred, thereby thwarting surveillance. The electronics industry is opposing further regulation of chip implants, on the grounds that "subcutaneous chips are highly useful" in people with Alzheimer's or diabetes. However, at least three states now ban obligatory implantation of chips in people.

9. Mind-reading. Scientists in Germany reported this year that they've used pattern recognition software to predict, from functional magnetic resonance imaging of people's brains, whether each person had secretly decided to add or subtract two numbers he was looking at. The computer correctly predicted the decision 71 percent of the time. The advertised application of this technology is computers that can discern and execute your will when you want them to—for example, if you're paralyzed or don't want to use a mouse. But civil libertarians worry that the next application will be mental surveillance. (Related: Welcome to the era of full-mental nudity.)

10. Manipulating sexual orientation. Research indicates that 7 percent to 10 percent of rams are gay and that brain biology is involved. The livestock industry wants to use this knowledge to identify gay or asexual rams, "thus eliminating their use for general breeding purposes." Critics worry that it will eventually be used to identify gay human fetuses, possibly leading parents to abort them or alter their orientation through hormone treatment in the womb. Some conservative Christian leaders have already endorsed the idea of fetal alteration. Subsequent research in worms and fruit flies has shown that drugs can "turn homosexual behavior on and off in a period of hours." The scientist behind the fruit-fly experiment predicts that we'll eventually learn to do the same in humans. (Related: Gay sheep and the biology of homosexuality.)

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William Saletan is Slate's national correspondent and author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War.
Illustration by Robert Neubecker.
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