Clockwork Orange meets Brave New World and 1984.

[Workingman]

A new study is being passed off as "Sleep Training" by a team at Northwestern University, Chicago.

They appear to have reduced racial and sexual bias by manipulating the way our brain works when we are asleep. They claim that this is a good thing. I call it brainwashing; and dangerous.

Who decides what 'correct' thinking is? Who will be pulled in for 'Sleep training'? Will the thought police sit in on interviews?

Another Pandora's box is opened....

Meanwhile, over here, our government is introducing an all-encompassing investigatory powers bill which will include the 'snooper’s charter' and enable the tracking of everyone’s web and social media use.

The media also makes light of a study by Warwick University where crowd sizes were measured using mobile phone and twitface feed data.

The team said it could enable measurement of events such as protests.

They will also be able to know who was at such protests.

Add in ANPR cameras and CCTV and we are all covered, all the time.

There will come a time when we have to be extremely careful where we go, digitally or in reality, and watch what we do and say once we get there.

[Suff]

There will come a time when we have to be extremely careful where we go, digitally or in reality, and watch what we do and say once we get there.

It's already here. If we don't want the government to know what we are doing, we are faced with a stark choice. Take a bicycle, with a hoodie and baseball cap to cover the face, don't look up and take the battery out of your mobile phone....

Other than that, you're trackable everywhere.

Take for instance the recent Irish murder case. They found the mobile phones the guy had dumped and were able to get his movements and texts from it. The message is clear. If you want to travel anonymously, use a pre pay phone, bought on cash with a sim, bought on cash and topped up on cash and when you are finished with it, put it in a blender.....

[Workingman]

Yes, we can already be tracked, but at an anti-government protest they will not only know how many but also who is there.

The sleep thing worries me, if it ever gets used. If you get arrested, for some reason, and you fit the profile of someone who the authorities think needs to be re-educated.....

It is not beyond belief, as anyone who has been in the armed forces will know from what they were told to expect if ever taken prisoner.

[Kaz]

The brain waves in early sleep are the same as those in a hypnotic state, just FYI, so this could be effective as brainwashing Not ethical in the slightest as no decent hypnotist/therapist would hypnotise anyone without their consent

[Aggers]

It certainly looks as though Big Brother has now arrived.

The mind boggles at the possible outcome of this technology.

[Suff]

It's not so much the sleep thing which worries me. That has been known since just after WW2 (or before). It is the attitude to using it which worries me much, much, more.

Attitudes have become (as I'm fond of saying), pink frilly skirt. Now they firmly believe that to save us from "potential" danger, they can "harm" us "Just a little bit".

That road is an exceptionally dangerous one to go down. My just a little bit starts with my least wanted fingernail clippings, however someone else might deem that just short of brain damage so long as we can have a "viable life" on their scales, not ours....

Personally I'd like to put anyone who believes in behaviour modification through my own form of it. Then they wouldn't be a danger to me or anyone else. The world would be a much safer place.