Creepy… Feds Invent App That Can Predict the ‘Psychological Status’ of Smartphone Users

by Terresa Monroe-Hamilton | September 26, 2015 10:35 am

Minority Report much?[1] Yeah, this isn’t creepy at all. The Feds have invented an app that can predict your ‘psychological status’ via your smartphone. It’s primarily being used on addicts right now. They answer a series of questions throughout the day and if those answers aren’t up to snuff… well, there just might be an intervention and whatever that entails. The Feds want to take this mainstream to everyone. I don’t know about you, but I’m not answering questions on my phone from the Feds or anyone else. And what’s to stop people from lying? What exactly is meant by an ‘intervention?’ Talk about intrusive and big brotherish. I could see the Feds forcing phone companies to include the app already pre-loaded on phones as well. It’s for the greater good and all that – not on my phone you don’t.

[2]

From The Washington Free Beacon:

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have developed a system that can predict the “psychological status” of users with smartphones and hope to private companies to bring the invention to the market.

The technology appeared on a list of NIH inventions published in the Federal Register that are now available to be licensed by private companies. The government allows companies to license inventions resulting from federal research in order to expedite their arrival on the marketplace.

The system uses smartphones to ask people how they are doing mentally during the day and based on the results can “deliver an automated intervention” if necessary.

“The NIH inventors have developed a mobile health technology to monitor and predict a user’s psychological status and to deliver an automated intervention when needed,” according to the notice[3]published Wednesday. “The technology uses smartphones to monitor the user’s location and ask questions about psychological status throughout the day.”

“Continuously collected ambulatory psychological data are fused with data on location and responses to questions,” the NIH said. “The mobile data are combined with geospatial risk maps to quantify exposure to risk and predict a future psychological state. The future predictions are used to warn the user when he or she is at especially high risk of experiencing a negative event that might lead to an unwanted outcome (e.g., lapse to drug use in a recovering addict).”

The NIH said the technology has potential commercial applications for “real-time behavior monitoring” and “therapeutic delivery of an intervention via a mobile device.”

Researchers developed the system from a project that tracked the mood and cravings of drug users[4]in Baltimore. The $8.9 million[5] federal study sought to develop algorithms that could[6] “automatically detect behavioral events (such as episodes of drug use or stress) without requiring self-report.”

The NIH said the app is currently being used for drug addiction interventions, but that the “inventors are also seeking to test the technology for other health applications.”

Look for this to move into healthcare, specifically Obamacare. It will be a requirement for anyone who has been treated for addiction or a mental issue. The Feds will know where a person is at all times and the questions via the phone will never end and they will get more and more personal. This could be abused in sooo many ways, I can’t count them. What’s more, I believe it is built to be abused by the Feds. Suddenly, if you are deemed a dissident or a trouble maker, you could be picked up out of the blue and locked away. If you were labeled as a conservative radical, you could be whisked off for reeducation. This is high-tech Nazism and this is Barack Obama’s and Cass Sunstein’s baby. They are big believers in mind games and control. There’s no way to accurately predict when someone is going off the rails… but there is a way to keep tabs on everyone and reach out and touch them. This is one of them.