Submitted by Retroidhooman t3_z8z0ky in askscience
A common conspiracy theory you hear, particularly in the "targeted individual" community, is that military/intelligence agencies have the technology to secretly detect brain activity from a distance and extract meaningful information from it and even modify said brain activity without any conspicuous or invasive device. Basically remote mind reading and mind control.
They often cite patents such as these as proof this technology exists or has been worked on:
https://patents.google.com/patent/US3951134A/en
https://patents.google.com/patent/US6017302A/en
I was arguing with someone who believes this and it got me wondering about the technical feasibility of this concept. I don't know enough about neuroimaging and EEG to answer the question.