The Solomon Scandals is a time-warpy kind of novel. Most of the plot unfolds in Washington, D.C., in the 1970s, but the foreword and afterword are of late-21st century vintage.

“Reporting” Chips turn out to be a journalistic hazard in this era of cyborgs. Without court orders, FBI-style agencies can have chips implanted inside the brains of uppity reporters—who face severe penalties if they reveal the existence of the snoop chips. So much for source confidentiality. In effect, the chips render the reporters useless as exposers of corruption.

So how close are we to mind-reading? A lot nearer than you’d think, according to a new 60 Minutes segment seen in part in this video. Perhaps we’ll see reliable and detailed reading of minds well before the feds can wire into cyborg chips. Or how about mind-reading from afar? Maybe the tin-foil hat crowd is on to something.

Related: Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon University.