Yes, I find it a bit alarming as a game concept, too.
Affinity Polygraph – Google Docs
The Affinity Polygraph
There is a saying among those involved in espionage and such-like activities: “What you do not know, you cannot reveal.” This device was designed to circumvent that rule of thumb. Note ‘was:’ it is 99.99% likely that every version of it was destroyed, and thrown into a blast furnace — right alongside of the bodies of its creators, as well as any documentation whatsoever that might have been useful for reverse-engineering it. And then the more patriotic and/or idealistic of the people involved in the blast furnace thing probably murdered everybody else working on the cleanup project, dumped them into the blast furnace, and then shot themselves. It’s that kind of item.
What does it do? Well, it uses magic — excuse me; the current term of art is ‘quantum entanglement’ — to allow one person (the ‘subject’) to access the memory of somebody else (the ‘target’). It’s not really a ‘polygraph:’ that was a bit of an euphemism. You see, in order for it to work the subject has to know the target fairly well. The closer the relationship, the more information that can be accessed. It doesn’t have to be a close genetic relationship, although certainly first cousin or better would qualify, even if the subject and target have never met. Close friends will work, too. Loved ones work extremely well. Somebody’s kid is pretty much perfect; arguably even better than an identical twin. What makes all of this a problem is that the Affinity Polygraph merely gives the subject access to the target’s memories; a third party will not have automatic access to them.
And that’s why every spy agency in the world will throw a phosphorus grenade into your work cubicle if they have a credible reason to believe that you’re working on recreating the Affinity Polygraph. Not only is it a screaming security risk; it’s a torture device that is pretty explicitly designed to be used on your family. The only intelligence organizations that would be immune to it would be those completely made up of orphan sociopaths with no social life. This is considerably less common in real life than the movies would have you think…
Oh, and if your team finds this device? Blow it up. If you do it quickly enough, maybe you won’t have to run.