Transporter tech is probably the most difficult of the Trek technologies to actually become a reality. Current thinking suggests that it may be possible. But the downside is that you'd have to destroy the object you're transporting while scanning it into the buffer and then reassembling the object at the destination using different atoms (sourced locally). The "beam" would be a digital signal sent between transmitter and receiver, not the actual atoms that made up the object. Whether living things could be transported this way is unknown. And, assuming it is possible, what comes out of the receiver is a copy of the original, not the original object/person. So do copies of people have the same legal rights as originals? And if you're of a religious persuasion, what happens to the soul during such a transfer? Since the original is killed in the process, does the soul head to the afterlife and a soulless copy step out of the receiver?