California Passes Law To Protect Consumer 'Brain Data' (govtech.com) 6
On September 28, California amended the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 to recognize the importance of mental privacy. "The law marks the second such legal protection for data produced from invasive neurotechnology, following Colorado, which incorporated neural data into its state data privacy statute, the Colorado Privacy Act (CPA) in April," notes Law.com. GovTech reports: The new bill amends the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, which grants consumers rights over personal information that is collected by businesses. The term "personal information" already included biometric data (such as your face, voice, or fingerprints). Now it also explicitly includes neural data. The bill defines neural data as "information that is generated by measuring the activity of a consumer's central or peripheral nervous system, and that is not inferred from nonneural information." In other words, data collected from a person's brain or nerves.
The law prevents companies from selling or sharing a person's data and requires them to make efforts to deidentify the data. It also gives consumers the right to know what information is collected and the right to delete it. "This new law in California will make the lives of consumers safer while sending a clear signal to the fast-growing neurotechnology industry there are high expectations that companies will provide robust protections for mental privacy of consumers," Jared Genser, general counsel to the Neurorights Foundation, which cosponsored the bill, said in a statement. "That said, there is much more work ahead."
The law prevents companies from selling or sharing a person's data and requires them to make efforts to deidentify the data. It also gives consumers the right to know what information is collected and the right to delete it. "This new law in California will make the lives of consumers safer while sending a clear signal to the fast-growing neurotechnology industry there are high expectations that companies will provide robust protections for mental privacy of consumers," Jared Genser, general counsel to the Neurorights Foundation, which cosponsored the bill, said in a statement. "That said, there is much more work ahead."
Finally! (Score:1)
At least now I can tell the aliens that it's illegal for them to spy on my thoughts.
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, Republicans are banning people from wearing masks [justia.com] to protect themselves and others. Wearing a mask would be considered part of a costume so you're not allowed to wear it.
Won't matter. (Score:2)
Whether it's through a data breach, an internal leak, a partner with an NDA who ignores their agreement... that data will escape. A medical firm going bankrupt has enough chaos in which to "lose" the information.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be such rules in place. But they're far more likely to be used as punishment than prevention. Consider it "in the wild" from the start.
Brain data (Score:1)
MAGA folks are safe.
Neural activity is not deidentifiable (Score:1)
This basically removes the ability of scientists from being able to do any research. You could make a case for the actual brain imaging (eg using defacing/deskulling techniques, which are problematic in itself) but neural activity is as unique as a fingerprint, any sort of brain injury affects regions too. On the other hand it is not identifiable either as we currently do not have the technology to do things like functional MRI at scale.