America’s first brain-wave privacy law goes into effect

Earlier this month, a first-of-its-kind law went into effect in Colorado that extends privacy protections to neural (brain) data. Or in more colloquial terms – the move puts its citizens’ brainwave data behind a door marked pirate private.

Why it matters: A growing number of consumer tech products capture and utilize brain activity to perform their advertised functions, such as improving sleep.

But unlike the brain implant industry (ex: Elon Musk’s Neuralink), which is subject to medical regulation, these products are playing largely outside of any regulatory purview. And privacy advocates are taking notice.

• The NeuroRights Foundation recently studied 30 companies making wearable technology capable of capturing brainwaves, and found 29 “provide no meaningful limitations to this access.”
• This means, among other things, the companies could be selling (or eventually sell) its users’ biometric/biological data to third parties without their consent, similar to DNA testing startups.

Fun (?) fact: Scientists can currently translate brain activity into words with ~40% accuracy. But data under peer review already indicates improvement up to 60+% accuracy, with many in the industry predicting 80%-90% accuracy within a few years.

This doesn’t just apply to words/text either. A preprint study published last year found that AI can take brainwaves and convert them into largely realistic images of what a person has seen.

👀 Looking ahead… Privacy advocates hope Colorado’s move could spawn new and widespread regulations applying to brain data.