Those gadgets'll get nuthin' from me.
From CNBC, August 17:
- Elon Musk’s Neuralink is the most famous example of how technology is being embedded with the human mind, but many consumer tech products not covered by medical regulation are also capturing brain waves, and the biggest tech companies in the market including Apple have filed patents for brain-sensing applications.
- Colorado recently became the first state in the U.S. to pass a privacy act that includes neural data among “sensitive data” that is protected by law.
- A wave of similar privacy bills may be needed as the number consumer tech products focused on brain activity, from sleep to focus and meditation, expand exponentially, with few safeguards in place.
The question “What is a thought?” is no longer strictly a philosophical one. Like anything else measurable, our thoughts are subject to increasingly technical answers, with data captured by tracking brainwaves. That breakthrough also means the data is commodifiable, and captured brain data is already being bought and sold by companies in the wearable consumer technologies space, with few protections in place for users.
In response, Colorado recently passed a first-in-the-nation privacy act aimed at protecting these rights. The act falls under the existing “Colorado Consumer Protection Act,” which aims to protect “the privacy of individuals’ personal data by establishing certain requirements for entities that process personal data [and] includes additional protections for sensitive data.”
The key language in the Colorado act is the expansion of the term “sensitive data” to include “biological data” — inclusive of numerous biological, genetic, biochemical, physiological, and neural properties.
Elon Musk’s Neuralink is the most famous example of how technology is being embedded with the human mind, though it isn’t alone in the space, with Paradromics emerging as a close competitor, alongside devices that have returned speech to stroke victims and helped amputees move prosthetic limbs with their minds. All of these products are medical devices that require implantation, and are protected under HIPAA’s strict privacy requirements. The Colorado law is focused on the rapidly growing consumer technology sphere and devices that don’t require medical procedures, have no analogous protections, and can be bought and used without medical oversight of any kind.
There are dozens of companies making products that are wearable technologies capturing brain waves (aka neura data). On Amazon alone, there are pages of products, from sleep masks designed to optimize deep sleep or promote lucid dreaming, to headbands promising to promote focus....
....MUCH MORE
