More states are passing laws to protect information generated by a person’s brain and nervous system as technology improves the ability to unlock the sensitive details of a person’s health, mental states, emotions, and cognitive functioning.
Colorado, California, and Montana are among the states that have recently required safeguarding brain data collected by devices outside of medical settings. That includes headphones, earbuds, and other wearable consumer products that aim to improve sleep, focus, and aging by measuring electrical activity and sending the data to an app on users’ phones.
A report by the Neurorights Foundation, an advocacy group that aims to protect people from the misuse of neurotechnology, found that 29 of 30 companies with neurotechnology products that can be purchased online have access to brain data and “provide no meaningful limitations to this access.” Almost all of them can share data with third parties.
In June, the American Medical Association called for greater regulation of neural data. In April, several Democratic members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether companies are exploiting consumers’ brain data. Juliana Gruenwald Henderson, a deputy director of the FTC’s Office of Public Affairs, said the agency had received the letter but had no additional comment.
Although current devices gather relatively basic information like sleep states, advocates for brain data protection caution that future technologies, including artificial intelligence, could extract more personal and sensitive information about people’s medical conditions or innermost thoughts.
“If you collect the data today, what can you read from it five years from now because the technology is advancing so quickly?” said Democratic state Sen. Cathy Kipp, who sponsored Colorado’s 2024 neural data protection bill when she was in the state House of Representatives.
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