Consumers have grown accustomed to the prospect that their personal data, such as email addresses, social contacts, browsing history and genetic ancestry, are being collected and often resold by the apps and the digital services they use.
On Wednesday, Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed a bill that, for the first time in the United States, tries to ensure that such data remains truly private. The new law, which passed by a 61-1 vote in the Colorado House and a 34-0 vote in the Senate, expands the definition of “sensitive data” in the state’s current personal privacy law to include biological and “neural data” generated by the brain, the spinal cord and the network of nerves that relays messages throughout the body.
“We’ve never seen anything with this power before — to identify, codify people and bias against people based on their brain waves and other neural information,” said Sean Pauzauskie, a member of the board of directors of the Colorado Medical Society, who first brought the issue to Kipp’s attention. Pauzauskie was recently hired by the Neurorights Foundation as medical director.
Experts say that the neurotechnology industry is poised to expand as major tech companies like Meta, Apple and Snapchat become involved.“It’s moving quickly, but it’s about to grow exponentially,” said Nita Farahany, a professor of law and philosophy at Duke University. It found that only one company restricted access to a person’s neural data in a meaningful way and that almost two-thirds could, under certain circumstances, share data with third parties. Two companies implied that they already sold such data.
In the United States, proponents of the new Colorado law hope it will establish a precedent for other states and even create momentum for federal legislation. But the law has limitations, experts noted, and might apply only to consumer neurotechnology companies that are gathering neural data specifically to determine a person’s identity, as the new law specifies.
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