EFF, Cooley Tout Montana's Privacy Firsts in Data Broker Loophole and Neural Activity
The Electronic Frontier Foundation applauded Montana for being the first state to close a “data broker loophole” for law enforcement. Separately, Cooley lawyers noted Montana's leadership role among states in crafting the country's third neural privacy law.
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Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) last week signed a bill prohibiting state and local governments from obtaining individuals’ private electronic communications and data without a search warrant (see 2505120005). Governments currently can purchase this information from data brokers.Accordingly, EFF blogged Wednesday, “Montana has done something that many states and the United States Congress have debated but failed to do: it has just enacted the first attempt to close the dreaded, invasive, unconstitutional, but easily fixed 'data broker loophole.'"
EFF continued: “In every state other than Montana, if police want to know where you have been, rather than presenting evidence and sending a warrant signed by a judge to a company like Verizon or Google to get your geolocation data for a particular set of time, they only need to buy that same data from data brokers."
Meanwhile, Montana this year followed Colorado and California in enacting a neural data privacy law -- and the red state went beyond the two blue states, Cooley lawyers blogged Tuesday.
The neural privacy bill became law May 2 after 10 days passed without Gianforte signing or vetoing it; the law takes effect Oct. 1, Cooley said. The legislature last month passed the measure, which is the first in the nation to include mental augmentation, covering devices that can influence brainwaves (see 2504030066).
“This is an important development in mental privacy because neural data can be used to derive private information about a person’s mental states, emotions and cognitive functioning, and, according to the Montana Legislature, can even be used to manipulate brain activity,” Cooley said.
The law firm added that, because of some conditions the law places on its Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) exemption, “it may surprise HIPAA-covered entities and business associates that this new Montana law not only applies to consumer neurotech, but also to neurotech used in medical settings.”
At least 15 additional mental and neural privacy bills are pending in state legislatures across the U.S., Cooley said in a separate blog post Tuesday. The bills are in Alabama, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Vermont, it said.