FPF: States Increasingly Seek to Regulate Neural Privacy
States show growing interest in privacy laws covering neural and neurotechnology data, Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) said Tuesday. Four states have enacted laws so far: Montana, California, Connecticut, and Colorado.
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“These laws, all of which amend existing state privacy laws, signify growing lawmaker interest in regulating what’s being considered a distinct, particularly sensitive kind of data: information about people’s thoughts, feelings, and mental activity,” blogged Jameson Spivack, FPF deputy director for U.S. policy. “Created in response to the burgeoning neurotechnology industry, neural data laws in the U.S. seek to extend existing protections for the most sensitive of personal data to the newly-conceived legal category of 'neural data.'"
The emergence of AI boosted the neurotechnology industry, noted Spivack: The industry’s sudden growth raised privacy, safety and ethical concerns for policymakers.
“Proposed regulation -- both in the U.S. and globally -- varies in its approach to neural data, with some strategies creating new ‘neurorights’ or mandating entities minimize the neural data they collect or process,” said the FPF official. “In the U.S., however, laws have coalesced around an approach in which covered entities must treat neural data as ‘sensitive data’ or other data with heightened protections under existing privacy law, above and beyond the protections granted by virtue of being personal information.”
FPF issued a comparison chart of state neural privacy laws. Among other differences, each law has its own definition of neural data, “varying around elements such as the treatment of central and peripheral nervous system data, exclusions for inferred or nonneural data, and the use of neural data for identification,” said Spivack. “In finding the right balance, lawmakers should be clear about what potential uses or outcomes on which they would like to focus.”