First law protecting consumers' brainwaves signed by Colorado governor | Hacker News Reader

First law protecting consumers' brainwaves signed by Colorado governor

reuters.com

45 pointsperihelions9 comments

This is excellent news!

Copied from my bio:

While we missed the boat on internet tracking, there is still time to avoid sailing through the final frontier with neuro tracking.

Soon we will be offered the trade of our privacy for the convenience of password-free login. Next there will be a quick TSA neuro scan to board.

> Proposed neuro-rights include the right to identity, or the ability to control both one's physical and mental integrity; the right to agency, or the freedom of thought and free will to choose one's own actions; the right to mental privacy, or the ability to keep thoughts protected against disclosure; [0]

For a great breakdown on the SOTA tech, and the long term implications, please see this podcast with full written transcript.

> Sean Carroll & Nita Farahany on Ethics, Law, and Neurotechnology [1]

[0] https://www.cirsd.org/en/horizons/horizons-winter-2021-issue...

[1] https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/03/13/229-...

It's good news in the big picture, but the law is extremely limited and weak. It's better than nothing, but isn't really an adequate solution. I'm hoping that these sorts of laws get adopted by other states as well, and are made much stronger.

Agreed that it's just a stepping stone. However, it feels like for once we (regulations) are ahead of the economic inertia. If there is any chance of us not falling off of this final cliff, the laws need to start in the USA, not in the EU, for example.

We're in the neurospace and discuss privacy internally, it's great to see laws proposed to protect people.

However, when I looked to find details about the legal privacy around DNA, I see lots of stuff related to DNA in research, https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/policy-issues/Privacy#..., but what about private companies protecting the DNA they are collecting?

Why is neuro more of a focus. Shouldn't we have laws that protect all bio-data? Users provide the data for their benefit. As a company, we should be able to learn from the mass of data collected on our users to continue to benefit them, but we shouldn't (we believe) be permitted to sell that data to a 3rd party which does not benefit our users.

DNA is useful primarily for associating identities with people. Your mental data is arguably more sensitive as it contains your passwords, potentially damaging or incriminating information, etc.

For example, a judge can't necessarily convict you because your DNA was present at a crime scene, but he can absolutely convict you if your brain has recorded a memory of you committing that crime.

PK Dick's short story "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" is a great thought experiment into the validity of our memories.

I can highly recommend a read.

> Shouldn't we have laws that protect all bio-data?

Yes, we should. We should have laws that protect all personal data, biological or not, but we can't even really manage to do that (in the US). So, until/unless we get there, these sorts of patchwork laws are the best we can get.

No Datadome Javascript:

https://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?d=2571414634699&w=eRbgoSR3CB...

A few decades too late :D.

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