Written by Sara Lucille Carbonneau and originally published at www.extendedmind.io.
Image courtesy of National Cancer Institute via Unsplash
Neurotechnologies are being designed for everything from the treatment of neurological diseases to mental augmentation. They could help people with Alzheimers and Schizophrenia, allow us to communicate telepathically, or even provide access to the internet through the brain¹. While these technologies sound like the dreams of science fiction, they are currently being researched and modeled.
While the potential benefits of these technologies offer exciting advancements, they also pose a threat to individual privacy. Without proper protection, these technologies might allow companies access to our brain signals, giving them insights into our thoughts and feelings; and perhaps even the ability to direct our free will through brain stimulation.
(For background on the potential for attitudinal and behavioral manipulation in XR, check out his 2021 paper from Mel Slate on: Beyond Speculation About the Ethics of Virtual Reality: The Need for Empirical Research²).
There are currently no international standards for what defines neuro-rights or agreed upon strategies to protect them. However, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has created recommendations for the responsible innovation of neurotechnology. These recommendations center around safety, inclusivity, oversight, and the safeguarding of personal brain data in the development of neurotechnologies⁷.
And in an article by neuroscientist Rafael Yuste, and attorneys Jared Genser, and Stephanie Herrmann, they include a human rights framework aimed at protecting the brain created by researchers and bioethicists¹. The framework outlines five essential rights:
“(1) the right to identity, or the ability to control both one’s physical and mental integrity;(2) the right to agency, or the freedom of thought and free will to choose one’s own actions;
(3) the right to mental privacy, or the ability to keep thoughts protected against disclosure;
(4) the right to fair access to mental augmentation, or the ability to ensure that the benefits of improvements to sensory and mental capacity through neurotechnology are distributed justly in the population;
(5) the right to protection from algorithmic bias, or the ability to ensure that technologies do not insert prejudices¹”
As neuro-rights are an international human rights issue, the authors want the UN to lead the charge and ensure protection is applied globally. While no action has yet been taken on a global scale, this month Chile became the first country to pass a neuro-rights law. The bill, which is expected to be signed into law by the president soon, is the first to define personal identity and mental privacy as a right and to protect them from invasion and discrimination.
This comes on the heels of Chile’s constitutional reform earlier this year, which included neuro-rights to their Constitution, stating that “‘physical and psychological integrity’ of the citizen” should be preserved so that “‘no authority or individual’ can, through new technologies on the human brain, ‘increase, decrease or disrupt that individual integrity without the proper consent’.⁶”
And because of neural data’s intimate relationship with identity, the recent bill also proposes to treat neural data as organic tissue. This would prohibit “Chileans from being compelled to give up brain data” and would flip a typical privacy default , meaning that companies invite users to opt-in for neural data collection rather than opt-out³. And it would render the buying and selling of neuro-data illegal.
Jeremy Greenberg, policy counsel of The Future of Privacy Forum, is tracking the progression of the bill in Chile and notes:
“Legislation specifically targeting neurorights indicates that some policymakers are viewing the mental privacy risks associated with neurotechnology as unique, and potentially heightened, compared to other privacy concerns. Other recent policy efforts, such as the Spanish government calling for individual rights involving neurotechnologies in its Digital Rights Charter, signal that conversations between regulators around neurorights and mental privacy are happening globally.”
Given the number of XR devices currently under development for the wide variety of use cases (healthcare, enterprise, education and more), and the potential for neuro data to be collected, this will be an interesting topic to follow.
Resources to learn more:
- On the neuro-rights human rights initiative, Kent Bye of the Voice of VR podcast⁴ interviews Rafael Yuste .
- To read more on the type of computer profiles XR is capable of creating based on neuro-data or biometric data broadly, read Brittan Heller’s work on biometric psychography⁵. (For a TL;DR of Brittan Heller’s paper, check out this blog from The Extended Mind).
- Learn more about the Spanish Digital Rights Charter:
- The Government adopts the Digital Rights Charter to articulate a reference framework to guarantee citizens’ rights in the new digital age (La Moncloa)
- Carta Derechos Digitales (La Moncloa) (in Spanish — the neurorights section is on p. 26)
References
1: Yuste, R., Genser, J., & Herrmann, S. (n.d.). It’s Time for Neuro — Rights. CIRSD. https://www.cirsd.org/en/horizons/horizons-winter-2021-issue-no-18/its-time-for-neuro--rights?__cf_chl_managed_tk__=pmd_48O1idwB05yBNeixTTLv4LHPQBrcupqg.gLWKnsKxlo-1634653532-0-gqNtZGzNAzujcnBszRRR
2: Slater, M. (2021). Beyond Speculation About the Ethics of Virtual Reality: The Need for Empirical Results. Frontiers in Virtual Reality, 81. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frvir.2021.687609
3: Paz, A. W. (2021, July 7). We need to regulate mind-reading tech before it exists. Rest of World. https://restofworld.org/2021/chile-neuro-rights/
4: Bye, K., & Yuste, R. (2021, June 4). #994: Neuro-Rights Initiative: A Human Rights Approach to Preserving Mental Privacy with Rafael Yuste | Voices of VR Podcast. Voices of VR Podcast. https://voicesofvr.com/994-neuro-rights-initiative-a-human-rights-approach-to-preserving-mental-privacy-with-rafael-yuste/
5: Brittan Heller, Watching Androids Dream of Electric Sheep: Immersive Technology, Biometric Psychography, and the Law, 23 Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law 1 (2021)
6: T. (2021, April 29). Chile wants to include “neuro-rights” or rights of the brain in its Constitution. The Canadian. https://thecanadian.news/2021/04/29/chile-wants-to-include-neuro-rights-or-rights-of-the-brain-in-its-constitution/
7: OECD. (2019, December 11). OECD Legal Instruments: Recommendation of the Council on Responsible Innovation in Neurotechnology. https://legalinstruments.oecd.org/en/instruments/OECD-LEGAL-0457
