No data mining in Colorado minds as state passes U.S.’s first brainwave privacy law

That’s because the U.S. state yesterday became the first to classify neural data as sensitive personal data, giving it protections under the Colorado Privacy Act, which came into force last year.

That means companies developing technology for reading brain activity would under certain circumstances have to get people’s consent before using the information they glean from their brainwaves—the same right people already had in the state when it comes to other biological information, like fingerprints and facial images. As with these other biometric data, the protections only apply to brain data that’s collected for identification purposes, as opposed to things like inferring emotions or seeing how the brain reacts to various stimuli.

The new law, signed yesterday by Gov. Jared Polis, is focused on consumer-level neurotech devices, as the processing of such information was already tightly controlled in the medical domain. So this isn’t really applicable to, say, Neuralink’s under-development implant-based brain-computer interface (BCI), but rather non-invasive BCIs like the hardware being sold by Emotiv or NeuroSky.

These aren’t exactly mass-market devices just yet, though companies like Meta, Apple and Snap are all working on their own entries in the field. So Colorado’s new law is pretty forward-looking, which is particularly notable in a country that’s only now getting around to maybe passing comprehensive federal privacy legislation.

Similar laws will probably be hot on its heels. Just this week, California’s Senate Judiciary Committee approved that state’s Neurorights Act. Lawmakers in Minnesota are working on their own version. And Chile has already given brain data constitutional protection, which its Supreme Court has already used to tell Emotiv to delete a citizen’s brain data.

The biggest driving force behind this push is the NeuroRights Foundation, a nonprofit that’s trying to preempt the unethical use of brain-reading technology by ensuring that heavy restrictions apply. The stakes are certainly high: The foundation’s mission talks about protecting personal identity and free will, along with privacy and fair treatment by algorithms using brain data as inputs.

“Everything that we are is within our mind,” NeuroRights Foundation cofounder Jared Genser told the New York Times yesterday. “What we think and feel, and the ability to decode that from the human brain, couldn’t be any more intrusive or personal to us.” Even though the new law doesn’t actually protect data gathered for those purposes—which is largely thanks to Big Tech lobbying—Genser said it was “a major step forward.”

I’ll be honest: I find it hard to envision a world in which consumer BCIs are commonplace, making this all feel like a very theoretical exercise. But given that neurotech is already expected to be a $15 billion market this year, with significant growth forecast for the coming years—and given the fundamental risks that are involved when machines read our thoughts—I’m glad to see legislators are getting active now.

More news below.

David Meyer

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NEWSWORTHY

TikTok bill latest. U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has unveiled a bill that would strongly encourage the Senate to approve requiring China’s ByteDance to sell TikTok or have it effectively banned in the U.S. The bill would be bundled with three others about military funding for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan, making rejection less likely. Under the new bill, ByteDance would have up to a year to find a buyer for TikTok, rather than the 180 days specified in a similar bill that the House recently passed, the Financial Times reports. In other TikTok news, the social media sensation has released its Instagram-rivalling TikTok Notes app in Canada and Australia, with a wider rollout of the photo-sharing app set to follow. Also, read this New York Times piece on the role of Republican megadonor Jeff Yass in ByteDance’s genesis.

Google job cuts. Google is letting go of some employees, though it’s not clear how many. As Reuters reports, the cost-driven layoffs are not companywide—apparently, some are in finance and real estate—and those affected can apply for other Google jobs. All this is separate from Google’s firing of 28 employees who participated in a sit-in protest against the company’s involvement in the Israeli government cloud contract known as Project Nimbus. “If you’re one of the few who are tempted to think we’re going to overlook conduct that violates our policies, think again,” Google security chief Chris Rackow warned in a memo to staffers, quoted by The Verge.

Microsoft and OpenAI. Microsoft’s $13 billion investment in OpenAI does not count as a secretive acquisition, EU competition regulators have decided, according to Reuters. That means no formal antitrust probe—although the European Commission is still looking into the wider network of partnerships between Big Tech and AI startups, to see if there’s anything untoward going on.

SIGNIFICANT FIGURES

$6.1 billion

—The amount of government support that Micron will get to make advanced memory chips in New York and Idaho, in the latest CHIPS Act subsidy deal

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Tesla asks shareholders to restore Musk’s pay package: ‘Because the Delaware court second-guessed your decision, Elon has not been paid for any of his work for Tesla for the past six years’, by Christiaan Hetzner

Netflix’s password crackdown has stirred up a wave of subscription revenue that still has a lot of room to run, by Rachyl Jones

Amazon’s co-inventor of ‘Just Walk Out’ tech—which is being removed from U.S. grocery stores—sets the record straight on the ‘overblown’ theory of its demise, by Jason Del Rey

WHO unveiled a new AI-powered chatbot to provide basic health information. The problem is it’s giving wrong medical answers, by Bloomberg

Microsoft-backed Rubrik looking to raise $713 million in latest tech IPO, by María Soledad Davila Calero

VC associates can be vital to firms and founders—when they’re empowered to be, by Allie Garfinkle

BEFORE YOU GO

Long live Atlas. As we reported yesterday, Boston Dynamics has retired its Atlas humanoid robot after an 11-year stretch of entertaining YouTube videos demonstrating the hydraulic robot’s capabilities. But now the Hyundai-owned company has unveiled a new electric robot called… Atlas. This one’s going to be a commercial product, as CEO Robert Playter explained to IEEE Spectrum in a lengthy interview. “It definitely needs to be a multi-use case robot,” he said. “I believe that because I don’t think there’s very many examples where a single repetitive task is going to warrant these complex robots.” And of course, there’s a creepy video.