Regulating neural data processing in the age of BCIs: Ethical concerns and legal approaches

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have seen increasingly fast growth under the help from AI, algorithms, and cloud computing. While providing great benefits for both medical and educational purposes, BCIs involve processing of neural data which are uniquely sensitive due to their most intimate nature, posing unique risks and ethical concerns especially related to privacy and safe control of our neural data. In furtherance of human right protection such as mental privacy, data laws provide more detailed and enforceable rules for processing neural data which may balance the tension between privacy protection and need of the public for wellness promotion and scientific progress through data sharing. This article notes that most of the current data laws like GDPR have not covered neural data clearly, incapable of providing full protection in response to its specialty. The new legislative reforms in the U.S. states of Colorado and California made pioneering advances to incorporate neural data into data privacy laws. Yet regulatory gaps remain as such reforms have not provided special additional rules for neural data processing. Potential problems such as static consent, vague research exceptions, and loopholes in regulating non-personal neural data need to be further addressed. We recommend relevant improved measures taken through amending data laws or making special data acts.