California passed law on protection of brain data

Alimat Aliyeva

California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a new law aimed at protecting human brain data from potentially misuse by companies engaged in neurotechnology, Azernews reports.

A growing number of consumer technology products promise to help solve cognitive problems: applications for meditation, improving concentration and treating mental illnesses such as depression. These products track and record brain data, which encodes almost everything that happens in the head, including thoughts, feelings and intentions.

The new law, passed by the California Assembly and Senate without a vote, amends the current state law on personal data protection, known as the California Consumer Personal Data Protection Act, and includes "neural data" in the category of "confidential information." These include data generated by the user's brain activity and neural networks that reach out to the rest of the body.

"I am very glad. It is very important that we take care in advance to protect the privacy of neural data - a very important set of data that belongs to people," said Senator Josh Becker, a Democrat from California, who authored the bill.

The bill extends the same level of protection to neural data as to other data that is already considered confidential under California's Consumer Data Protection Act, such as facial images, DNA and fingerprints, known as biometric information.
Users can now request, delete, correct, and limit the amount of data that a neurotechnology company collects about them. They can also opt out of selling or transferring data.