Colorado law bans commercial misuse of people's brain data and thoughts

[frauenfelder]

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/04/18/colorado-law-bans-commercial-misuse-of-peoples-brain-data-and-thoughts.html

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[Otherbrother]

Good. It would be a shame if commercial advertisers went too far and started messing with our brainwaves for profit.

Leela: Didn’t you have ads in the 20th century?

Fry: Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games, and on buses, and milk cartons, and T-shirts, and bananas, and written on the sky… But not in dreams.

[Scientist]

Colorado now protects data on biological, genetic, biochemical, physiological, or neural properties

(a) “Biological data”, which is data generated by the technological processing, measurement, or analysis of an individual’s biological, genetic, biochemical, physiological, or neural properties, compositions, or activities or of an individual’s body or bodily functions, which data is used or intended to be used, singly or in combination with other personal data, for identification purposes; and
(b) “Neural data”, which is information that is generated by the measurement of the activity of an individual’s central or peripheral nervous systems and that can be processed by or with the assistance of a device.

genetic data is included.
This is much better than described in the OP or NYT. EEG recordings are more akin to an out of focus low res movie of a person. It isn’t remotely as personal as genetic information. This could become a really important bill

[fuzzyfungus]

You’ll be sorry when all the consumers in less enlightened jurisdictions are enjoying hyper-personalized torment nexus experiences thanks to enhanced telemetry!

[MadLibrarian]

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

[hngr]

When I saw Apple’s new proctections against “Collect now, decrypt later,” I thought of encephalogram data.

[fiatrn]

@Scientist

(b) “Neural data”, which is information that is generated by the measurement of the activity of an individual’s central or peripheral nervous systems and that can be processed by or with the assistance of a device.

Couldn’t my Strides per Minute data from my running watch fall under this metric? It is a measurement of an activity caused by my central and peripheral nervous system, measurable by a watch…

[Scientist]

That seems a very forced reading. All behavior is generated by neural activity, but unless your step counter is measuring motor neuron activity instead of leg movement, then it wouldn’t apply.

“activity of an individual’s central or peripheral nervous system” is different than “activity caused by my central and peripheral nervous system”

[sqlrob]

@fiatrn

Couldn’t my Strides per Minute data from my running watch fall under this metric? It is a measurement of an activity caused by my central and peripheral nervous system, measurable by a watch…

Gait should absolutely be protected