Cognitive Liberty Is Not a Ban on Technology

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It might just be a sense of political exhaustion that sits deep within me over the past few years but I kind of find it hard to think that the United States would enact vast new privacy rights especially when they might get in the way of certain companies making money. When it comes to people's brains it's a bipartisan issue that it is hard to imagine that there is any person on the left or the right who would think it's a good idea for corporations and governments to have unfettered access to what they're thinking. If we start with human rights right human rights already binds corporations we don't have to necessarily rely on our divided Congress coming together and passing comprehensive privacy legislation, he says.

Every time our brain does some thinking, there are associated physical processes. In particular, electric currents and charged particles jump between neurons, creating associated electromagnetic fields. These fields can in principle be detected with proper technology, opening the possibility for reading your mind. That technology is currently primitive, but rapidly advancing, and it's not too early to start thinking about legal and ethical consequences when governments and corporations have access to your thoughts. Nita Farahany is a law professor and bioethicist who discusses these issues in her new book, The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology.

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Nita Farahany received a J.D. and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Duke University. She is currently the Robinson O. Everett Distinguished Professor of Law & Philosophy at Duke, as well as Founding Director of the Duke Initiative for Science & Society. She has served on a number of government commissions, including the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. She is a Fellow of the American Law Institute and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and was awarded the Duke Law School Distinguished Teaching Award.

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