“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”
—George Orwell, “1984″
If science fiction has taught us anything, it is that the danger of mind reading is not the technology itself, but the power that comes with the control of information. George Orwell’s “1984” illustrates an unsettling image of how the line between thought and expression can blur in a world of constant surveillance.
Today, that boundary is no longer simply threatened, but beginning to dissolve entirely. In an era where technology is advancing at an exponential rate, Orwell’s narrative becomes more of a reality with every passing day. His concept of the “thought police” serves as a chilling reminder of the dangers that come when institutions gain the power to monitor and control an individual’s innermost sentiments.
What once belonged to dystopian fiction has now insidiously permeated the marketplace, hiding behind the façade of an innocuous new toy.
A Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) is a wearable or implanted device that processes brain signals and translates them into computer commands. BCIs include a range of devices, from unassuming headphones to a chip in the brain used to mitigate the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. Currently, the surgically implanted versions of these machines are used in medical contexts and are therefore covered by HIPAA, whereas wearable models fall short of these data protections.
BCI manufacturers and companies can pull sensitive information from raw brain activity tracked and recorded by these devices, decoding emotional states, user intention, and reconstruct images. These intricate systems not only monitor what you choose to share, but read the signals emitted from your brain, sometimes before you even know what you’re thinking. This changes everything, as personal data no longer solely pertains to an action, or lack thereof, executed on a platform.
Alarmingly, no overt action is needed for a company to obtain your unique biological data. As of 2024, the NeuroRights Foundation reviewed the privacy policies of 30 BCI companies with products on the consumer market. They identified 29 out of the 30 neurotechnology businesses assessed “have access to the consumer’s neural data and provide no meaningful limitations to this access.”
The rise of neurotechnology exposes precarious gaps in Texas’ existing data privacy policies, leaving citizens vulnerable to the imminent dangers of these devices. Preexisting frameworks, such as Texas Data Privacy and Security Act (TDPSA), are centered around standard digital information, not neural activity, leaving your personal, biological data at risk.
The traditional data breaches we’ve grown accustomed to, such as Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, exposed information voluntarily shared by the user like full names, email addresses, and phone numbers. This served as a widespread wake-up call that these platforms are not harmless, but rather a tool of surveillance designed to monetize our actions. However, with the assimilation of BCI technology into the public sphere, the threat of data breaches becomes far more invasive. Data gained from BCIs, called neurodata, is unconsciously provided by its user; every flicker of emotion, every impulsive decision, even the pause that comes before a lie can be detected and logged.
Without clearly defined policy in this area, our brains become a game of cognitive monopoly, where tech companies land on free parking.
The right to think freely has long been assumed—but never litigated. The First Amendment ensures your freedom to express your thoughts, but what happens when technology can decode your thoughts before they are ever expressed? BCI technology threatens to collapse the distinction between thoughts and speech, taking advantage of the public’s ignorance/naivety. Leaving our minds unguarded by policy means treating neural data as any other data point, instead of as an extension of ourselves.
Whereas in Orwell’s vision of the future, “Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull,” our future denies us of even that most basic promise.
