New human rights laws are required to protect sensitive information in a person's mind from `unauthorised collection, storage, use or even deletion'
1. Technological advances in machines that can read our thoughts mean that the privacy of our brain is under threat.
2. Now, two biomedical scientists are calling for the creation of new human rights laws to ensure people are protected. The new laws include the right to mental privacy and the right of humans to control their own mental processes.
3. Scientists have already developed devices capable of telling whether people are politically right-wing or left-wing. In one experiment, researchers were able to read people's minds to tell with 70 per cent accuracy whether they planned to add or subtract two numbers.
4. Facebook also recently revealed it had been secretly working on technology to read people's minds so they could type by just thinking.
5. Medical researchers have also managed to connect part of a paralysed man's brain to a computer to allow him to stimulate muscles in his arm so he could move it and feed himself.
6. The scientists also stressed the "unprecedented opportunities" that would result from the distribution of cheaper and easier to use applications that would make neurotechnology* part of our everyday lives.
7. However, the academics made it clear that these devices were open to abuse on a frightening level.
8. And they warned that the techniques were so sophisticated that people's minds could be read or interfered with without their knowledge.
9. They said that illegal intrusion into a person's mind could happen not because they were persuaded to allow it, but because they weren't aware it was happening.
10. Professor Roberto Andorno, an academic at Zurich University's law school and a co-author of the paper, said that brain imaging technology had already reached a point where there had been discussion about whether it could be used in a criminal court, for example when assessing the risk of a criminal re-offending.
11. He also said that consumer companies were using brain imaging for `neuromarketing' to understand consumer behaviour and to achieve desired responses from customers.
12. He added that there were also tools such as `brain decoders' which can turn brain imaging data into images, text or sound.
13. His colleague Marcello Ienca, of the Institute for Biomedical Ethics at Basel University, said: "The mind is considered to be the last refuge of personal freedom and self-determination, but advances in neural engineering, brain imaging and neurotechnology put the freedom of the mind at risk."
14. He admitted such advances might sound like something out of the world of science fiction.
15. But he added: "Neurotechnology featured in famous stories has in some cases already become a reality, while others are inching ever closer, or exist as military and commercial prototypes."
16. "We need to be prepared to deal with the impact these technologies will have on our personal freedom."
Adapted from the Independent by Ian Johnston, 26th of April 2017
* neurotechnology = technology used to interact
with the brain and nervous system.