Mental privacy: the new frontier of human rights

The topic of mental privacy is as interesting as it is absent within all the dominant information channels. For this reason, it seems only right to attempt a small reconstruction of the salient features: in our opinion, many of these are culpably ignored and thus some control dynamics of the elements of historical development are wisely directed in order to make the course of events simpler, as are advocated by some power groups.

There is a very important line of research that uses neurotechnology for severe forms of disability, such as Alzhemier, severe epilepsy and which, even if the long-term effects are not well known, can be allowed to the individual who is suffering of a particular syndrome, to weigh the risk / benefit ratio … While there are other cases, such as eg. the playful uses of neurotechnology, such as the case of objects (IoT) that connect to our mind and change color according to our mood, or what neurotechnology presumes to interpret as our mood; all this must be analyzed in order to understand all the possible medium and long-term consequences, how much and if they are reversible. We know that experiments have been done on the identification of some neuronal activities related to memory and the removal of memories. An example of implication, marked by the difference between the current standard and the future standard is: if a person is physically injured and becomes aware of it, in the event that the damage has been suffered through the interference of a third party, this person can make up for it. If this event were removed, clearly any mechanism of revenge would fall, damaging the principle of self-determination. But all this is the minimum…

Neuro-rights and mental privacy: the overall protection of the human mind

Mental privacy and more generally the so-called neuro-rights, as you can guess, are a set of safeguards aimed at protecting the human mind from the unaware manipulation and exploitation of men by men. Human minds as we see it, in fact, must not be used for economic or other purposes, without the explicit consent of the individual. To understand what this right consists of, it is necessary to take a small step back in recent history, in which there was well emphasized a physical integrity, a psychic integrity, and both were protected by legislation all over the world, as psychophysical integrity; with the recent neuro-technological revolutions, on the other hand, we arrive at levels that our law does not yet provide.

In this it must obviously be emphasized that this whole package of rights that we believe is very important to protect, should also defend individuals from those particular treatments induced in the professional field, under penalty of exclusion from the possibility of working. The risks are numerous. current society has brought citizens to the dawn of an epochal change that has never been agreed upon, even though it is already in the making … there is a lot of talk about digitization, and changes in this sense happen without actually having a concrete consensus: they tell us that “this is the future”, while we find ourselves in a process of becoming the fruit of the folly of a select few, to the full detriment of all the others.

We need to make a small focus: there is a digital divide, a gap, between what we should know to be aware users (hardware, software and connectivity) and what we really know. This gap is soaring, there is a deliberate ignorance in it. We add to all of this all those problems of no small importance, relating to ecology, in the sense that digital pervasiveness does not imply a gain in terms of ecological footprint, just think that the increase in connections and therefore the increase in consumption of cloud computing services, for one thing, the number of “server villages” is increasing, which in some cases are so large, so energy-consuming, that nuclear power plants are required to be kept fully functional.

This small premise is enough to ask fundamental questions about the principle of progress, always superimposed on technological advancement, as if in itself it were a positive thing; we know instead that technological advancement also has a negative impact on human and environmental health. And yet, even if we want to think there may be an overlap between technological advancement and progress, the point is that the regulations of the countries have gaps as such becoming, in particular then in the field of neurotechnologies, advances in a much faster way than in what the legislator can accept. Not to mention the national contexts elected as a laboratory and a springboard, in which the ruling class is preliminarily selected precisely to avoid a timely examination, a basic will relating to the legislative assessments of the case: the politician closes his eyes and pretends, guilty, not to know.

In all this we must consider, for example, the existence of neurotechnologies capable of identifying (or at least so declared) the so-called hidden-intentions, of delving into our unconscious, and which in theory could “know” us better than we know ourselves themselves. Impossible not to notice that we are facing an unprecedented attack on free will, on human nature itself. In this context, we can also see how the notion of health is also changing. If the notion of health changes, so does the definition of need and that of well-being. So it is important to grasp the boundary between neuro-technological intervention, which can actually be defined as necessary (severe epilepsy, Alzheimer’s, etc.) and other issues, such as viewers (Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Merged Reality and eXtended Reality) also promoted within educational institutions; in many cases these technologies are associated with biometric sensors capable of reading the student’s mood.

With quick steps towards nowhere

The right to mental privacy is no joke: the proposed invasiveness should be calibrated within the public debate, a debate that we believe should be based on correct and complete information and be cleansed of utopian and sweetened perspectives. It is a fact that peoples can no longer trust their delegates (politicians) for much simpler and more superficial dynamics. Without information and protection there can be neither delegation, representation and participation: everything falls into a black smoke of devastating magnitude. Despite this, we are in 2022, we do not see any path of this type and indeed, what is “proposed” has more the appearance of a religious faith, of ineluctable, with completely fideistic connotations: it rains frogs, it is the fact of tomorrow and you have to accept it.

What are the countries that are further ahead on this front? In a world that goes faster and faster, technology does not necessarily have to be rejected a priori and en bloc. Instead, it is important not to let the sense of humanity, identity in all its nuances be replaced, literally, by impulses devoid of any aesthetic sense, which is the instinctive basis of truth. Because, because with what is proposed by transhumanism we actually go further, especially when decisions are not fully brought to the attention of the general public in an anticipated and correct way.

But how much autonomy does a person have in deciding whether or not to increase their mental faculties in this society, and therefore to definitively take to the defense and control of their mental privacy? Society goes fast, there are human characteristics that lead to a level 6, while society requires it to reach 10. It is clear that on a game table like this, man finds himself in the position of having to go to 10 for the through ploys (drugs or precisely technological appendages). How much autonomy can there be on the part of man in accepting, in deciding not to use these technological devices? What is the gap, the rift created in society?

These are fundamental arguments, because even if we want to maintain a highly liberal perspective – we ourselves have grown up with imaginary concepts, even science fiction – the point is to understand, in time, what is the reasonable limit of this human-machine convergence. One of the highly underestimated points within the debate is exactly: is there the possibility for those who want to neuro-empower themselves to the maximum, to do it in complete autonomy, as individuals? Why should an entire society turn completely and unambiguously in this direction? It is no coincidence that research groups, such as the Neuro Technology Center, were born among the main promoters of a battery of five neuro rights.

So basically

• Right to personal identity
• Right to free will
• Right to mental privacy
• Right to protection from algorithmic bias
• Equal right to the accessibility of neuro-enhancement

The last one listed here represents the decisive Trojan horse: why not establish the right not to be neuro-enhanced? These researchers motivate this neuro-law with the fact that one day, neuro-technologies capable of eg. to enhance concentration skills, memory skills and so on, only those who have the money to afford them would have the opportunity to compete unfairly on the job market, making it difficult for those who are not neuropotentiated to find employment.

This scenario deserves a little study. When we think of human rights, we think of the convergence on those minimum essential values on which we should all agree: the right to a dignified life, the right not to be tortured, the right to speech and free thought and many other rights, all more or less containable but always limited for a short time, providing for their reversibility. By inserting the right to neuropotentiation into basic human rights, a goal these Columbia University scholars are working on, one wonders if we are talking about a solution that makes neuropotentification as comparable and desirable as staying alive, accessing the drinking water, breathing healthy air? Let’s talk about this? Clearly, a full public discussion is needed.

Then there are other scholars and opinion leaders who, rather than trying to understand this series of human rights in the formula previously expressed, prefer to renounce it and strengthen the regulations, updating them with sector integration, through a mere direct legislative activity. But also, and perhaps worse, in this context, the missing factor always remains the citizen; in fact, we proceed for emergencies, and this is extremely dangerous. If we wanted to regulate the journey to Mars, we could happily wait for the moment in which such journeys, tested in the field and evaluated, were really available; for the neuro-rights the discourse changes radically. If we wait to regulate the neuro-rights until the moment in which the problem is posed in a concrete way, it could already be too late, since we are not able to measure the invasiveness, the pervasiveness and the irreversibility, not only of the correct ones uses, but also of all possible abuses.

One would think that in reality we are already in full emergency. The problem is that, as always, there are so many flue bars, so much noise, for example. through fascinating and hyper-technological gadgets, fooling public opinion, just like with Hollywood special effects. In parallel to the fun, the citizen is also stunned with emergency management, notwithstanding any right and regulation. There is an emergency, there is fun, why think of all the implications?

The point therefore is to answer the mother question: is there really a political will to inform citizens?