The scenarios sound like science fiction: police officers accessing data contained in suspects' brains to forcibly extract information or predict whether offenders could plan future crimes.
But the Secretary-General of the United Nations warned on Thursday (8), for the first time, that neurotechnologies are advancing so quickly that governments' ability to access and manipulate people's brains could one day pose a threat to fundamental human rights.
The misuse of future technologies, warned Secretary-General António Guterres, could lead to arbitrary detentions, altered people's mental states and violations of privacy.
“Neurotechnology, including new and emerging forms, raises profound human rights challenges when applied to the administration of justice,” wrote the Secretary-General. "Its expansion beyond clinical settings into investigative, judicial and correctional contexts introduces significant risks as well as potential benefits."
To address these threats, the report presents a series of recommendations, including establishing regulations compatible with international law, recognizing thoughts as "highly sensitive personal data" and requiring explicit consent for the use of neurotechnology in the criminal justice system.
Human rights officials said the document represents an important step in raising global awareness of the issue and could help countries draft laws designed to prevent the abusive use of this technology.
"This offers States the opportunity to establish clear, human rights-based rules to regulate the use of neurotechnology before it becomes routine in investigations, courts and prisons," said Jeremy Laurence, spokesperson for the UN Human Rights Office.
According to some human rights activists, the report expands the traditional understanding of freedom of thought, which has largely focused on freedom of expression, to include the right to keep one's most intimate ideas private.
"It's no longer just about the classical ways in which freedom of thought is evoked," said Marcello Ienca, professor of ethics and neuroscience at the Technical University of Munich.
The UN's interest comes amid a growing global mobilization to protect brain data. In 2012, Chile enshrined protections for brain activity in its Constitution. And several US states, including California, Colorado and Montana, have passed neural data protection laws. Similar measures have been proposed in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico.
But while some countries work to protect their citizens' neural data, others are already trying to access it.
In India, police have been using a technology called Brain Electrical Oscillation Signature — or BEOS, for two decades — to determine whether a suspect may have participated in a crime.
The scientific basis for this technology, which reads brain waves, is scant. BEOS test results are not admissible as evidence in Indian courts, but the technology has been used in hundreds of high-profile cases, including homicides, rapes and terrorism.
BEOS has not been validated by the international scientific community. And a committee set up by the Indian government to evaluate it concluded in 2008 that the technology was "suboptimal."
Not all neurotechnologies are being developed as instruments of the State. Many have reached the consumer market in the form of wearable devices focused on health and wellness, capable of helping users monitor stress, sleep and concentration.
But these devices too, experts warned, are subject to few regulations.
The Neurorights Foundation analyzed the privacy policies of 30 consumer-facing neurotechnology companies in 2024 and found that most did not place limits on how they used customers' brain data. More than half of these companies, according to the foundation, explicitly allowed user data to be shared with third parties.
Neurotechnologies have also become powerful clinical resources for patients who have suffered severe brain or spinal cord injuries. Brain-computer interfaces have helped paralyzed patients write sentences by imagining the act of writing by hand, as well as move robotic limbs and play online chess with just their thoughts.
