Consumer brain wave headsets threaten privacy (science.org)

99 pointsby maxall414 hours ago69 comments

nashashmi 4 hours ago

Blame the lawyers who wrote infinitely extensive “complete and comprehensive” permission agreements for the end user. Then blame the unethical ceos and shareholder-driven companies for exploiting such permissions.

Now we are in a situation that anyone can do anything with any data. And this was not what we were thinking. There needs to be a legal reset.

A new judicial ruling that forbids such permissions as its terms of service. That calls such permissions exploitation. That labels them as a force of evil (like the patents meant to favor edison’s movie cartels) and invalidates all powers they hold. And a judicial ruling that unilaterally limits all prior TOS agreements to be for just specific existing uses. And all future TOS’s to be opt-in, versus being forced to accept or withhold service.

If I subscribe to Google, and Google changes its TOS, why the hell should I accept a new TOS just to get access to my data? Big large govt agencies negotiate TOS’s and hold the companies to those outdated TOS’s so the companies understand well that they cant just unilaterally change it and must maintain older processes that respect legacy TOS’s.

Scaled 4 hours ago

Contract law fundamentally assumes two parties of equivalent bargaining strength. The system was intended for large, powerful entities dealing with one another hundreds of years ago and wasn't designed for how it's used often used today where one party has zero bargaining strength.

jareklupinski 3 hours ago

> wasn't designed for how it's used often used today where one party has zero bargaining strength.

so any party that binds another in such an agreement is knowingly acting in bad faith

voakbasda 37 minutes ago

Yes, unquestionably. The question is not whether it is happening; the real issue is what does anyone think we can we do about it.

The bigger problem is that’s also exactly how the government works: I never opted into any of the laws to which I am subjected, and I have zero bargaining power. The entire premise of our civilization is effectively based on such bad faith. Good faith would be more akin to referendums rhat give the public the chance to affirm or strike any or all existing laws on the books.

Which is why I now endorse violent revolution. Reform is not a realistic option. Those in power demonstrate every single day the kind of bad faith that deserves a firing squad. I would rather endure the terror of anarchy than suffer this tyranny for much longer. Things are not going to get better any other way.

argentinian 30 minutes ago

Do you believe that after a revolution a new and more benign organization would arise? Wouldn't it be a democracy? What could type of organization could it be? Anarchies with millions of members don't exist, some kind of organization arises with systems at that scale.

If people don't analyze in detail what the politicians that they vote plan to do, why would they act wisely at referendums? Depending on how a certain idea is framed by the media, the same idea may be seen as good or bad. And it's not possible to make a referendum for every one of the thousands of laws we have. The democracy with representatives was created in part because of practical reasons regarding the labor of studying the laws.

voakbasda 21 minutes ago

The biggest change that needs to happen is the dissolution of nation states. All of them. They are top-down authoritarian regimes (every last one of them, don’t pretend otherwise) and have no place in the modern world that espouses democratic ideals.

Instead, I want to see local governments become the first-class line of order. County/provincial/regional government would be nothing more than an emergent property of local governments banding together, pooling resources from the bottom up. The current top-down model of federal taxation and trickle-down funding is completely backwards.

Anarchy is a necessary part of the transition, because the existing power structures or not going to peaceably dismantle themselves and transfer power to “lesser” powers that previously would have been groveling at their feet for scraps.

jareklupinski 19 minutes ago

> Anarchy is a necessary part of the transition

perhaps a rebranding is necessary

how about... Freedom Prime. Super Freedom. Hyperliberty

argentinian 10 minutes ago

You believe that from anarchy, benign local governments would arise. And that a benign emerging regional government would emerge from that.

I may be mistaken, but I don't see any reason for that situation to happen. We humans started with groups, then they organized as tribes, then as regional governments, and then national states. And the bigger entities had power to assimilate either by force or by diplomacy smaller entities. Why would it occur differently this time?

jareklupinski 24 minutes ago

> I never opted into any of the laws to which I am subjected, and I have zero bargaining power.

the balance seemed to lie with the body of the citizen of the state: if someone didnt agree with their leader/laws, they simply laid down their arms when a benevolent invader / reformer arrives

it doesn't have to be violent

voakbasda 19 minutes ago

It will be violent, because that is how the existing powers maintain control. They will not relinquish it peacefully.

jareklupinski 16 minutes ago

> because that is how the existing powers maintain contro

if that's how existing powers maintain control, then the new status quo _cannot_ be violent

otherwise it would just be another participant in the existing power struggle

it seems impossible because it hasn't happened, but that doesnt mean it cant necessarily. we discover new things about our selves every day :)

odyssey7 33 minutes ago

A contract is unenforceable if presented on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.

I learned something like this in business school. It didn’t seem like it corresponded to the world I knew and if it was ever true it doesn’t seem to be so today.

oceanplexian 26 minutes ago

>Contract law fundamentally assumes two parties of equivalent bargaining strength.

What are you even talking about? Contract law assumes no such thing and unequal parties have been signing contracts for literally hundreds of years.

frereubu 5 hours ago

This area of ethics should be considered seriously, but in this specific instance these consumer-level headsets tell you very little about anything. I'm constantly frustrated by the amount of coverage these get when, if you've ever studied any kind of neuroscience, you realise quite how vague the data is, and how much over-interpretation goes on in the advertising for these products.

It's a shame this book by my MSc dissertation supervisor isn't coming out until next June, because I'm pretty sure there's a bunch of stuff in there about this kind of neurobollocks: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/479845/neurobollocks-by-devl...

gabriel666smith 3 hours ago

With your perspective, I'd be really interested in knowing what you would currently guess the chance that their purported dataset (of 50k hours of EEG data) not ultimately being useful for training a ML model with some kind of genuine utility is.

Do you think that this data is so vague that it is 100% unlikely to provide utility? 99.9%?

frereubu an hour ago

I'm not an expert by any means - you'd need Joe (my supervisor) for that! - but here's a relatively common example that he pointed at: https://www.acnlabs.co.uk/blog/neuro-bollocks-alert-dopamine...

"Muscle movements on the head (like moving your eyes, smiling, gurning, etc) produce electrical noise that is far stronger than the brain signals EEG tries to measure. You cannot put a helmet over an EEG kit and then bang your head around in a jet or race car and get anything but pure noise."

That's a crude example, but it's the kind of over-interpretation that's really common with these things.

And that's using a proper EEG skullcap, not these ridiculously simple things that you slip over your head without any conduction gel etc. In my non-expert opinion a large dataset of this kind of vague data would just lead to mostly mush because the signals that come from these things are so rubbish. But it won't stop people who want to make money from it that there are clear signals there, like the use of Myers-Briggs, astrology etc.

The only current technology that actively concerns me is direct neural implantation. You can get really clean, clear signals from that depending on where you hook into. Anything else feels like it's a long way away from anything which would actively harm privacy, although clearly people have a vested interest in making that work and we shouldn't be complacent.

999900000999 42 minutes ago

Can someone manipulate their own brain wave patterns.

As is I can imagine this being used to interrogate people. Of course it doesn’t matter if the EEG produces any real data.

Billy only needs to think LEOs can read his mind.

frereubu 30 minutes ago

> Can someone manipulate their own brain wave patterns.

Yes, absolutely.

> As is I can imagine this being used to interrogate people. Of course it doesn’t matter if the EEG produces any real data.

Indeed - "lie detectors" are a good analogy.

ArcHound 3 hours ago

While you're more knowledgeable than me on this, let me tell you that these giants are now able to use the tiniest hints to create and enhance existing profiles. So no, we should stop this ASAP.

frereubu an hour ago

It's probably more efficient in legal terms to make it a blanket ban, so I agree with you on that front, but honestly, with this kind of data the risk is more about people selling snake oil than any real privacy concerns. Or I suppose something like this ending up on a credit report where the data is worse than useless because it's utterly meaningless! Noise in, noise out...

plastic-enjoyer 2 hours ago

> I'm constantly frustrated by the amount of coverage these get when, if you've ever studied any kind of neuroscience, you realise quite how vague the data is, and how much over-interpretation goes on in the advertising for these products.

I blame engineers here. I have a neuroscience background myself and know what you're talking about. Engineers, in my experience, can't really grasp the nature of neural signals and do seem to over-interpret them quite alot or just misuse them.

frereubu 43 minutes ago

I did consider doing a PhD on imaging methodology because I was so angry about its misuse, but I in the end I realised I didn't want to be angry the whole time! Perhaps if I'd been able to do an elective in meditation...

leafingensemble 2 hours ago

Excellent, since the data says so little, the company will not be needing it.

Revealed preference.

totetsu 2 hours ago

I thought the level of resolution of these things is comparable to .. a few tsunami warning buoys in an ocean. It's not going to be logging anyones inner monolouge to a text file anytime soon. and also there is a real normalisation challenge, as the signals vary so much form one perosn to the next.

>But although EEG might not read people’s thoughts, “it would be equally misleading to suggest that it cannot reveal meaningful information about their cognitive states,” says Pietro Aricò, professor of bioengineering at the Sapienza University of Rome. And as consumer EEG devices begin to incorporate AI and are able to conduct increasingly sophisticated analyses, data collected on the outer surface of the brain could be enough to decode intimate features of our mental lives, including our thoughts, emotions, and personality, says Rafael Yuste, co-founder of the Neurorights Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting people’s brain data rights.

I wonder what these features are.

bawana 4 hours ago

It seeems like every new appliance, tool, fixture or almost anything has become a device to gather data. This will change how we divide society into the 'haves' and the 'have-nots'. When AI and robotics displace most people from gainful employment, the only thing left we will have to trade for money is ourselves, our thoughts and our bodies.

The only way to stop this debasement of humanity is to destroy the tools that store this data. Time for everyone to start carrying portable emp devices and performing 'random acts of privacy preservation'.

cwmoore 3 hours ago

Those in the US might recall “one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”.

Then in the past couple decades—a generation—we have put our faith into new ways of communicating, with many convenient individual decisions that undermine our traditional social context, eg. giving away our contacts, recording everywhere, and reporting our locations, with simple personal benefits and large effects (multitrillion dollar effects are substantial). Our institutional trust is plainly naive to graph theory.

Unsure how to curve fit the two.

gabriel666smith 7 hours ago

Huh, interesting. The company has amassed 50k hours of training data - that’s a very large dataset.

A side-project of mine recently has been building out this stack:

- Recording audio in proximity to me, and transcribing it

- Grabbing EEG data from cheap sensors on my own head

- Mapping it against the transcription

With a view to eventually train transformer models which might reliably understand, from EEG signals, what words I am thinking. The existing studies on this method don’t seem to show any drop off in efficacy at mind-reading (lol) as the dataset gets larger.

(If anyone wants to invest some seed money so I can justify spending more time strapping things to my head, do hit me up.)

Crucially, the Muse headband the article talks about doesn’t have a microphone. This seems (slightly!) better for user privacy, but it seems like it would hamper training somewhat, depending on your aims.

A less privacy-respecting company in this space with a popular wellness device could do some pretty dark stuff - it doesn’t really bear thinking about. A sleep tracker app with companion EEG sensor device, for example, could reasonably request microphone access without most users batting an eye.

44mkultra69 6 hours ago

how, what? without any input from you, ever? did you feed some personal parameters, first? like "fuck the Yankees, love red, may the Wall Street Soviet live on forever" so it can "map assumptions" bouncing around in your head to all that which you catch on your audiovisual peripheral and/or center of focus while you catch it all at different distances and pitches? Are you a person who feels bloodflow/tension in brain parts more or less specifically temporo-spatially ( pre-, during, release, post-release phases, ... ) or not and you just feel the neuro-chemistry vibe with the brain waves ( tired, awake, confused, intensifying, uuuh me so horny )... ?

schiffern 5 hours ago

  >Are you a person who feels bloodflow/tension in brain parts

Feeling the brain is biologically impossible, since the brain has no nerve endings.

What you're feeling is muscle tension tighten and release in your head/face/neck/scalp, which does effect blood flow.

44mkultra69 5 hours ago

> is biologically impossible

But there are nerve endings all around the scalp, everywhere in the face and neck, ears, that organ that picks up sound, eye nerves? So some hypersensitivity might create some cerebral geolocationish triangulation of where vessels dilate and constrict? Or are blocked by clots, which gives the flow and dilation a different shape and timing, which also changes clock sync of what usually fires together at much more specific rates than during the blockade.

I'm asking. I'm curious and have not done a preliminary consultation with AI, yet ( why do I feel the need to say this? Probably the sustained increased oxygen supply. Lot's of additional neurogenesis going on in my head atm--19 months on nose plasters )

I used to have annoying TLE attacks which changed thinking patterns and nudged inner dialogues in and out of conversations with people. Even when I was super smooth after weeks of continuous stretching and mobility exercises ( hold two minutes, don't be a noob ) ... but that's about the only somewhat relatable example which I mentioned elsewhere some time in the past. Oh, I felt the TLE like I felt pinching or stuffed sinuses or swallowing unchewed chunks of food for the duration of the TLE.

Some people report tensions on the inside of their forehead even though the particular and surrounding facial nerves are quantifyably ( there's probably a correct term for that ) chill, when taking certain medications.

gabriel666smith 5 hours ago

This paper explains it better than I could:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-65499-0

If you know that at [timestamp] a certain word was audible in my vicinity, it might be reasonably safe to guess that I also thought this word around that point, because I heard that word.

The EEG signal my brain creates might behave in a unique way when I heard (and thus, thought) that word. Over time, it might be possible, using machine learning, to notice that unique pattern repeatedly in the data an EEG sensor captures.

So my hope is that decoding EEG might be perhaps simpler than people currently assume. Most studies create their datasets using "lots of participants, participating for relatively short periods" rather than "one participant, over an extremely long period".

If it's possible to have my EEG reasonably-well mapped and decoded (this signal previously repeatedly meant I was hearing the words "uuuh me so horny", to use your example) it might then become possible to read mapped words in the EEG signals even when the mapped words were not audible.

This, in turn, might mean it was possible to read (some of) the words I am thinking.

As a sibling commenter pointed out, it's insanely noisy data, so I have no idea whether any of the above will ever prove possible.

But mapping assumptions in the manner you laid out isn't something I would have any idea how to do, not least because I often hate the sports teams I love when they are underperforming.

close04 5 hours ago

That’s an interesting project and if you ever succeed it will be massive. What I say shouldn’t stop you but just in case, EEG signals through the scalp are incredibly noisy. You can’t get the level of granularity you need like that. You’re putting a stethoscope on the side of the building and trying to guess what everyone in a few rooms is working on.

gabriel666smith 5 hours ago

Yeah! Super super noisy - and maybe harder than you've described. At least you might overhear some meetings with a stethoscope-on-building approach.

That's kind of the motivation for trying a no-MEG, (comparatively) large dataset, ML approach - it strikes me as exactly the kind of problem to which transformer models might be particularly well-suited, if it's even possible to find a hint of anything in that noise at all.

nirvael 3 hours ago

Cool project. Is there any way to follow along with it? I'm also working on neuro-AI / BCI side projects but for images. Where are you based?

gabriel666smith 3 hours ago

Thanks. I'm London-based. There's nowhere to follow it yet - I'm only a couple of weeks in, and I've currently got it categorised mentally as "weird hobby project", so it hadn't yet occurred to me to publicly document the process at all.

adrianN 9 hours ago

Every day my urge to just disconnect from modern society becomes stronger, but alas it is impossible to live outside of it when you have a family.

Eridanus2 7 hours ago

Right. I don't recall where I read it: two decades ago geeks were defined by being eager early adopters while the rest looked on dismissive or dismayed, whereas now it's inverted, the geeks are on the verge of retreating to the woodlands, while the general body is tapping into every new, ever more invasive technovelty (sic).

andai 7 hours ago

> The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world.

The continued development of technology will worsen the situation.

—Spicy Secret Santa

noduerme 6 hours ago

nothing like the indignity of dying from an ingrown toenail at 26

andai 4 hours ago

See also: The Agricultural Revolution Has Been A Disaster for the Human Race.

https://notrelated.xyz/#01.05

noduerme an hour ago

yeah, yeah, let's go back to hunting and gathering. The ultimate in make the world great again for yobs who consider themselves liberal rather than survivalist fascists. Why bring back the 1950s when you could bring back 10,000 BC?

You know the nice thing about modern civilization? You're free to go build a shack in Montana and live on berries without modern medicine. If or when you need medical assistance it'll be a phone call away. Till then, enjoy your natural life, just don't mail anything.

ndsipa_pomu an hour ago

Nothing like the indignity of being run over by someone driving a car

keyringlight 5 hours ago

I think a big difference is that now we have a lot of examples of what certain types of technology is likely to get used for, and how that affects our daily lives.

throw1234567891 2 hours ago

> but alas it is impossible to live outside of it when you have a family

Who's not willing to do it with you.

Kiboneu 11 hours ago

"On the Feasibility of Side-Channel Attacks with Brain-Computer Interfaces" (Martinovic et al. 2012)

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurit...

webdoodle 10 hours ago

Reading someone's mind is just the beginning, that paper was 14 years ago, and they've likely advanced far beyond it. Buried behind private orgs and dark government agencies, the real objective has always been mind control.

Peter Thiel and his ilk would use it to reprogram anyone who doesn't conform to there thinking. He even bragged about it before being indirectly called the antichrist in his interview with Ross Douthat.

lostlogin 8 hours ago

One upside to the incredible power and influence of the US billionaire class is that they enjoy the position they are in. Please don’t clamp down on them too hard.

Thiel organised a bolt hole down here in New Zealand and we really don’t want him.

deskamess 3 hours ago

Have to be careful with this. I am interested (have not started) in using brain waves to track epilepsy episodes and hopefully none of this makes tracking/capture difficult for consumers. Granted most of the good devices require implant so some level of permission is implied but the scope may be assumed. Still shutting down in the early stages may seem convenient but it could be limiting too.

If the start of an episode can be tracked (sub-second) perhaps there are some counter measures that can be taken to disrupt/subdue the electrical storm that sustains the episode. That detection pattern is something that is unique to the patient so there is custom learning involved. The hope is with enough samples we may be able to detect some hidden 'core' pattern - similar to warnings for earth quakes - and mitigate the episode or use that to go into a heightened sensitivity mode to watch out for the more custom signal.

az09mugen 11 hours ago

The real title of the article is : "The scramble for your brain data"

ericpruitt 10 hours ago

That's what I see in the article body, but the <title> tag is "Wearable device makers are harvesting brain data to train AI—without telling users" for me. It's not clear to me if the submitter changed the title on submission or if the site's doing some form of A/B testing.

mikae1 9 hours ago

This is an extremely common practice among publishers. They put a more SEO friendly headline in the <title> and I'd say the "real headline" is always in the <h1>.

peteforde 8 hours ago

I finally got around to firing up the Neurosity Crown I bought some years ago to experiment with BCI. Lights are on, but nobody is home; it knows the position of my head, but no actual EEG data is coming into the system.

Multiple attempts to contact any kind of support have gone unanswered, and according to Reddit the founders appear to have quietly disappeared, which pisses me off more than a little bit. This thing was not cheap.

toonvanvr 8 hours ago

That sounds like the perfect use case for Reverse Engineer Anything, and it's totally justified..

peteforde 4 hours ago

I certainly wouldn't be opposed! But in this case, I strongly suspect that there's something electronically wrong with my unit.

I'm quite confident that other people are happily using theirs. It's just that mine doesn't work.

chychiu 8 hours ago

Guy is currently working as a engineer at 1X so if anyone works there and can ping him, that will be useful

peteforde 4 hours ago

That would be a pretty excellent outcome. Thanks for posting.

ChrisArchitect 8 hours ago

Clean url: https://www.science.org/content/article/wearable-device-make...

ourcat 6 hours ago

When I saw it was called "Muse headband", I immediately thought it was a Meta thing. Surely, it's just a matter of time until Meta knocks on their door. Especially if they're getting into the AI category with their supposed 'wellness devices'.

Zarathruster 2 hours ago

You've got it backwards. The Muse headset is decades old

FacelessJim 7 hours ago

That title is one hell of an understatement.

tom89999 10 hours ago

Quit your job, apply at DHL, Flink or as Über-Driver and you will never have problems falling asleep again. Also working as a storeman, commuting by bus and tram will surely guarantee an early bed time. No expensive gyms needed, just go by bike to your office, the entire year. Also, ask your employer if you could help out in production or warehouse. Problem solved.

bell-cot 3 hours ago

Somehow, our "modern" world is making the Amish look wiser and wiser every year.

andai 7 hours ago

Great, now I need to worry about my brain having libre bootloader, TEMPEST shielding, latest Intel Management Engine update... did I miss anything?

techteach00 4 hours ago

Lol are we at the bottom of the slippery slope now? What a headline.

ndsipa_pomu an hour ago

Seems like other places need a European-style GDPR set of laws.

Companies should only be allowed to use people's data for a specific purpose that the customer has explicitly given consent to. No hidden terms in EULs and no using data for any purpose than what they have permission to do.

metalman 7 hours ago

not to worry, privacy was just a primitive concept, wrapped up in other ridiculous notions like personal autonomy and agency, along with silly ideas like rights and responsibilities, and soon that whole way of thinking can be edited in order to release your true potential as a happy meat bot

andai 7 hours ago

Wait, you guys are happy?

newterminus 5 hours ago

this stuff is already super advanced bbs stream of direct experience clock your ass to ai type shit