Seite - 194 - in Cyborg Mind - What Brain–Computer and Mind–Cyberspace Interfaces Mean for Cyberneuroethics

194 • Cyborg Mind • anonymous peer-to-peer file sharing; and • whistleblowing. However, it is worth recognising that such anonymity can also be used for negative purposes, for example, in criminal markets, such as in the selling and buying of illegal drugs, the sharing of indecent images of children, and for terrorism. This means that if neuronal interfaces continue to be developed and become ever more present in society, a corresponding risk assessment of potential threats to individual privacy and confidentiality may be required. For example, with the emergence of mass data collections, such as with ‘Big Data’ sets obtained through social media, the ‘Internet of Things’ and other devices or settings, new threats to private life may increase.434 This may imply that data protection principles and data protection laws may need to be revised and improved in order to reflect life in a digital and interconnected world.435 In other words, according to Ienca and Andorno, a right to brain pri- vacy should ‘protect people against illegitimate access to their brain infor- mation and to prevent the indiscriminate leakage of brain data across the infosphere’.436 It should finally be noted, however, that in an Edenic society where nobody is ever malevolent to anyone else, a person may not need to hide his or her thoughts through the means of privacy. But such a society, unfortunately, does not exist. This means that a right to privacy will always remain necessary for persons to protect themselves from the controlling power of others. Notes 1. Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Technological Convergence, para 2. 2. British Medical Association, Boosting Your Brainpower, 3. 3. Ibid., 16–20. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid., 21–22. 9. Ibid. 10. Here, many of the arguments are similar to those relating to equality of access to eugen- ics. See MacKellar and Bechtel (eds),The Ethics of the New Eugenics, 146–48. 11. A fuller examination of societal inequality should include a substantial discussion on poverty as well as what it is, how it happens and how it may be overcome. Indeed, poverty is a complex phenomenon, encompassing financial, relational and emotional shortfalls. Thus, a more equal distribution of financial resources would be insufficient to counteract poverty. See, for example, Lister, Poverty, 36. 12. Anderson, Feed. This open access edition has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched. Not for resale.