Guido Girardi slipped on an Emotiv headset, hoping to gauge focus, and instead sparked the first court case on neurodata. Chile’s Supreme Court, in a unanimous 2023 ruling, ordered the San Francisco‑based firm to delete his brain recordings, citing violations of constitutional rights to physical and psychological integrity. The decision arrived as BCIs shift from labs to skulls and consumer EEG headsets hit shelves beside smartwatches.

Global EEG sales are projected to hit £3.65 billion by 2034, up from £1.38 billion in 2024. Meanwhile, Neuralink has implanted its N1 chip in three people, while Synchron and Precision Neuroscience race to broaden access. Yet the quietest threat comes from everyday headbands that promise meditation or productivity boosts while harvesting intimate neural signatures.

Industry reports show 29 of 30 companies offer little data restraint, exposing users to surveillance, discrimination, and privacy erosion. Governments are catching up: Chile amended its constitution to protect “neurorights,” U.S. states like Colorado and California are enacting neural‑data laws, and UNESCO is drafting a global ethics framework. The stakes: if unchecked, brain data could become the next frontier of targeted manipulation.