Professor Jennifer Chandler recently gave a keynote lecture on this topic at the 5th International Brain Stimulation Conference in Lisbon, Portugal, where she addressed how recordings of brain data have been used by the criminal justice system, and the legal and ethical issues that await this kind of technology in the future. The conference, organized by the publisher of the journal Brain Stimulation, brings together neuroscientists, brain surgeons, psychiatrists and ethicists to discuss technologies that affect how our brains work.
Professor Chandler’s talk was covered recently in The Checkup, The MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter, in an article entitled “How your brain data could be used against you”, where she is cited on how brain data could be used in a criminal matter. Professor Chandler notes that brain stimulation treatments that collect and store brain data can potentially reveal the state of a person’s brain at any given moment in time. This may pose certain ethical problems depending on how the data is used. In a criminal trial, for example, brain data could provide an alibi for someone accused of a crime, but could also be used as evidence against that person.
Professor Chandler is globally recognized scholar working at the intersection of law and biomedical science and technology, focusing her research on the law and ethics of the brain sciences and neurotechnology. She is currently leading a project entitled “Hybrid Minds: Experiential, ethical and legal investigation of intelligent neuroprostheses”, which studies the use of AI-based neuroprostheses as medical devices and the resulting ethical and legal questions that arise from their use. The project involves an international research team of experts from Canada, Germany and Switzerland, coordinated by Professor Chandler. You can read more about the project at Professor Chandler’s website.