Securing the Exocortex

Tamara Bonaci, a graduate student at the University of Washington, presented groundbreaking research on the privacy implications of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). She introduced the concept of the "exocortex," referring to wearable or implanted computing devices that augment human cognition, and demonstrated the alarming possibility of "brain spyware attacks" capable of extracting sensitive information such as political beliefs and even passwords from neural signals.

Bonaci proposed a "BCI anonymizer" that would treat neurosignals as personally identifiable information, applying privacy protections analogous to those used for other sensitive biometric data. Her presentation highlighted a frontier of technology ethics that Wiener could scarcely have imagined in specific detail but whose fundamental dynamics he anticipated: the intimate merger of human cognition and machine processing, and the urgent need to protect individual autonomy in the face of increasingly powerful surveillance technologies.