From Privacy to Cognitive Liberty: Constitutional Protection against Neuro-Data Exploitation and Emerging Digital Technologies under India's Data Protection Framework

Abstract

With the advent of the digital age, there is a paradigmatic change in the exploitation and manipulation of information. Traditionally, the digital economy leveraged behaviorally induced externalities, including clicks, geolocations, shopping behaviors, and search records. But now, in the current context, the frontier of technological extraction extends much farther inward to invade the last bastion of personal freedom, namely, the individual mind itself. With the exponential rise in the field of neurotechnology, artificial intelligence (AI), and Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs), there has arisen a novel possibility of monitoring, recording, decoding, and even controlling human brain processes, thus raising existential, ethical, and juristic dilemmas, necessitating the development of jurisprudence for "cognitive liberty" and "mental privacy," not only globally but specifically within the Republic of India. As global discourse intensifies, spurred by milestones such as Neuralink's continued human trials and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) 2025 recommendations on the ethics of neurotechnology, jurisdictions worldwide are scrambling to erect statutory safeguards against neuro-data exploitation. Within India, the intersection of constitutional rights and digital data governance presents a complex tapestry of profound foundational protections juxtaposed against glaring statutory lacunae. While the Supreme Court of India has established formidable precedents safeguarding psychological integrity and the right against self-incrimination, the legislative architecture, most notably the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act of 2023 and its subsequent 2025 Rules, remains dangerously unequipped to manage the unique threats posed by neuro-data extraction. This paper intends to shed light upon that discourse by providing a probable roadmap by the end.

Keywords: Technology, Security, dignity, Privacy, protection