Suggested citation: M. Sosa Navarro, F. Holzer, Mapping a right to mental privacy within European and international human rights law, in lceonline (www.lceonline.eu), 2/2026, I/Saggi e contributi, p. 69 ss.
Key words: mental privacy, neurotechnology, neural data, soft law, international and regional human rights frameworks, GDPR
Abstract: The concept of “mental privacy” has gained increasing attention as a means of protecting individuals’ thoughts, emotions, and neural data from unauthorized access, analysis, or manipulation. As advances in artificial intelligence and neurotechnology make the decoding of mental states increasingly plausible, concerns over the misuse of such data for surveillance, profiling, and behavioural prediction have intensified. In this paper, we first situate mental privacy within broader privacy theory and the conceptual discussion on the foundations of mental privacy before examining the international and regional instruments applicable together with their normative limitations and interpretative challenges. Building on this framework, the paper maps the principal international and European legal instruments relevant to the protection of mental privacy, including the ICCPR, GDPR, MDR, Product Safety Regulation, AI Act, and Council of Europe’s Convention 108+. It argues that while the normative architecture for its protection exists, it remains fragmented and conceptually underdeveloped.
