Big Tech is after your brain data, but US lawmakers are trying to stop them getting their hands on it. Over the weekend, California Governor Gavin Newsom passed a law to protect the data gathered by wearable technology and certain apps from being sold to or misused by neurotechnology companies.

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What is brain data? Who’s been gathering it? Forget MRIs, CT scans, or any other medical tool explicitly made to record your inner workings. Your brain data — information about what goes on in your head, including your thoughts, feelings, and intentions — is mineable, and not just by the smartwatch monitoring your body. While medical devices and institutions are under strict regulation not to share your data, Big Tech isn’t.

Meditation apps, feeling trackers, gratitude journals, apps that help you focus, or apps aimed to improve your mental health all observe and record that neural data. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Big Tech — namely Meta and Apple — are rolling out devices that will collect an obscene amount of brain data.

Scientists can already decode people’s thoughts and feelings. Researchers have analyzed brain activity and used it to reconstruct those thoughts visually, and others have used the technology to help a paralyzed woman speak and emote through an avatar on a screen. Perhaps that’s why more than 40k neuroscientists supported the passing of this law.

By extending the definition of “personal sensitive data” to include neural information, the California State Senate now protects this information under the California Consumer Privacy Act, alongside other biometric data. Silicon Valley companies are now required to offer you the option to control the amount of data being collected or opt out completely.

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