# Mental Privacy **Domain:** Neuroethics / Privacy **Doc Type:** Governance Concept Node **Maturity:** Emerging Legal and Ethical Principle **Related:** [[Neurorights]], [[Neural Data Sovereignty]], [[Digital Phenotyping]], [[Genetic Privacy]] --- ## Definition **Mental privacy** is protection against unauthorized access to, collection of, inference from, disclosure of, or commercialization of information about mental states and processes. It includes direct neural recordings and may extend to non-neural data when that data supports sensitive mental-state inference. ## Architectural implications Consent, purpose limitation, minimization, encryption, local processing, access revocation, auditability, inference controls, retention policy, and deletion rights must be designed into neural systems rather than added after deployment.