# 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. ## Digital Afterlife Interface **Evidence / Concept Status:** Emerging and partially enacted neurodata-protection concept; scope varies. A continuity archive may contain unusually intimate neural and inferred mental state. Preservation cannot be treated as universal permission to inspect, disclose, train on, or reconstruct from that state. The source person's privacy and a later continuant's own interests may diverge, requiring distinct rules. See [[wiki/Human Digital Remains|Human Digital Remains]], [[wiki/Postmortem Data Directive|Postmortem Data Directive]], and [[wiki/Digital Afterlife Rights and Personhood|Digital Afterlife Rights and Personhood]].