Revisiting Privacy Preservation in Brain-Computer Interfaces: Conceptual Boundaries, Risk Pathways, and a Protection-Strength Grading Framework

arXiv:2605.11386v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are moving rapidly from laboratory research into clinical, edge, and real-world settings. Under ISO/IEC 8663:2025, a BCI is a direct communication link between central nervous system activity and external software or hardware systems. This link expands privacy risk beyond raw neural-signal leakage: neural data, derived representations, model assets, and decoded outputs can be re-associated with individuals across co