Information Privacy

Max Clarke

The primary question of information privacy that Everything Everywhere raises is in relation to the headset device the alpha universe uses to give people the power to verse jump. The first thing this headset does is perform some kind of brain scan or otherwise interfaces with the wearer's brain to sync the computers in the alpha universe to the wearer's thoughts. This is certainly a violation of the privacy of the wearer since a live stream of their thoughts are being remotely transmitted to another computer. There is no way to ensure that this data isn't being stored, sold, or otherwise being used for purposes beyond the intended use of calculating verse jumps. Additionally, we see at the beginning of the movie that alpha Waymond has no issues with subjecting Evelyn to this process without first getting her consent which makes the concern much worse. A study shows that "Thoughts in mind" is the third highest type of information Americans want to keep private falling just behind social security number and phone conversations [1], so it's reasonable to conclude that a brain scan like we see in the movie would face massive pushback. This is also in the context of a much less sophisticated type of brain scan than what we see in the movie, as modern day brain scanning technology is limited to individual signals and, more recently, image reconstruction [2] while the movie suggests that the scan retrieves all of the memories of the scanned person.

1. Shenyang Huang, "U.S. public perceptions of the sensitivity of brain data" (NIH, June 2024), http://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10800024/ (5/6/26)

2. Łukasz Szoszkiewicz, "Mental privacy: navigating risks, rights and regulation" (NIH, June 2025), https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12287510/  (5/6/26)