We already allow our government to make decisions on access to personal data for services -- it's called HIPAA. The difference between that and seemingly "ordi

We already allow our government to make decisions on access to personal data for services -- it's called HIPAA. The difference between that and seemingly "ordinary" data is that HIPAA data can be used against us unfairly. I argue that's the case now, and we have proof it is already happening. You better bet your bottom dollar insurance companies and the likes are mining social media to charge different prices based on silly facebook posts http://www.cnbc.com/2014/04/16/data-mining-is-now-used-to-set-insurance-rates-critics-cry-fowl.html http://www.cnbc.com/2014/04/16/data-mining-is-now-used-to-se... It's only a matter of time before police forces will begin to use these same techniques to "optimize policing" We live in a different time now. Our data is not as harmless as it used to be. Hackers can attack various sources of services and build complete picture of peoples lives. Companies are using data mining techniques to leverage people's private interaction with friends and families against them. The worst part about it is -- it's complicated, and we have a technically inept Congress that barely understands the implications of all these technologies, and we will soon have a technically inept soon to be incumbent president, so these legal issues are not going to get any better. this, plus what zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC mentioned, until we have the right to "be forgotten" or the ability to have our records completely purged after a period of time -- like you do with debt, like you do with criminal records, like you do with basically any public record, we will have these privacy issues. Right now if you want to purge false information about yourself on the internet, you have to go through hell and back (trust me, I've tried, Salon has had a completely fabricated story about me for almost 10 years now. I send an email every week asking them to redact my name from that article. Unless I seemingly spend hundreds of thousands to fight their legal arm, it's probably never going to change.)