Topic: Privacy and the importance of biodata (Read 134 times)

Yes, think twice before giving them a sample of your DNA without finding a way to hide your identity. For best and for worst, they will have the most important information about you.

I wonder if restaurants and bars of the future will sell samples of our DNA on the glasses we used.

I love all these ancestry sites marketing to people using the emotional pull of being able to look at family history. The reality is they are hoovering up DNA at a breakneck pace not only for surveillance purposes, but so they can patent the next wave of genetically specialized medicine using your DNA. Guess what. They are the only one selling it, and you will have to pay whatever they demand if you want it. I could get into the more fringe aspects of how this information can be used for horribly disturbing purposes, but no one would believe me anyway...

IMO what will happen is eventually every biometric database will be hacked and put up for sale, and it will become virtually worthless as an authentication method. That's when they will start pushing DNA authentication, portable sequencers are already a thing. Either that or they will have to start mandating the collection of rectal prints for identification, I am not sure which.

Yuval Harari have some good points about this issue.

A brief summary of this thoughts on it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHHb7R3kx40

The Facebooks of the future might be health and biological corporations, offering free health care services or enhancing biological and intellectual capacities in exchange for biodata (Yuval Harari).

Imagine a device that will improve health, lifespan, intelligence or allow instant access to information, that customers will have to use permanently and that will allow a corporation to monitor their biodata.

A device that will record their emotional reactions when confronted with information, political propaganda, products, services and that will allow the corporation to really know them.

Not just where they go, what they read or what they buy, but their emotions, likes and dislikes or inclinations.

That will allow it to predict in what party their customers will vote, what products and services they will buy, if they have criminal or political rebellious inclinations, etc.

Governments won’t need to buy this information. Dictatorial ones will make these devices mandatory; others will demand this information from these corporations.

Of course, it’s this what Facebook, Google or Microsoft (yes, don’t forget to opt out all the information that Windows 10 give about you by default) do: give free services in exchange for information about their customers, that they use to show ads or that they will sell to third parties.

These developments will just go a few steps closer to know the customer better than himself and, therefore, easily manipulate or control him.