Perhap this book will reveal to me some dangers that I am not currently aware of. I'll try to keep an eye out for it and read it if it can.
Let's be more day-to-day: all your data is sold to insurance companies. Where you go, how fast you go, what kind of food you eat, your gym attendance etc.
Not day to day situation
>Or some law is passed and suddenly some of your old activity is made illegal
Then the law need to be changed so that past activity that is now illegal shouldn't affect you.
>all your data is sold to insurance companies
Ok so what's the danger? If anything I could get maybe cheaper insurance.
Re: insurance: Is that happening right now? I am not aware of any reports that indicate that is currently occurring.
We are still in the early days of commercial data analysis. Online retailers and ad brokers (e.g. Google) have been the trailblazers. But it will spread. Imagine a combination of facial recognition and data analysis being used in the real world to serve you custom billboard ads or to allow sales people to remind you that you probably need to buy new shoes.
Lets move beyond sales in to really creepy territory. Want to intimidate someone? Get hold as much of their marketing data as you can, it'll probably be on sale from some data broker. If its not on sale, bribing someone will probably get you what you want. Now let your target know that you know where they shop, what they buy, what websites they visit and maybe they have a drink problem they want to keep hidden. If you think that what legitimate businesses can do with your data is bad, imagine what criminals could do.
The same goes for your hypotheticals about billboards and facial recognition. Very creepy and I certainly don't want to live in that world but at the end of the day, I'm not being harmed by it.
Invoking fear of criminals and underworld behavior is an unconvincing argument. If someone with those resources seeks to harm me, they're always going to be able to find a way to do it. We can stand about and talk about "what if's" all day, I'm interested in how my life is being affected today.
These companies that do this do not care about your interests, they care only about their bottom line.
But Facebook suggested I tagged some faces on some photos my family shared. They were all of me. Not my brothers or other people also in the photos. But me.
Of course there is a lot of context shared by family and friends, but how Facebook could get the right faces baffles me.
How does it affect my daily life? I don't know yet.