The Panopticon Is Good for You

blog.dshr.org

33 points·casca··5 comments

Right, the panopticon is arbitrarily good for those it serves. And even if it doesn't serve you directly, less mistakes are made, and fewer get caught in the crossfire, should there be any conflicts.

Even if it doesn't pay off for you, you still benefit indirectly. Things will eventually trickle down anyway. Patience is a virtue. So, if you know what's good for you, you'll keep your mouth shut.

But, what if? Let's say something goes wrong, and it goes bad. Arbitrarily bad. Things get fucked up. How bad can it get? What could possibly go wrong?

I bet there's absolutely no downside to this, whatsoever.

Okay, so I get hung up on details, but "below the fold"? It's 2015.

Meanwhile, this is a good issue to bring up, publicize, and discuss. A worthwhile post.

Anyone working on homomorphic encryption with DNA or peptide sequence data? If so, I'd love to chat about it.

So,what could possibly go wrong? Dshr didn't answer

I'll give you the canonical example: if this data is available to health insurance companies, your premium could go up if you are eating bacon, not running your 15 miles a week or whatever other metric is defined to make you 'healthy'. Even worse, they could actually start denying you care when you need it the most because you lied when you applied (hey, you said you didn't eat bacon!)

Then cue the next canonical example: what if you are thinking of running for office but someone in the opposing party digs out data showing that you were spending waaaay too much time at someone else's house?

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