How much should be known about you?

[Tee Kay]

sadly as far as I know there is no way to encrypt DNA.

Luckily DNA is naturally encrypted.

 

[Zelig]

Luckily DNA is naturally encrypted.

It's encoded, not encrypted.

 

[Tee Kay]

It's encoded, not encrypted.

Same difference.

 

[zjintz]

DELETED:nevermind.

 

[Zelig]

Same difference.

Not really.

 

[Tee Kay]

It is if it merits only a one sentence response.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

What does dropping hairs have to do with it?

I recommend you watch the movie GATTACA.

 

[Hygro]

While I personally agree with you, you are probably going to run into arguments by the people that pirate stuff. It's not "stealing" because they are not taking something tangible from you and denying you access to it. You still have your information, it's just that they do now as well.

Apparently, that's not stealing, though, it's just "information infringement" or something like that.

Well, it could be information infringement while also be grand theft of your personal privacy. It doesn't have to just be one thing.

 

[Mise]

For some reason, googling my own name now finds my twitter account. Sigh... That means I need to make my tweets protected

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Googling my name will result in a slew of references to somebody who has almost the same name as me, but who is not me.

There are some pissed-off people on MySpace who still think I'm a stuck-up witch who won't admit to being the celebrity they met at some shindig in Toronto, even though I told them I've never been east of the Alberta/Saskatchewan border in my life.

 

[The_J]

Here is an interesting approach to an incompetent and meddling government which is becoming more and more like a police state over time:

From today's newspaper:

When the government questioned him, this professor decided to make his entire life public. Why? To keep his privacy.

You Want to Track Me? Here You Go, F.B.I.

This seems to be a reasonably decent strategy. Perhaps we should all overload the bureaucratic busybodies with endless picayune details of our lives.

I’m sorry to say that Mr. Elahi is wrong.

[...]

But regarding what we as citizens should learn from his exploits, I strongly agree with two commenters in a Slashdot posting.

The first lesson, from ohnocitizen: There is nothing that a citizen can gain by handing information over to authorities, regardless of how charmed his interrogators surely were by this articulate artist. “Flooding the FBI with information and hoping for privacy is like talking to the police and hoping for clemency,” ohnocitizen writes.

[...]

The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution ensures that “No person … shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.”

There are extremely good reasons to invoke this, as the law school professor and former criminal defense attorney outlines in the lecture mentioned by ohnocitizen. One of the most compelling is that anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.

Given that the laws of this land have grown to a point that they are now considered unquantifiable, there is no way that anybody can open their mouths and say anything that can’t potentially be used against them.

I also agree with this Slashdot comment from this Anonymous Coward, who states:

“Mr. Elahi seems to confuse the fact that the FBI may no longer care about his daily whereabouts with the fact that they can't sort through the data should every one do what he's doing. Will it be more difficult? Yes, but it's not impossible. Google searches the web in near real-time using sophisticated indexing strategies and there is no reason to believe that the FBI couldn't do the same with people and publicly available information to obtain statistically meaningful deviations from normal behavior on your part which could then be referred for human followup.”

As dusty as my analytics knowledge is, Anonymous Coward’s words all ring true.

I applaud Mr. Elahi’s artistic talents. But I’d still suggest that we all guard our privacy and cherish the Fifth Amendment.

--------------
@"if someone takes my hair": Paternity tests without consent are not allowed, and the police is not allowed to take DNA samples against your will, so i guess there are some laws against sequencing random human DNA.

 

[El_Machinae]

My opinion is that, if you don't want me knowing your DNA sequence, don't go leaving it all over the place. If I were a corporation, the rules would be different.

 

[IglooDame]

How many people post the results of their past urine and DNA tests to the internet?

I'd estimate about 32 million.

I produce this number by seeing that one in every twenty-five people on Facebook apparently put every conceivable element of their daily lives on their Wall for friends' consumption, then apply that 4% to the current Facebook total membership (800 million).

 

[Commodore]

While I personally agree with you, you are probably going to run into arguments by the people that pirate stuff. It's not "stealing" because they are not taking something tangible from you and denying you access to it. You still have your information, it's just that they do now as well.

Apparently, that's not stealing, though, it's just "information infringement" or something like that.

Except by pirating software you really don't cause that much damage (I personally believe it doesn't cause any damage); whereas obtaining someone's personal information without their consent can cause tremendous damage to the individual.

In fact most people who pirate still view identity theft as a serious crime. But hey, don't let that stand in the way of you trying to make us look like baby-eaters.

 

[warpus]

When personal information are obtained/released without my consent.

Bingo.

If you don't want your personal information to be accessible to anyone, don't post it on a public forum on the internet.

 

[GenMarshall]

When personal information are obtained/released without my consent.

This...

*glares at Facebook*

...looking at you Facebook!!

 

[squall78]

This is why I don't post on Facebook/Myspace/whatever. Why would you volunteer information such as a vacation? It leaves you open for burglaries. Drunk pics of you acting like an idiot? Great resume booster.

Partying after calling in a sick day? I just don't understand sometimes.