[ExI] openness again

[spike]

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf
Of BillK
Subject: Re: [ExI] before?

 

 

 

On 2 April 2016 at 16:12, William Flynn Wallace  wrote:

>>... Denmark is making a necrogenomic database: DNA from everyone who
dies...

 

 

>...Well, it will be useful if the dead start committing crimes.......

 

Ja.  Come the zombie apocalypse, we will know who it was who is coming to
devour our brains.

 

>...The scientists want the database for medical research,  but I would
expect the police to be interested as well. Murders have been solved by
getting a close DNA match which led to checking relatives and getting a
conviction...

 

Ja.  The guilty have been caught and the innocent set free because of DNA
analysis.  

 

Do repeat that sentence like a mantra please, several times until memorized.

 

>...Totalitarian governments would really like every DNA on file as
everybody is now a suspected criminal. But so far there are still some
restrictions stopping them...BillK

 

Ja.  So what we need to do then is prevent totalitarian governments.

 

I am personally acquainted with a relative whose grandparents were in the
funeral business.  It was a rural area, not much money in it.  It is easy
enough to imagine them being offered 100 bucks for some unknown entity to
have 2 minutes to view the deceased and keep it quiet.  Now an unknown
entity has a DNA sample, the ID of the dearly departed and a good idea how
she perished.  This kind of information is valuable.  If my own money is at
stake (it's my insurance company selling policies for instance) I am an
inquiring mind.

 

Those of us who are old-timers on ExI, especially those who participated in
the privacy discussions here back in the 90s and 00s, do feel free to post
in regard to how your views have changed, how they have stayed the same,
what predictions you made then which have come to pass and which have
failed.  Our openness advocates are no longer in the neighborhood.  Well, I
am, but Assange is gone, Burch is gone, Hal Finney and Robert Bradbury are
gone permanently, so I (and possibly BillW) are the new openness advocates,
ja?  Others?

 

spike

 

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