> Just out of curiosity, what is it about your relative's blood test that you don't want the NSA to know about?
This is the wrong question. The right question is, "what is it about your relative's blood test that you don't want the NSA, or anybody else in the government, or any contractor or lobbyist the government is persuaded to share this data with, now or at any point in the future, essentially in perpetuity, to know about?"
And the answer is, of course, "I don't know".
I don't know if Obamacare will die an ugly death and insurance companies will successfully lobby for absolutely anything establishing genetic prior conditions.
I don't know if, in 50 years, the government will decide to, say, demonize Jews and go hunting for Ashkenazi DNA indicators in their databases and go after the families they can find with them.
I don't know if a genetic predisposition to homosexuality, haemophaelia, a positive test for AIDs or herpes or ginger hair will one day be used against me or my descendants by some future mob.
I agree with the point you are making. In the spirit of agreement, I would suggest that the right question is "what is it about your relative's blood test that you specifically want to bring to the attention of the NSA, government, contractors, and lobbyists."
Privacy should be the default state and expectation, and disclosure should be by exception when necessary, for exactly the reasons outlined in your post. The argument that privacy only matters if you have something to hide conceals a number of assumptions, and misses the fact that one doesn't know what one might one day wish one had hidden.
> or any contractor or lobbyist the government is persuaded to share this data with
Or anyone the government is "persuaded" where persuaded may well include security breaches by hostile parties of indeterminate origin... Actually the hell with it, just put it this way, insecure by law is still insecure. Effectively PRISM and its ilk implies that insecure by law is in fact insecure, completely.
This is the wrong question. The right question is, "what is it about your relative's blood test that you don't want the NSA, or anybody else in the government, or any contractor or lobbyist the government is persuaded to share this data with, now or at any point in the future, essentially in perpetuity, to know about?"
And the answer is, of course, "I don't know".
I don't know if Obamacare will die an ugly death and insurance companies will successfully lobby for absolutely anything establishing genetic prior conditions.
I don't know if, in 50 years, the government will decide to, say, demonize Jews and go hunting for Ashkenazi DNA indicators in their databases and go after the families they can find with them.
I don't know if a genetic predisposition to homosexuality, haemophaelia, a positive test for AIDs or herpes or ginger hair will one day be used against me or my descendants by some future mob.
And that's why privacy is important.