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Silicon Valley vs. Your Privacy
TreeRat submits word of an article in the New York Times' magazine section, including mention of the proposed national database which has been talked about on Slashdot before. "The story goes into great detail with Larry Ellison, who is still pushing hard to bring 'Big Brother' to life. When asked if this database will be created, and run on Oracle, Larry's response was 'I do think it will exist, and I think it is going to be an Oracle database. ...And we're going to track everything.' There's a lot more than Ellison in this piece, though, and much of it is scary.
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The Fresh Air interview on April 11 with Journalist Jeffrey Rosen is worth a listen.
"Aren't there already such megadatabases? ... How else would the government keep track of the population...?", he says, assuming it's necessary to "keep track" of the population. It's scary that people make assumptions like this.
Remember, your government, if you live in a democratic nation, is there to serve you. If this requires detailed, complete tracking of the population, then so be it. But keep asking the question "is this necessary?", and not "isn't it already happening?"
The Mormon Church keeps genealogical information because they feel baptism is necesary for final redemption. They believe that if someone is not baptized prior to death, someone can stand in for them, but they need information as to who is around. They also make this information free to anyone to research family history. The information they collect is only from freely available public sources and from members. It is freely available to the public to research their family line. They let anyone into their family history centers to do genealogical research, an admitted satanist, an exommunicated church member, all can go so long as they are polite and don't push their religious views, and the mormons return the favor and don't push theirs.