But that doesn't change the validity of the proposal that opt-in should be the standard - exceptions from which must have solid reasons. Just making it easier for someone to make money off people is not one of those reasons. Neither is vague "making the product better".

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[0] - INB4 yes, there are also valid arguments that opt-out organ donations will reduce doctors' willingness to fight for patient's life. Human societies are complicated.

Actually, I've opted out because my next of kin stand to lose quite a lot (the harvesting of organs needs to be done quickly, well within the mourning period of the people I care about the most). The decision to leave sight of my body needs to be theirs, and theirs alone.

If your in the position to donate organs you most likely died in an accident. You likely won't have that rosy picture of your family and friends around your beside. You might not have anyone.

What a waste.

I said the decision should be theirs. I did not say my body couldn't be parted from them, I said it was their decision to do so. I used to be registered as a donor, but because the law has now changed that my donorship overrides the wishes of my loved ones, I have withdrawn it.

And I said they may not be there to give that decision, so that's moot really. Organs like lungs and hearts expire very quickly. Reading comprehension indeed.

> Try a little empathy next time

For the dead person, or the person who misses out on a life saving organ due to the dead person?

It's your body and your choice obviously, but I think saying it's up to my relatives to decide isn't a great reason to be taken off the donor registry. There is plenty of time for them to grieve but only a few hours to take a vital organ. If you want to do something great if you expire unexpectedly then it's up to you, don't put that on your parter/relatives.

For example your wearables get to collect so much biometric info, if that data can be connected to detecting conditions early it would provide a lot of value down the road. At some point we will have the option to collect data about what you ate, what you did, where you went and then how that affected your biometrics, and we can inexpensively collect huge scale DNA samples, etc. all that data if available publicly could really provide insights in to things that are really not practical in limited group studies.

For reasons such as this I think I'm fine if services collect anonymized (unless we solve identity theft and such security concerns) information about me, I'd just want them to make this data free.

Remember; there's no such thing as "anonymized data", there's only "not enough other data to correlate out identities from it".

I am saying is that these benign things are opt-out not because most people wouldn't want to do them if they weigh the prons and cons but because they don't want to put in the effort of doing so and will just be conservative - which is logical from an individual perspective - but will cause us to lose out on opportunities as a whole.

Also this data is getting collected weather you want it or not, even intelligence people are just taping over their webcams as a security measure - the attitude that we must protect every bit of privacy by default will lead to the future where hidden data collection is the only way to access data - people will be making money off it, it won't be available to general public (for eg. public research) and there will be no transparency about it. And if you think the government will protect you - well they are the biggest transgressor here.

So instead of fighting a lost battle with trying to keep absolute privacy why not just make most of that data public and available and focus on protecting the really sensitive stuff.

Because you can't. You cannot build something that protects the really sensitive stuff out of stuff that's leaking data left and right, making it harder and harder to protect the really sensitive stuff.

Yeah, carrier contracts also "disclose" everything, there's a reason why it's called "small print".

It would only take to make it opt-in, instead of opt-out to rectify this.