Point of information: "the government" should not be regarded as a monolithic entity unless it actually behaves as such. As a Brit, my medical records are held by the nationalised health service, but this doesn't mean that random cabinet ministers or police can go leafing through them on a whim.

For me, they're held with https://nhsnss.org/how-nss-works/ ; quite a lot of England actually has them held by a private company, Serco.

(edit: should probably add another distinction between "illegal" and "doesn't happen at all")

I value your idea about language, and sometimes I use 'government' in general terms. In your example however, I believe given the opportunity, scumbag ministers and police would indeed look into people's medical records, and would indeed abuse this information.

As an American, I'm constantly upset with our government's abuses, especially by our police and their access to otherwise private info.

More on confidentiality: https://www.gponline.com/confidentiality-when-gps-disclose-i...

Yet.

Edit: I thought we were talking about America.

> obligation by contract to protect that information, even from the government

Contract never trumps statute anywhere.

The 4th Amendment to privacy trumps statues everywhere (i.e. neither the feds nor state can just legislate their ability to read private company data). The contract between the customer and the org. should prevent the org. from just handing it over willingly.

Now, does this mean no company will take the government to court to protect their user data? Maybe not, but the list of companies that I can think of which will do that is vanishingly small. And let's not forget that the AT&T NSA spying case was dismissed by the appeals court, and was not accepted by review in the supreme court. Do you think the outcome would be any different next time?

The problem is that if there is no way to effectively "petition a redress of grievances" (to borrow a phrase) about some constitutional violations, what is the point of that clause of the constitution? If you have legal protections of your rights, you must also have a court system that is willing to actually hold the government to account over violations of your rights -- and my impression of the US (as an outsider) is that this is not the case for 4th amendment violations.

I think we need need term limits in Congress, so the same stale minds can't dominate forever. Also I think states should start flexing their 10th amendment rights to show the feds that they care about their rights (state legalization of drugs, prostitution for example).

In general our court system is fairly good at upholding constitutional rights. It's not uncommon for a trial to be thrown out because some evidence was collected without a warrant, for example. However you're right that certain events question the viability of upholding our rights against a tyrannically government. That of course is why the 2nd amendment exists.

Fuck that! Seriously. Why do people keep wanting to put data on the blockchain? All that does is make the data public. Sure, it can't be decrypted __now__, but do you want to take the risk that it will always be encrypted? Even if you update the security of the entire chain the previous blocks are still decryptable (and we repeat the with same problem).

We don't need a fully audit-able system this type of data. There are advantages to centralized data systems and I would even take a decentralized approach over a BC method. Unless you can give a very compelling reason why the data needs to be audit-able through the entire history.

Presumely, usage by the business would be open-ended and very openly for the gain of the company first.

Meanwhile, a government agency were (at least in theory) bound by publicly available purposes and regulations.

Out of curiosity, why would you trust the private company more than a government agency?

I understand your point though and definitely agree with your on the sensitivity of the data.

Put simply, I personally don't trust the American government at the federal level, and it's hard to find reasons why anyone should. People who restrain criticisms of the feds often like to pretend that all they need to do to prevent corruption is get into office any make the changes we want. Unfortunately that's extremely naive and huge waste of effort, especially when Congress has no term limits. I believe the only way to reign in federal abuse is by taking its power away.

My point here is that the government has a long track record for abuse at the highest degree, quite literally, and giving them my most personal and private data is terrifying. The problem is that we can't change governments on a whim, thus if we have a crappy one, we have to deal with it. In a free market however, if a corporation is caught with abuses, we can bury them in court and move to a competitor.

Not everyone is addicted, but rather Facebook has become arguably necessary because of its network effect.

Facebook has become the de facto standard of communication in some institutions. For example, in some universities, important notices on due dates or class cancellations is done solely through Facebook. One may be very heavily pressured to use it.

By the way, I don't have a Facebook account.

If you pick the former, then I'll assume that you're naive to the abuses in our government. If you pick the latter, then I'm going to leave and be productive somewhere else, because you're never going to get it.

Far more industry leading companies (much less companies as a whole) have rose and fall in power, changed their goals/products/management/etc in the past 5/15/50/etc years than governments. Turnover is far higher in corporation management positions than congresses and parliaments, and further, there is no law saying that I have to buy any specific good from a company, whereas I don't get a choice in which government I pay to build the the roads or police where I have established my life.