A brief exchange with @DianeCoyle1859 changed my mind about this. Some higher purposes require us all to agree to be coerced to supply our data.
@DianeCoyle1859 For instance, healthcare data supplied collectively and compulsorily, can improve healthcare. Individual rights to withhold data would here impose an externality on the collective objective of improving healthcare.
@DianeCoyle1859 You could make a similar case for transport use and consumption behaviour.
@DianeCoyle1859 The former improves transport provision; the latter, distribution logistics.
@DianeCoyle1859 In all cases there are very large risks of institutional failure compromising personal freedoms. So the case for coercively collecting and using this data is not proven a-priori.
@DianeCoyle1859 You could project forwards and mull genetic data provision.
@DianeCoyle1859 Some data provision issues have the power to transform social policy problems. For example by turning insurance against risk into redistribution. This may or may not be a good thing!
@DianeCoyle1859 As explained by @FryRsquared in her Hello World book, technology is changing what it's feasible to collect, and what evil and good purposes data we already have can be put to.
@DianeCoyle1859 @FryRsquared Significance of this is that there are social possibilities and threats that were not collectively signed up to, not consciously, but are now in place. And there are potential new collective decisions to make that weren't there previously.
@DianeCoyle1859 @FryRsquared Complicated by the fact that a lot of this is not widely known or understood; today's era of dysfunctional knowledge transmission and policy formulation is not the best climate in which to renew/establish these social choices.
