According to NPR it might one day be possible to identify us based not on our DNA, but on the bacteria that covers our skin. Which brings up a laundry list of issues regarding ease of identification. With this information it is constantly becoming more and more possible to find someone pretty much no matter where they run off to, to pull up and disclose any web site we’ve ever visited, anything we’ve ever said, the list of ways in which our privacy as individuals has been offset by advances in technology is long enough and deep enough that it begs the question: What is more valuable, our privacy or our safety? Another related question would be, are we necessarily safer if we know more about each other? For me the questions are not easily answered. Yes it is easier to catch a criminal if we can identify them based on basically anything all the way down to microscopic beings that live on their fingertips, and it is in theory harder to plan large scale attacks when all forms of communication are monitored and recorded, but the price of that kind of monitoring in terms of independence and privacy is inevitably very high. It can also be said that that type of monitoring drives people to do things they wouldn’t normally do because their personal lives have been so invaded. So as much as access to information might give us insight into what people are planning, it might also be part of the reason why people are planning these things in the first place.
I for one generally believe that people tend to be peaceful when they are given a) autonomy and b) enough to live well. The fact that we live in a world where the disparity between rich and poor is so vast is in all likelihood causing a majority of the tensions that require us to monitor people. So I would put it this way. As long as we insist on having more than everybody else, and insist that it is our right to have so much more than everybody else, we are going to have to do plenty of monitoring to make sure all the stuff we have that they don’t have is safe.
So, I guess what I’m saying is this: as long as we insist on maintaining that imbalance, continue to be prepared to be worried about where you leave the bacteria on your fingers.
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