Is your DNA public or private?

On October 23, 2013, the ‘Guardian’ published an article with the headline: ‘Bell to track customers web history, TV viewing, phone calls, mobile usage’; dateline Toronto by ‘The Canadian Press’. The article says that Bell will begin collecting customer data beginning Nov. 16, 2013 and the data will not be linked with the customer’s identity but only where they live, their gender, and age range.

Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor said he’s shocked by the extent of the ‘data grab’ that Bell is preparing to undertake. Geist said “What Bell is able to aggregate, being as large as it is, is far more than any individual Internet company, even a company as large as Google, (can aggregate). It’s a level of intrusiveness and monitoring that I think is truly unprecedented in Canada.”

In 2014 CTV News Atlantic interviewed people from socialmedialab.ca at Dalhousie University. The think-tank’s objective was to study the social impact of network technologies. Large computer monitors graphically showed network graphs with nodes of websites and cellphones with lines between nodes showing connections. I visited socialmedialab.ca in 2014 and 2018 - today the think-tank is hosted by Ryerson University. When combined with a category machine Bell’s data aggregate forms an artificial intelligence machine; category algorithms sort data and evolve classifications and/or categories.

B. F. Skinner in his theory of operant conditioning and behavior modification dreamed of using a category machine with a human DNA database. Is your DNA public or private?

Tony Lloyd, Mount Stewart