But they literally can’t ask you for it if it is about high volumes of data that only become useful if you have all or close to all of it like statistical analysis of rare events. It would be prohibitively expensive if you had to ask hundreds of thousands of people just to figure out that there is an increase in e.g. cancer or some lung disease near coal power plants.
They don’t need most of the date, they need a statistically significant sample to have a high confidence in the result. And that’s a small percentage of the total population.
And you could have something on file where you opt in to such things, just like you can opt in to being an organ donor. Maybe make it opt out if numbers are important. But it cannot be publicly available without a way to say no.
But they literally can’t ask you for it if it is about high volumes of data that only become useful if you have all or close to all of it like statistical analysis of rare events. It would be prohibitively expensive if you had to ask hundreds of thousands of people just to figure out that there is an increase in e.g. cancer or some lung disease near coal power plants.
They don’t need most of the date, they need a statistically significant sample to have a high confidence in the result. And that’s a small percentage of the total population.
And you could have something on file where you opt in to such things, just like you can opt in to being an organ donor. Maybe make it opt out if numbers are important. But it cannot be publicly available without a way to say no.