Pretty sure it's the same across the world, really. Try getting your medical records expunged in Cuba or your search records expunged in China. I bet you have the same success as in the US.

Maybe you should look at free people in mostly free countries, instead of dictatorships.

For instance, the EU and Switzerland.

Have you successfully gotten Google or Facebook or your doctor to purge your records in Switzerland?

Are you suggesting some corporations have become more powerful than our lawfully elected governments?

I’m suggesting that “data about you” is not the same as “your data” and never has been.

I honestly don't know how to distinguish between "me" and "about me".

These discussions always go full meta. Makes my head hurt.

Being a simple bear, I try to distill these paradoxes (freewill, love, death, what is art) down to something actionable. Hence my conclusion, after much thought and effort (eg securing medical records), that "I am my data, my data is me." and therefore I own it.

If privacy is the ability to control what is publicly known about yourself, the best (practical, prescriptive) way I can think to do that is via property rights.

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I appreciate your reply. I'm going to revisit my beliefs, conclusions. Starting with the currently generally accepted definitions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_identity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authentication

> I honestly don't know how to distinguish between "me" and "about me".

> These discussions always go full meta. Makes my head hurt.

You go to the store to buy a carton of eggs. The store now has data about you and your purchase. If you pay with credit card, they have a record tied to your identity. If you pay with cash, they still have a record of what you bought with your eggs, and nothing stops them from scribbling your name on the copy of the receipt they keep.

You have no right to demand that the store cease possession of this data. They might use this data (in aggregate) to determine when they need to restock eggs. They might use this data (along with other purchase records) to determine that butter should be stocked next to the eggs. They might discard this data as soon as books are reconciled or they might retain this data in perpetuity. This was the case is 1920 and it's the case now. We like to talk about "big data" as if it changed the fundamentals, but all it actually changed was the scale.

Well. This is where we'll disagree then.

No entity has any right whatsoever to retain any data about me, for any purpose.

Your rights end where mine begin. My right to privacy trumps everyone else's profit motive.

Edit: Scratch that. Our disagreement is more fundamental. I believe humans have a fundamental right to privacy. You don't.

I absolutely believe in the right to privacy. But I don’t think the right to privacy extends that far. I think it’s kind of unreasonable that everyone else loses their rights to record data to protect your right to privacy. This runs counter to the first amendment and makes journalism impossible. It also makes it impossible to do things like monitor the police.

Good points.