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Comment by jylam | Hacker News Reader

It's not even your own government institutions, it's another totally separate government asking for your biometric data.

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Disclaimer: I’m totally against any normalization of the collection/sharing of biometric data. But just to play Devil’s Advocate:

Let’s say I’m a boring white midwestern HVAC contractor with a mortgage and 2.5 kids. Big Bad China acquires a picture of my face and my fingerprints. Also my DNA, why not, just for argument’s sake! I never plan to visit China. How does this biometric sharing affect me, my rights, my safety, monetarily or otherwise? Connect the dots for me because it’s hard for me to argue the privacy angle if I can’t even explain the danger of a simple scenario like this.

Write some anti-CCP stuff on social media, become randomly targeted by China's "Magic Methods". Whole lot easier when they have your biometric data.

The typical counter argument goes something like China installs a webcam in your bathroom and broadcasts the stream on purely national TV. How does that affect you? It’s just some personal video that’s never going impinge on your life.

Another way of putting it: all personal information should by default be kept private, until there’s a specific need from you for that information to be processed by known people.

This doesn't actually answer the question, though, as people value their home interior video privacy a lot more than they value their biometric privacy.

There are lots of scenarios.

- Your data could be sold by China to your insurer.

- Or they could buy your insurer and use the information they have on you.

- They could use it for some corporate espionage.

- Perhaps you or your boss need to be convinced that you should sell Chinese HVAC equipment instead of Korean.

- Maybe one of your kids will get married to someone from China and you have been critical of their government online. They may visit China and be punished for that.

> Disclaimer: I’m totally against any normalization of the collection/sharing of biometric data. But just to play Devil’s Advocate:

> Let’s say I’m a boring white midwestern HVAC contractor with a mortgage and 2.5 kids. Big Bad China acquires a picture of my face and my fingerprints.

1) If you cannot imagine the potential problems, then why do you believe the contents of your disclaimer?

2) Let's say you are not "a boring white midwestern HVAC contractor"

The problem with a totally separate government having your data, is that they are not bound by your government's laws. What prevents a foreign government from selling your data to private entities, which then resell these data to criminals? Or, a more likely scenario, said foreign government isn't as careful about vetting who has access to that kind of data (because they don't have the GDPR there), leading to criminals from your own country getting access to it?

That is: even if you never plan to visit the remote country in question, the data can come back to your country (or a third country you might want to visit). And it might not even get there intact: what happens if your fingerprints get mislabeled as someone else's?

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