What Does Screening Your Phone Records Have To Do With Health Care?

I have been following  the news about the National Security Agency (NSA) access to our phone records with great interest.  If we as a society don’t sort some of this out, we’ll see a repeat in the health sector a few years from now.

These discussions seem to pivot on issues of population-level safety vs. personal liberty, and on trust vs. suspicion re: how much of the process is driven by machine learning vs. individuals.

It is interesting that the story about the scanning of phone records came out close to reports about the IRS targeting certain non-profits.  The two are quite incendiary when it comes to paranoia around privacy.

As a Boston area resident, I was also quite puzzled by criticisms that our surveillance processes were not good enough to prevent the marathon bombings.  I have to wonder if these same folks were then chafing at the possibility of having their own phone records scanned. What is good for the prospective terrorist is bad for the average citizen, I guess. [...]