The example of birth records highlights the issue with such "unforseen" threats - anything and everything can become such a threat. In the past it was birth records, or census records. In the future it may be liquer store sales data or air quality metrics. We can't just stop improving things with data because of a vague fear that it may one day be used against us. Especially that data abuse is mostly a small symptom among numerous, more serious issues (e.g. by the time birth records were used for exercising racism, the problems with that government were most likely pretty visible, and even if they didn't have that data, they'd find another way to do what they wanted to do).
I see what you're saying, but I think that the onus should be on the government to clearly demonstrate where the value from collecting this data will come from.
What improvements has the Charleston PD made with this data? What improvements are they planning on making? They offer precisely one example of a man convicted for murder using that information, but while they claim it's "crucial", we can't exactly go back and see if he would have been convicted without that one particular row in the database.
We can't even get the data without paying nearly a quarter of a million dollars.
Fine; let's use data about me to improve things. But tell me what you're going to improve, tell me how long you're going to keep the data, and find a damn good way to reassure me that it won't be used to harm me, either.
I agree. There should always be a good justification provided for the data collection, as well as a description of safeguards against malicious use and also a way to verify if the data is indeed used as intended and brings in value. This should be a minimum standard to hold a government to.
