There is a deeper issue here that is not going away any time soon: our electronics, and the data they hold, have become extensions of who we are.

FORBES: Homeland Security Approves Their Right To Search and Seize Your Electronics Without Suspicion

He said that Google was hiding behind the European directive in setting time limits on how long it should hold on to the data.

BBC: NEWS | Technology | Privacy bodies back Google step

RFLP-based databases, it will probably be true manyfold for medical databases that hold data on particular genes, and may well be linked to samples that could, in the fullness of time, yield the complete genome of an individual.

ECONOMIST: A survey of the human genome