zlacker

Example: in the 1930, Dutch municipalities would record ethnicity for their citizens. The argument was that ethnicity wasn't something you'd need to hide, and it could be useful should you need to identify yourself.

When in 1940 the German occupiers took over, those records turned out to be very useful for their genocide.

>>kvdvee+(OP)
would record ethnicity

*religious affiliation

It makes sense that ethnicity would have been recorded as well, but FAFAIK the Germans mostly used the data on religious identity (i.e. which persons were a member of which church community).

>>tremon+r1
And that makes what difference exactly...?

>>_a_a_a+Od
They’re still doing it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_tax#Germany

>>civili+Bm
And this is a way you contribute some of your taxes to your religious affiliation

>>tremon+r1
The point still stands; any kind of private information like ethnicity, religion, gender identity, sexuality - NONE of those are relevant to a government, and ANY of those can be used to identify and persecute people if there is a regime or law change aimed at any of those categories.

Tangentially related, it's why things like period trackers are dangerous too; the US has had a spate of anti-abortion laws, the data from those apps (if used) can be used to detect pregnancies and whether they have stopped prematurely. For example.

>>Cthulh+k51
My reply wasn't meant to refute the parent's point. I wanted to clarify because in today's society ethnicity is a much more contentious data point than religion. Given the prevalence of race-related issues in the media it makes much more sense to a present-day mind to say "maybe we shouldn't be recording ethnicity" than to say "maybe we shouldn't record a person's religion".

>>Cthulh+k51
> "NONE of those are relevant to a government"

It is in the context of taxes if you agree that regligious organizations would receive church tax from the government.

>>prmous+If1
That’s a big if!