NOYB!

Ponder a trifecta of recent stories from the Nosybody files:

The Ranks of Gun Owners Grow, and So Does Their Resistance to Scrutiny

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday granted full approval to Leqembi, allowing Medicare enrollees to get fully covered treatment with the drug if they qualify and agree to report data to a registry.

A proposed law would require New York state agencies to collect data that more precisely identifies residents who identify as lesbian, gay and transgender,

Gathering data on Americans is everybody's favorite pastime, it seems. It's what makes Google, Meta, and the rest of Big Tech a large chunk of their money, for one thing. For another, the government's apparatchiks really, really, REALLY like to know about anyone and everyone who doesn't kiss their feet.

Much of this is couched in "public policy" and public-good language, but the clash with liberty is blatant.

It's absolutely, positively, none of anyone's business whether someone owns a gun or guns, barring some sort of probable cause sufficient to issue a warrant (e.g. a convicted felon waves a gun around in an on-line video). All this blather:

The implications of false denials of firearms ownership are substantial. First, such practices would result in an underestimation of firearms ownership rates and diminish our capacity to test the association between firearm access and various firearm violence-related outcomes. Furthermore, such practices would skew our understanding of the demographics of firearm ownership, such that we would overemphasize the characteristics of those more apt to disclose. Third, the mere existence of a large group of individuals who falsely deny firearm ownership highlights that intervention aimed at promoting firearm safety (e.g., secure firearm storage) may fail to reach communities in need.

is pretzel logic intended to subordinate and undermine individual rights and sovereignty, because 'they really want to know where the guns are.'

It's unconscionable to deny someone access to a life-saving drug unless he agrees to 'fess up to its use (and more).

And, it's also an irrefutable invasion of privacy to "find all the gays," even if the data-gatherer is a liberal/LGBTQ+ friendly city.

The plaints and excuses are always about safety or "needs of the many" (I deconstruct the latter here) but the real reason is the reflexive desire to control and the behind-the-curtain reveal is the lack of respect for others' rights and privacy.

MYOB, an abbreviation for "Mind Your Own Business," was (per Urban Dictionary, at least), was coined back in 1951 by science fiction author Eric Frank Russell.

MYOB seems awfully quaint nowadays, especially with a large and growing economic sector founded on "other people's business." 'Social Media Influencer' is a growth industry, and far too many people spend their lives sharing every potentially marketable detail and visually appealing moment in the hopes that they, too, can make bank.

That doesn't bother me. If you want to try and be the next Paris Hilton (net worth: $300M) or Kim Kardashian (net worth: $1.2B), it's not my place to infringe on your self-determination.

I also can't fault private-sector data gatherers from looking to make a living from the vast troves of information we voluntarily share.

Where my objections do arise (and, hoo-boy, do they ever), is when the government looks to get in on the data game. Recall a nugget from last fall:

U.S. government buys data on Americans with little oversight, report finds.

Seems our government has found a lovely end-around the Fourth Amendment's protections, and it even has the leftists at the Daily Beast miffed.

My take? If and when they ask me about X or Y or Z, I'm going to be more diligent in responding NOYB.

As in None of Your Business. Perhaps with a vulgar interjection incorporated.

Or, perhaps, I'll just lie, and help screw up their data sets.