[ClassicFarris]

At first I thought something along these lines, then I remembered:

1. Google has "trends" when things happen, and "Earthquake" was most certainly googled near/at the time it happened. 2. The phone company has records, which many people texted/called near/at the time it happened. 3. 911 has records and calls were made near/at the time it happened.

and so on…

So there are private entities and government that have data around the event that can correlate behavior and situations, so it shouldn't seem scary to me… it's just should I have better access to the data? And if I do, what can I tell from the correlation?

[jsprogrammer]

I think it also has to do with what content is being recorded.

Intimate sleep data is a bit different than knowing I called 911 for an emergency situation.

[dohertyjf]

Are you saying that the sleep data is more personal than calling 911? I have to question that, because you could call 911 for all sorts of private situations that you wouldn't want publicly known. So no, it's not really different.

[gknoy]

Especially in this case. Saying something like, "I couldn't go back to sleep after that earthquake woke me up" is the kind of thing many people would share on twitter, facebook, or around the water cooler with coworkers.

[baddox]

It's subjective. I would consider a call I made to 911 to be a lot more personally sensitive than my sleep patterns.