Ecko Magazine 
Without a doubt : Maya’s Food has made itself well known. These last few months the media have obligingly spread a huge publicity campaign which presented an enticing concept : food, bookstore, florist and cyberbar. Maya’s Food is just one place but with an abundance of services focused on the pleasure of the senses and communication (in the broad sense of the term…). But the services on offer don’t just stop there…
In the spirit of a renewed hedonism, Maya’s Food offers its customers personalized menus. By that, let it be un- derstood it’s a personalization unlike anything you have been offered : as soon as you take your seat, even before ordering any drinks, you are welcomed by a short questionnaire at your table. It finishes by the offer of a metabolic and phenotypic analysis.
Excuse me ? You read it correctly. What trade unions and other associations pursue in businesses to protect employees’ right to anonymity (FuturHebdo : Industrio-private Espionage), these restaurants have made a selling point : “Let us see, deep inside you, who you are… And we will feed you the best possible way !” That being so, it is in fact trying to say, in these times of chronic, diverse and varied health crises, that personalized and beneficial food (nutri- tious, purifying, stimulating, energising…) can’t do any harm… What remains is a question to which the answer hasn’t yet been found : what does Mayas Food do with all the data collected on the customers who frequent this now famous chain. Mayas Food’s IT director guarantees complete anonymity and non-correlation between a genetic profile and the customer’s identity in the name of medical confidentiality : Mayas Food’s system of analysis is controlled by an ethics committee consisting of, amongst others, several doctors. Should they be believed ? The EDPS (the European successor to the French CNIL [the French Data Protection Agency], see FuturHebdo : Individual Protection) is studying this database’s case which is considered to be critical. To date, it hasn’t found anything of note. It remains true that it’s a big temptation, for a government, an insurer… a market group… to lay its hands on such a treasure…
The temptation could quite simply be too much for Maya’ Food : will it always be prevented from marketing its database of genetic profiles, cor- related or not with the identities. At the time, businesses such as Facebook took the step without hesitating… It’s true that data sold at the beginning of the century by certain social networks could pass as harmless in comparison to the millions of human genetic profiles ! Under the pretext of enjoyment, it would be a big danger to see individual freedom truncated a little more, initially for Maya’s Food’s customers… Once again, it’s the customer who has to act thanks to his purchasing power, which is becoming as sharp as a ballot paper !
© Olivier Parent – prospective.lecomptoir2.pro