Hi @chrisaiki,
I understand your concern. But as @mobbs pointed out. All of the information is publicly availabe on the blockchain. It's not like I'm wiretapping or running an NSA operation collecting private data on people illegally like oh wait.. The NSA is doing.
So, spare me the legality concern.
As for:
and you can add a note to classify people: this one is Jew, this one is homosexual, this one is disabled
Well, the lists could be used for contest entries, could be used for writing prompt winners, could be used for anything really, the sky is the limit... I'm not sure why your imagination flew in that direction.
If someone is going to profile and discriminate against people in their private lists, I'm sure they would do it anyways maybe on a notepad or even a piece of paper. Heck, I'm sure they have such lists in their mind too, no one really can prevent them.
I only try to imagine the arguments of the opponents:
"Accumulating information about people is illegal
Hivedevs are doing illegal things
Let's make Hive illegal"
Any lawyer can do that! even if your intention are goods.
The tool itself only looks up the information that is already stored publicly on the blockchain. Technically, these are all transactions that have already been accumulated on the produced blocks.
I'm no lawyer, but I know that all Blockchains did indeed trigger privacy concerns all over, which is still an ongoing thing (This is not specific to Hive.) And currently, it's widely accepted that whoever uses any Blockchain, already consented such transactions to be public, and can be publicly used.
So again, I understand your concern, and I appreciate your input. But that's something all the Blockchain tech have to look into, and deal with.