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`law enforcement a means to potentially quickly identify violent criminals`

Go ahead and replace "law enforcement" with political group you don't like, and "violent criminals" for a group you do.

I don't get it. What political groups rely heavily on not being identified? Most political groups have leaders whose identity is public knowledge.

> What political groups rely heavily on not being identified?

Resistances, opposition groups in some environments, etc.

It means you will be unidentified by political groups. EG let's say a right wing goverment in France finding all the gypsies in Paris.

Or a life insurance corporation seeing that you have predisposition for heart disease, and refusing to provide services to you.

> Or a life insurance corporation seeing that you have predisposition for heart disease, and refusing to provide services to you.

I don't get your example. It's a private company and has a right to decide what risks it should take...Unless there is a government control over life insurance rules - why would an insurance company risk losing money? It's the same as charging an 80 year old man higher premium than a 20 year old.

Because perfect information makes insurances useless. Insurances work because we know that most people have roughly the same chance, plus or minus a bit, to get royally fucked in life by disease, acts of God, human maliciousness and all that. That means that when someone gets the rough end of the stick, the entire group helps to pay to keep them on their feet.

If we have perfect (or near-perfect) knowledge, what would insurers do? Well, they'd charge you for exactly how much you're going to cost, plus some administrative costs, plus some extra. At that point, everyone's better off not having insurance.

> That means that when someone gets the rough end of the stick, the entire group helps to pay to keep them on their feet.

That's exactly what I meant, government should be that entity that helps those on the rough end of the stick. Riding on the misinformation of life insurance company is not a solution either

What you suggest is that insurance, as practiced for the past thousand years, not exist at all then.

> > Riding on the misinformation of life insurance company is not a solution either

But this is the very and only concept of insurance: misinformation on misfortune...

When the US was still a part of the British Empire, it was pretty important for revolutionaries not to be easily identified. Same with resistance fighters against every empire ever. Spaniards against Napoleon, French against Hitler, Irish against Cromwell, Vietnamese against everybody. If I can identify your family members, I can threaten them and through them, you.

I think it's less about the leaders of a group than about its members themselves.

When I read about the government having access to identification attributes of the general populace, I recall that a focal part of the Nazi attempts to eradicate European Jews was actually finding them. One theory for why Dutch Jews were killed at a higher rate than neighboring countries was that the government kept religious affiliation as part of its census information. IIRC, the Dutch resistance made a semi-successful attempt to destroy the records before they could be used. I can't find a direct reference to that particular event yet, hence my 'IIRC', but the general context is laid out in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands_in_World_War_II.

I think the point here is that even if a government is being innocuous in its information gathering, what happens if the government is then occupied by a group that is entirely not innocuous? This can get much more subtle than genocide: for example healthcare groups using data to try to remove people with certain conditions from their rolls.

With regards to political groups, what would DNA tell you that their Facebook profile and network wouldn't?

Who their relatives are. One tool of political assassination is to out the <some bad thing> sibling of the { conservative | liberal } party candidate.

I would think that if they had any connection with them, there would be a Facebook link. If there is not even a Facebook connection, I doubt that the fact that a politician has <some bad thing> sibling that they don't really keep in touch with is going to be a big deal.

But just because you know the names of the parents of someone doesn't mean that you know they happen to be cousins.

Oh, what a blissful #fakenews-less reality that would be.

or in some countries actual assassinations or kidnappings of family members.

People shouldn't be giving Facebook their info either.

It would allow them a well targeted ethnic cleansing. To give you some ideas:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_unworthy_of_life - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_eugenics

With respect, if we hit this point, it really doesn't matter if the company wants to share the data or not, the government is taking it.

sure, but if it was anonymized/encrypted/some kind of "only the owner can see this" they couldn't do anything with it.

That is literally the exact reason why ever storing such data nonanonymously is a bad idea. It can and will be used.

I wouldn't underestimate the importance of technology.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust?wprov=...

Replace "political group" with "ethnic or racial group".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule

It could tell you who a masked protester was based on the blood they left behind on a rubber bullet left on the scene, or who sent a mailed-in tip to a newspaper based on saliva on the envelope.

Just as DNA can help you find who did a criminal act, it can track down who did a political act.

Giving data to the FBI, and giving data to any random political group are very very different things. This straw man can probably be seen from space.

That random political group will one day be in power, or a larger political group will adopt their policies to take their votes.

Sure, maybe not, but maybe so. It does happen.

I think if anything it points to the fallacy that not allowing the government to collect this type of data, but allowing corporations to collect it, ends up with the same result as allowing the government to collect this data itself. All we've really accomplished is making things cheaper for the government as the private sector is footing the bill for collection and storage.

Put differently,corporations exist to put prices on things. Corporations are clearly minting products from peoples DNA samples. They probably can’t deny sales to governments.

Let's say the government was able to perfectly connect every person who commits a crime with that crime.

Combine that against the reality that everyone commits 3 felonies a day.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704471504574438...

That's the perfect tool for oppression. Do you really want the government to be too good at solving crimes?

Don’t forget to mention selective enforcement. That’s the real key to “monetizing” the pantopicon.

3 felonies a day is a lie. The fact that there's a book with that title doesn't mean it's reality.

Your point is a decent one, no need to exaggerate.

> 3 felonies a day is a lie

This is a compelling argument.

The FBI is never going to arrest people for the felony of improper paperwork on their crawfish fishing business based on their DNA.

> potentially quickly identify violent criminals via physical traits

Western civilization requires warrants supported by probable cause, because history has proved the hard way that those are not the kind of people the state would be identifying if left to its own devices.

Forgot to add "for now."

The risk with this sort of thing is you never know which way the political winds will blow.

Case in point, I thought we progressed to the point where concentration camps were inconceivable in America given our past history with them nationally and internationally. And yet here we are.

The problem with using DNA to identify someone in crime is that we leave DNA everywhere. See this case for example: https://www.wired.com/story/dna-transfer-framed-murder/

Came here to mention that same article. The more important point, to my view, is that the DNA we shed doesn't necessarily stay put.

DNA transference, law enforcement access to large DNA databases, familial matching, and advances in extracting DNA from trace samples make for a scary combination. Lukis Anderson was damned lucky that the person who inadvertently transferred his DNA to a crime scene could be identified.

Reading that article and the studies it cites makes me lose all faith in DNA evidence. It seems anyone can be carrying anyone else’s DNA at any given time. What’s the point of considering it as evidence?

It's evidence. I can point you to tons of cases of eye witnesses providing faulty testimony (in good faith, not to mention those who lie).

Is there an oracle that will tell you who committed the crime? No. But it seems odd to be OK with some forms of evidence that are even more unreliable than this, if your issue is about reliability.

>If the company did not disclose this in massive font to potential customers ahead of time, then I do think this company should very quickly go out of business.

Disclose what? The point of most of these services is that you are adding yourself to a searchable database where you can find relations. The FBI seems to be using the service for the explicit reason it exists.

I'm very uncomfortable with the thought that one of these services could hand over specific DNA information to groups that could be used to profile you (employers, insurance, etc) but this use case really shouldn't come as surprising. It seems like complaining that the FBI found you by searching for your name on Facebook.

23andMe, for example, only shows your information to people that it identifies as being related to you (typically ~1000 people). And that's only if you have open sharing turned on -- otherwise they need to send you a request. That's quite different from just sharing your information with anyone who searches for it.

There’s a meaningful difference between the government getting a warrant to look for a specific person’s DNA and searching everyone’s DNA to see if it’s a match. Why should the government get to digitally “stop and frisk” three hundred thousand people because they have a hair sample from a murder scene?

You talk about meaningful differences, but then lump a search in a database with stop and frisk. Either everyone is allowed to use hyperbole or no one is - you can’t have it both ways.

Do you understand the difference between searching an individual you know had committed a crime and searching pool of people that might contain an individual?

No hyperbole needed, and only one way is present :)

I'm hung up on that I, as a member of the general public, can essentially do the same thing when using the service more-or-less as intended.

In talking about searching a pool of people, I'm not really seeing how this is different than using Facebook to search for Criminal McEvildoer's name. The police are searching a pool of people (facebook users) to match a string. It's effectively the same thing, yeah?

The big issue here is that people are making privacy decisions without thinking through the ramifications of the privacy decisions.

Same reason the government should be allowed to search Facebook for information on a person of interest, or use the whitepages, or search public records such as property records, or use Google to search the web. They don't have any more access than a normal user, so they don't need a warrant. They are acting just like a member of the public and get the exact same results you or I would get if we used that site. If it's available for a member of the general population, it's available to law enforcement without a warrant. That's the way it's always been.

People are putting their genetic information into a database in order to be searchable by their genetic information. If they have a problem with being searchable by their genetic information, then they shouldn't upload their genetic information into publicly searchable databases.

>The Family Tree database is free to access and can be used by anyone with a DNA profile to upload, not just paying customers.

>Officials at Family Tree said customers could decide to opt out of any familial matching, which would prevent their profiles from being searchable by the FBI. But by doing so, customers would also be unable to use one of the key features of the service: finding possible relatives through DNA testing.

>In December 2018, the company changed its terms of service to allow law enforcement to use the database to identify suspects of “a violent crime,” such as homicide or sexual assault, and to identify the remains of a victim.

>In a statement, Greenspan, the president and founder of Gene by Gene, Family Tree’s parent company, said the firm would not be violating its terms of privacy to its customers, despite the FBI’s access.

>“We came to the conclusion that if law enforcement created accounts, with the same level of access to the database as the standard FamilyTreeDNA user, they would not be violating user privacy and confidentiality,” Greenspan said.

>In a statement, company officials told BuzzFeed News that despite the FBI’s access to the database, agents would not be able to obtain more information than what is accessible to normal users of the service.

> The Family Tree database is free to access and can be used by anyone with a DNA profile to upload, not just paying customers.

But the terms claim you are only able to upload files which are "my own or belongs to someone for who I am legally authorized to act." If FBI agents are creating accounts and then uploading DNA which doesn't belong to them, that seems to me to violate the terms.

Why is matching DNA analogous to "stop and frisk"? If the govt doesn't actually get access to the raw DNA data, but only the records that matched the sample they submitted, it sounds like a very narrow tool that doesn't infringe anyone's privacy without a valid reason (i.e. if there's a match).

I mean, fundamentally, how is it different from the police asking a hotel administrator whether John Doe stayed there?

>> I mean, fundamentally, how is it different from the police asking a hotel administrator whether John Doe stayed there?

I don't think it's different. Hopefully the hotel operator has the good sense to tell any law enforcement without a warrant precisely where they can shove it. It sounds like this DNA company does not have that good sense, however.

> On the other hand, essentially all this does is provide law enforcement a means to potentially quickly identify

People who support government's ability to violate our rights always seem to think that the government will never use it in bad faith... And then they act surprised when their rights are gone.

> On the other hand, essentially all this does is provide law enforcement a means to potentially quickly identify violent criminals via physical traits as opposed to the contents of their mind such as forcing someone to unlock a phone which I am very against.

That is far from all it does. We have had massive historic and ongoing issues with the correct presentation and interpretation of forensic evidence by experts. There are a number of potential issues that can arise, but the deepest issue is a gradual shifting of the burden of proof onto defendants.

"Perhaps the greatest concern in all this debate, has been the subtle shift in the burden of proof resulting from misunderstanding or misuse of streamlined DNA profile match reports; with assumptions made and inferences asserted that a DNA match could only have resulted from the allegations, unless or until a defendant can demonstrate otherwise."

https://keithborer.co.uk/news/dna-profile-matches-their-use-...

> Assuming DNA technology is advanced enough to provide few false positives (which I am not sure it is) and prosecution is based on additional concrete evidence as well I think I am fine with this.

The problem is that we have learned that so much forensic science is just flat out not scientific. DNA has many issues depending on the type of matching done and the samples gathered. It's scary that DNA has become such a slam dunk in cases, because it makes framing someone for a crime incredibly easy.

Just to be more clear, the problem is that if they don't find a perfect match (that ensures a low number of false positives) then they will try a partial match, and if I]that fails a somewhat match, but then the expert will claim that there is still a very low probability of false positives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_profiling#Issues_with_fore...

re: "..essentially all this does is provide law enforcement a means to potentially quickly identify violent criminals via physical traits"

Perhaps today at 3:00 EST it may helping law enforcement identify violent criminals, but tomorrow it may be helping other gov't entities directly (or indirectly via familial) identify individuals for any reason at all.

This part is concerning though:

"Under the arrangement, the company has also agreed to test DNA evidence for the FBI in its private laboratory."

I hope the FBI will corroborate whatever results the private company comes up with later and just use the data to narrow down the suspects.

That's likely how it will play out, DNA evidence is a lot shakier these days since it's better known that DNA can go places the owner has never been. The transition point where juries don't know that though will be a bit scary, no one wants to be falsely implicated (like [0]) because they touched a handle on a bus and later the actual criminal touched it too.

[0] https://www.wired.com/story/dna-transfer-framed-murder/

>DNA can go places the owner has never been

Damn right it can. I was on a business trip alone and found some of my wife’s hair in my bed. I know it was hers because there was some more on a jacket in my luggage. I know testing hair isn’t exactly straight forward, but that was her DNA in a country she’s never even been to.

Im sure they can just send the samples to Target for double checking like they've done for years.

https://corporate.target.com/article/2012/02/an-unexpected-c...

Question: would policing in the US be easier without the 4th amendment? Would it matter if the answer was yes?

Problem is private companies do and will have access to this data and will one day do the worst imaginable thing we don’t want them doing.

There is really no way forward with this. Even is legally limited to law enforcement, the data will get hacked, leaked, abused. It’s just a matter of time.

"can screen people for genetics flaws and make hiring decisions etc. based on them" Don't worry, by time we can accurately do this screening, the large push to automation will have already rendered most people unemployable.

It also makes it possible to screen for people with various ancestries. In the future, it will be easier to identify the target du jour for rounding up.

I'd happily put my DNA on public record if it promotes scientific research. I honestly don't understand the privacy concerns here for the lawful citizen.

Place; Amsterdam. Date; 27th of March, 1943. Objective; destroy the records identifying the 70000 Jewish people living in Amsterdam.

They were lawful citizens too. The law was to identify them and ship them out. Do you understand their privacy concerns?

Can you promise that this won't happen again? Can you assure us that no future group will use the records for this sort of thing? I believe it will happen again. I believe it can happen here. I'm not keen on making it easier for them.