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Comment by apo | Hacker News Reader

Few people taking theses tests understand or care about the privacy-destroying effect of what they're doing to themselves and their families.

For example, this is from the AncestryDNA (different company) terms of service:

By submitting User Provided Content to AncestryDNA, you grant AncestryDNA and the Ancestry Group Companies a perpetual, royalty-free, worldwide, sublicensable, transferable license to host, transfer, process, analyze, distribute, communicate, and display your submission for the purposes of providing Ancestry's products and services, conducting Ancestry’s research and product development, enhancing Ancestry’s user experience, and making and offering personalized products and services.

https://www.ancestry.com/cs/legal/dnaterms_2017_09_22_us?hid...

There's a feel-good statement elsewhere in the document about how the company won't disclose your info to third parties, but this grant of rights pretty much covers anything you'd want to do with a DNA sequence.

Privacy policies change, but grants of rights like this to a service like Ancestry are forever.

I imagine a future in which every casual DNA company has been hoovered into a single powerful corporation. All those rights granted by users will transfer to that new company. That company will be just as mean as Facebook (or Microsoft in its heyday), but 10x more powerful.

View on HN

> and their families

That's how a local cold murder case was solved last year.

DNA from a 25-year-old crime scene was run against the samples in one of these genealogy databases, and they found a familial match. Police set up a sting to covertly collect DNA from that person's immediate family. They got their DNA match with a brother's water bottle police took from a trash can after he worked a DJ gig at a school.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/26/us/christy-mirack-slaying-upd...

The now-confessed killer was the DJ at my wedding. He never would have been caught if his brother hadn't done one of these genealogy tests. He wasn't even a suspect in the initial investigation.

Indeed. Not that I plan on being involved in any such crimes (necessary disclaimer?) but a family member of mine submitted their DNA to one of these services. Now it's irrelevant whether I submit mine or not because it's as good as in there anyway. Feels real good having your rights signed away by someone else...

What rights? Surely if you have rights to your DNA, then your family member has rights to their DNA. It’s just an unfortunate consequence of how DNA works.

No, it’s an unfortunate consequence of how the dna test provider treats everyone’s data.

It’s incredibly empowering for abuse and completely disrespectful to the individual. The assymetry is staggering.

What if a court compels the analysis or data sharing?

That migrates the issue from business ethics and consumer rights to that of legality.

The fbi has is own database. Of course having everyone’s dna will help them solve a few (one?) more crimes. At what cost?

It is probably wrong to think of DNA as personal property. Its public use more closely resembles a commons which is shared by many. We don't give individuals the right to pollute air, for instance, simply because they own property that has air on it.

Likewise we should develop principles for information which when combined with other information can be used to transgress against 3rd parties' enjoyment of their own privacy.

> Itis probably wrong to think of DNA as personal property.

DNA cannot be thought of any other way whilst we continue to use it for personal identification.

We don't have another mechanism for protecting something uniquely identifying from tyranny.

Perhaps we should, especially as in this case others privacy may be co-dependent on myself, as you noted.

In the US we absolutely don't treat DNA as personal property.

For instance, there's no need to get a warrant to follow you around and pick up something that you discard and then examine that object for DNA.

> We don't give individuals the right to pollute air, for instance, simply because they own property that has air on it

Lol, what planet do you live on? Sounds dope.

The battles to price externalities into markets here on Earth are all hard fought. By default if you can’t see it you don’t pay for it. Anything beyond that needs to be pounded out in the political ring.

Total surveillance or global DNA law enforcement database would solve many murders and prevent wrongful convictions. However, it would also give many opportunities for framing convenient suspects and "encouraging" confessions.

I am sure your case was above board but, being born in a totalitarian state, I do not trust law enforcement too much and prefer to err on the side of not solving some crimes. My 2c.

How would it let you frame convenient suspects? Surely you would need to place that suspects DNA at the scene, in which case you already have it...? Where does the database come into this?

Just because the government finds your DNA at the crime scene doesn't mean they know it's yours. They have to match it against some sort of database that connects the DNA to your identity.

With enough corruption, they might also "find" it on the crime scene.

Exactly, while DNA may identify an individual with high precision, we have to trust that that DNA was actually associated with the location or event.

Consider a public bathroom: how much DNA is at that location? How much is relevant to the event?

Consider a corrupt lab tech: The DNA at the event might be reported as DNA from their database. Does a defense attorney get to see the untainted sample?

Consider a corrupt/hacked DNA database: The database might report that the DNA belongs to one individual when it actually doesn't. Does a defense attorney even get to see the source code?

In these scenarios, the link to any individual is either of little consequence, or fraudulent.

And in case this sounds implausible, a corrupt lab tech handled 60,000 cases in MA:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/annie-dookhan-chemist-at-mass-c...

There's a case against globally accessible DNA databases from the point of view of dragnet approaches picking up people whose connection to the crime scene is either totally incidental or actually nonexistent and purely down to data mixups, but that's a largely separate issue from authoritarian police trying to massage the evidence in a case against a particular person.

If you're already a "convenient suspect" the police wish to build a case against, they don't need to find you on a consumer genetics database to be able to obtain a sample of your DNA or strongly hint that they expect to be able to use DNA evidence (truthfully or otherwise) to send you away for a very long time if you're not willing to consider moving to plea bargaining territory.

Right now you do not have a convenient way to force your target to submit to a DNA test. This way you can frame someone by placing their DNA at the crime scene and then having it "discovered" using DNA testing company data.

Because there is a line when framing people never to be crossed ;) come on throw in a shoe print,a witness, fake signature. something extra

> Where does the database come into this?

"The scientists fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva. They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person." [0]

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/science/18dna.html

> if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile

Oh wow. Really??? Any experts in this field reading this? Would love to hear someone with pertinent authority tell us this isn't true. (Please don't be true)

There links in that NY Times article and they look like reasonable sources.

It is simple to do, assuming the police are using genotyping instead of a full genome sequence for the match. (This is the common case today.)

Genotyping works as follows: there are thousands of regions of “junk” dna in the human genome that don’t code for anything. There is no evolutionary pressure to preserve the exact length of these regions. (They probably help the chromosomes fold up in ways that encourage/suppress the activity of certain genes, help the molecule be more robust, etc).

Since there is no evolutionary pressure to preserve the regions, they tend to be full of hard to copy junk like ATAT..... that tends to change every few generations.

Genotyping works by isolating a bunch of these regions, and using PCR to create millions of copies of each region (with ~one sample per region).

Finally, you put a drop of the each sample and some die on a electrophoresis gel, and apply some current. Different sized molecules move at different rates, so this gives you a crude measurement of the length of each molecule.

To fake a match, all you need to do is produce something that will trick the first step of all this into grabbing molecules of your choice of length, which will fool the rest of the process. If you want to see how that would work, read up on “pcr primers”.

Source: I used to work in a genotyping/sequencing lab as a bioinformatician, and worked on algorithms that did exactly this sort of analysis (not the forgery bit though).

Hey, that's just like fake video.

So you could fake everything. Video surveillance, DNA samples, testimony from dishonest informers and investigators, etc. This is just a tweak to parallel construction. And outright framing.

DNA is supposed to be supporting evidence of guilt (A number i've heard thrown around is it narrows down to 1 in 1m, with >300m people in the US that is still not perfect).

Instead CSI has taught your average juror that it is irrefutable proof of guilt.

> Surely you would need to place that suspects DNA at the scene

Don't underestimate DNA transfer. Your DNA can end up in locations you have never been:

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

With Pcr you’d only need a very small sample to produce enough DNA to smother a crime scene in “evidence”

The UK takes DNA samples of every person arrested. There it's controlled by the government. In the US, it's held privately. Both situations are disturbing.

The US also takes DNA and prints from arrestees and maintains it in a federal database (CODIS for DNA, FBI for prints).

Yes, the panopticon is a dangerous ideal. :/ Given enough technological progress, if everyone's DNA were kept in a database, that's a juicy target for any numbers of crimes, misuse, violence, privacy invasion and stalking, i.e., hackers break-in in order to selectively extort rich people with engineered diseases (sounds like a Black Mirror script).

Same here. However, I have no illusions about stopping any of this. The global panopticon is just too useful for authoritarians.

So my solution is to avoid attracting any attention in meatspace. Not doing anything that could generate troublesome records. Such as leaving DNA around. I mean, I certainly leave DNA around, when I go out for stuff. But there's nothing involved that I need to hide.

I also make no effort to hide anything that I do online as my meatspace persona. Because that would attract attention. I do use a VPN service, but that's not at all unusual where I live. And I do torrent some, even when I'm not really after anything. Just as cover.

Anything potentially troublesome, I do via nested VPN chains and Tor. Mirimir just uses nested VPN chains. But then Mirimir just writes about stuff, so hey.

> And I do torrent some, even when I'm not really after anything.

I’d like to subscribe to your RSS feed of magnet: links.

I typically search TPB for recent action and horror films. Especially new Miike stuff.

This has to be one of the strangest replies I’ve ever read on HN.

Off to google the term “meatspace” now.

http://catb.org/jargon/html/M/meatspace.html

Goes back to the earliest days of online existence, to distinguish the two.

Well, there was the "Meat Puppets", formed in 1980.

And then Terry Bisson's "They're Made Out of Meat", published in 1990:[0]

> "They're made out of meat."

> "Meat?"

> "Meat. They're made out of meat."

> "Meat?"

> "There's no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."

So yeah, it's a term that we old geeks use.

Recent usage by John Markoff:

> "True Names" by Vernor Vinge (1981): "The basic premise of that was, you had to basically hide your true name at all costs. It was an insight into the world we’re living in today … We have to figure it out. I think we have to go to pseudonymity or something. You’re gonna participate in this networked existence, you have to be connected to meatspace in some way."

And yes, we "have to go to pseudonymity or something". If we care about privacy, anyway.

0) http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html

1) http://renaissancechambara.jp/2017/06/14/oprah-time-true-nam...

So, as with all things which can be good or bad depending on use, we allow people to voluntarily choose whether to participate. What’s the problem?

The problem is the that genetic data discloses PII on other people without their consent. It cannot be a fully voluntary system.

Lack of truly informed consent

> Total surveillance or global DNA law enforcement database would solve many murders and prevent wrongful convictions. However, it would also give many opportunities for framing convenient suspects and "encouraging" confessions.

I am afraid it could cause wrongful convictions as well. Let's say there is a 1 in a million chance of a false positive, if you have an enormous database there is a large probability of a false positive even though your individual risk is low. As far as I understand DNA evidence is often damaged or incomplete, meaning this could be a serious risk.

Increase in the ratio of solved crimes will make society less tolerant of wrongful convictions.

If ratio of solved crimes is not high enough -- society tolerates wrongful convictions -- because without risking wrongful convictions it is hard to make any convictions at all.

Because DNA testing increases the ratio of solved crimes, it decreases the chances of wrongful convictions.

They just solved the murder of a child near my house using a technique like this.

My understanding is they asked everyone they could find in a specific ethnic community if they would volunteer a sample for a kind of dna dragnet.

The killer was related to one of the many people sampled.

If the DNA was gathered for one specific purpose like this and not kept on file, I think that's pretty unobjectionable. As soon as it's on file in a database, though, there's potential for uses further and further removed from those envisioned by the owners when they gave the samples.

That's wonderful if the crime is something clear-cut like murder. We can generally all agree that it is unethical and worthy of punishment.

What if it's something we can't quite agree on, or tyranny of the majority? Joe McCarthy happened once, and he didn't give a shit about ex post facto. Presuming someone like him will never come along again is a road to pain and suffering.

Spend ten minutes reading about what Crypto-Judaism is and why it is even a thing. Then look at abuse of power (I've known 2 people who have had LEOs as stalkers). A big part of warrant law is the premise that you don't give people information they don't need 'just because'. Very similar to the computing concept of Principle of Least Power. They prove they need it, you give it to them, but not a moment before, because who knows what they'll get up to.

> I've known 2 people who have had LEOs as stalkers

What's an LEO? My first thought is Low Earth Orbit, but obviously that's not right. Googling "leo" and "leo stalker" doesn't bring up much apart from horoscopes.

Law Enforcement Officer

Now you can refuse to support prosecution against family, but your DNA can't.

> The now-confessed killer was the DJ at my wedding.

That is a bit morbid.

The biggest insult is that you're paying them money to violate your privacy.

Some links I've seen for DIY thermocycling [1] https://openpcr.org/ [2] https://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-PCR-thermal-cycler-...

Hope this becomes more of a thing. This is one of the fields where a non-cloud or decentralized solution is more desirable.

I wonder if there's an alternate universe where people are PAID to use this service. Where the company is upfront about buying your data from you because they intend on making a ton of money from it later on, maybe for nefarious means, maybe to try and cure some disease, I don't know if that part of it matters.

Anyway, I wonder if people would be skeptical of the company's motives to the point where they don't want to give up their data or if they'd still just really want that cool DNA sequence art and to have a laugh about having 7% unexpected DNA.

> There's a feel-good statement elsewhere in the document about how the company won't disclose your info to third parties

Can a lawyer answer whether or not such promises apply to an acquiring company, should they ever be sold?

>what they're doing to themselves and their families.

This only encourages me. My DNA is on record in various places, and if any relative of mine commits a crime I want the honor of being the person who fucked them and sent them to prison. I would tout the event as an esteemed accomplishment.

Everyone seems to be worried about a sci-fi movie where clones are made from cheek swabs or corporations use DNA to deny certain services.

The former is a pipe dream and the latter is already (partially) illegal in the US via the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008.

If evilmegacorp is going to break the law today then they'll break it tomorrow as well.

Every conceivable scenario in which DNA can be used to harm an individual can be answered with "well a bad actor can already do that today using different methods".

As far as I'm concerned a database of DNA is no different than a database of mugshots or fingerprints.

Mugshots and fingerprints have both led to false-positives being reported.

"Oh but DNA might lead to a false-positive so it must never be used" differs little from "eyewitness testimony, mugshots, fingerprint analysis, confessions, and every single investigative technique ever used in the history of humanity has unassailably led to false positives therefore they should all be banned".

What about accidental harm because your DNA or a relative’s DNA managed to end up at a crime scene, or bad lab procedures produce a false match?

>Most notoriously, Brandon Mayfield, an American lawyer, was wrongly linked by four fingerprint experts to the 2004 Madrid train bombing. He was arrested and detained for two weeks, before investigators realised that an Algerian man, Ouhnane Daoud, was the real source of the print.

https://theconversation.com/fingerprinting-to-solve-crimes-n...

Should law enforcement be prohibited from fingerprinting objects found at crime scenes?

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171005111100.h...

Fingerprints lack scientific basis for legal certainty More research into validity of fingerprint comparisons needed Date: October 5, 2017 Source: Carnegie Mellon University Summary: A new report on the quality of latent fingerprint analysis says that courtroom testimony and reports stating or even implying that fingerprints collected from a crime scene belong to a single person are indefensible and lack scientific foundation.

http://theconversation.com/fingerprinting-to-solve-crimes-no...

Fingerprinting to solve crimes: not as robust as you think

https://californiainnocenceproject.org/issues-we-face/finger...

The main problem with fingerprint analysis is one consistent with many other areas of forensic science: subjectivity. Instead of relying on tested scientific methods, the process is mostly based on the subjective beliefs of the analyst... Despite this subjectivity, fingerprint analysts also typically testify in terms of absolute certainty.

https://issues.org/mnookin/

Fingerprints: Not a Gold Standard

So to answer your question: Should law enforcement be prohibited from fingerprinting objects found at crime scenes?

You tell me.

Which is why DNA and fingerprint evidence is so valuable as corroborating evidence (person x dna was at the scene and their car was seen at the area), and so hopeless as a dragnet. If everyone in the USA was in a DNA database almost every test would show multiple matches.

Then there is the issue of transference. Person x dna found on housemate y's underwear... rape or shared washing machine?

It wouldn't be that hard to increase the number of DNA features needed to make the chance of accidental match in the database exponentially small.

Maybe. The more relevant question here would be: would you pay some company to get yourself fingerprinted and have them put your prints in a big database for police to use when solving crimes?

The difference is, fingerprints would only finger you. Your DNA can finger thousands of distantly related people who are not you.

Fingerprinting is a notoriously inaccurate pseudoscience along with polygraph testing.

As was seen on HN[1], consumer DNA tests are also inaccurate. In fact, up to 40% of gene variants on consumer DNA tests are false positives[2]. False positives happen with criminal investigations and DNA testing[3]. And now, consumer DNA databases are generating false positives[4] that upend and potentially ruin innocent people's lives.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18938750

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/gim201838

[3] https://gizmodo.com/when-bad-dna-tests-lead-to-false-convict...

[4] https://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/article_1b3a3f9...

Fingerprinting is inaccurate.

DNA tests are inaccurate.

Witness statements are inaccurate.

Confessions are inaccurate.

Thanks to deepfakes, video is inaccurate.

Someone steals your car, eyewitnesses claim they saw them in possession of it, their fingerprints are in it, their hair is in it, a gas station security camera recorded them in it, cops found them in it, and they confessed.

"Your honor that evidence is, in order, a stress-induced misrecognition, a flawed analysis, pseudoscience, tampered with, a setup, and coerced."

What remains?

What remains is an understanding of statistics and probability applied to scientifically studied accuracy rates of the various evidence available. Combining error-prone evidence can give fairly certain results.

Any one of those could be wrong but all of them together are almost impossible to fake. The source of the video is also important. What incentive does a petrol station have to fake a car theft? If you can prove that the station owner is somehow involved then that changes things.

I applaud your thinking. But in the real world, things can get ugly very very quickly as the original commenter said. Even worse, imagine your DNA results score being used as part of employment qualification checks! When the greed of $$ is involved, ethics take a backseat in almost all corporate decision making, and good willed but naive persons get trampled.

In the US, it is already illegal for genetic information to be used as a qualification for employment.

(a) Discrimination Based on Genetic Information.--It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer--

(1) to fail or refuse to hire, or to discharge, any employee, or otherwise to discriminate against any employee with respect to the compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment of the employee, because of genetic information with respect to the employee; or

(2) to limit, segregate, or classify the employees of the employer in any way that would deprive or tend to deprive any employee of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect the status of the employee as an employee, because of genetic information with respect to the employee.

https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/gina.cfm

Laws and governments change. They can change radically very quickly. That DNA database isn't going anywhere though.

You are only thinking about now. Do you think things will be the same in 20 years?

Best of luck.

We all need that luck.

It's pretty easy to not hire someone and say it was for something other than something you found in a DNA sample.

Your putting the onus on me to prove that it was explicitly the results of my test that caused me not to be hired.

> In the US, it is already illegal for genetic information to be used as a qualification for employment.

No.

In the US, it is currently illegal for genetic information to be used as a qualification for employment.

Your DNA never changes. Once it's on record it's on record. This isn't like prohibition where as long as you quit before the law comes into effect you are safe.

If there is ever a future time you can be punished for your DNA, the only people who can possibly be 'grandfathered' in are the ones who've avoided submitting their DNA in the first place. Everyone else can be punished after the fact.

> If there is ever a future time you can be punished for your DNA, the only people who can possibly be 'grandfathered' in are the ones who've avoided submitting their DNA in the first place.

I don't support the point of view of the GP but in all fairness, if we come to the society where DNA is used for widespread discrimination, it will probably be semi-voluntarily collected from the majority of the citizens anyway (e.g. want to have a driver's license? submit the DNA)

If some future hell has us ruining people because of their DNA, it's not gonna be opt in. At least not for very long.

Most of the problems today with privacy are opt-in. There's also a national security argument for dragnet surveillance. For another potential justification, I'll just throw in a great, older movie and a good, newer one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO_x-po_Nsc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWw4V6GTyKw

As a certain Chinese person recently learned, you can start a trip in Country A, get arrested on a stopover in Country B on your way to Country C, accused of breaking the laws of Country D because you (allegedly) did business in Country E through a subsidiary in Country F.

I’m worried about getting deported to Saudi Arabia (never been) because I drank alcohol in my home country, but happen to stopover in a country that yields to large cash payments to enforce its extra-territorial laws.

Which countries are you currently not flying into?

I ask because it would help us gauge how worried you are.

Well, the US is #1 by GDP, China is #2 and Canada (the pushover) is #10. Saudi Arabia is #18, so going by the evidence, us alcohol enjoyers should consider staying out of countries with #28 rank GDP or less, as they could fall over for S. Arabia.

All based on one crude comparison between countries. But you don't see the USA arresting too many people for violating other country's laws.

So is that not very worried or not at all worried?

Uhhh, those mean the same thing, no?

Anywho, even if I think I know I'm safe, a billionaire CFO with far more legal resources than I could dream of has been wrong.

What crimes would exactly would you be proud to sell your relatives down the river for? Genuinely curious if all acts that can/could be labeled as a crime by the government of the time would count.

There's a fair amount of historical and current laws that have arguably zero moral good; Homophobic, Segregationist, etc.. all around the world.

But alas, There's you cheerily pointing out anyone you can help identify because, it's the law after all.

You’re assuming that every crime anybody could possibly be accused of in the future is legitimate. What if the crime is ‘handed out pamphlets opposing the leader?’

>What if the crime is ‘handed out pamphlets opposing the leader?’

That has been a crime in many places at various times in the past. The non-existence of a DNA database did nothing to prevent the existence of totalitarian governments, and would likely do nothing to promote them.

That's the thing about totalitarians. They don't care about the facts, if they want to get you they'll get you regardless of what the DNA says, in its absence they'll just come up with something else like the bumps found on your skull or distance between your eyes or the volume at which your voice has been measured praising the leader.

Why would a totalitarian system rely on DNA evidence when they can just go "our local comrade commissar has decreed that you are guilty and thus you are" and in regimes where there has to at least be a semblance of a show trial, they would just make up or cover up DNA-related findings to suit their whims.

Saying that DNA is dangerous because it may be used against someone in the future in some hypothetical situation is like saying "a list of person's names MUST NEVER be compiled because in the future a totalitarian leader may decide he doesn't like anyone whose name ends in a -ez or -stein."

And what happens when you insurance company drops you because of potential chronic illness or an employer doest call you back.

I think there will be an insurance market for these risks as well. We are all carrying around some kind of defects anyways and we get know more and more about the risk factors and how to prevent for breakouts or gain knowledge about working around them, maybe even repair or modify.

Your naïve if you think that is how insurance works

What is your argument? Share your view of how an insurance work, so that we can compare.

Sure, you can get insurance for anything. You might not be able to afford the premiums, but someone will happily take your money if you can.

As a German, I see many problems with this point of view. What is a crime can change fast, and it can also mean just being of the wrong group. Don't think it can't and won't happen again.

Exactly. People who proudly tell you that they have nothing to hide never seem to understand that they aren't the ones who decide whether or not they have something to hide.

Or isn't currently happening in other countries. The people here who think nothing is wrong would probably be arrested for something if they lived in another country. I can't travel to many countries because I would be at risk of being arrested for being gay.

Just imagine if we had the technology to identify that through DNA samples.

It's a bit of an aside, but I have such respect for you Germans when it comes to owning up to past transgressions. In my experience, when the topic of WWII has come up, it's always been a matter of, "Yes, we fucked up. Now, how do we prevent it from happening again?"

My ancestors came to the USA after the Civil War, so _I_ have no real stake in this, but I married into a family from the midwest/south who has been in the US for many generations and I'm regularly floored when I hear people make claims about how the Civil War was actually about states' rights (to own human beings ...) and such. It seems like these people are still mostly concerned with trying to save face, as opposed to admitting that their forbears _royally_ screwed up and trying to learn and adapt from the episode.

Does anyone else feel like there's a growing assumption of benevolent governments and states? It might just be my own anecdotal experience, but I'm constantly surprised at how often people overlook the entire point of the 4th and 5th Amendment because Western states have been "mostly better" (these are both relative qualifiers, I am NOT saying they're perfect) in the last 10-30 years.

This entire post read as if there's not dirty cops all over the US doing asset forfeiture, planting evidence, shooting innocents, raiding the wrong houses...why does anyone believe that giving those agents ANOTHER tool, and one that's seen in the general public as even more legitimate? (It's not the accuracy of the DNA match that's the problem, it's how easy it is to create false circumstances using someone's DNA, which is pretty easy to get.)

And all of this in a time when most of those same people (myself included) are decrying how horrible the federal government has recently become under Trump. Again, you want to give Trump and the people in his administration another tool for muddying the waters around his opponents?

Going even further, any of these genealogy companies could pull a full-on Cambridge Analytics like Facebook and just leak all our DNA to some private company operating on behalf of a foreign government.

The problem with your position is that dirty governments win not by access to information, but by controlling the processes of our government.

Police don't really need to plant evidence when they are believed over defendants to begin with. Go listen to the latest season of the Series podcast. Or the Reply All episodes about the police in NYC.

If a corrupt cop wants to take you down, they don't need any of this.

Reading the comments on this thread, I was getting exactly the opposite impression. So many people don't trust the government at all, and don't want them to be able to enforce laws. I suppose they'd prefer that the police force and justice system be disbanded.

"So many people" likely trust business even less than the government, and this is about handing your DNA over to businesses and government at the same time, for funsies. And that last part is quite an assumption.

Right up until that crime happens to be homosexuality (oh you meant western values crimes...)

Or you can't get a job because you're closely related to a felon.

Or a loan because you are closely related to someone who filed for bankruptcy.

I could go on. There's more "ors" here than on a viking raiding ship.

The underlying presumption here is that there is business value in establishing the genetic link.

If there's a real link between genetics and bankruptcy, maybe we should figure that shit out (with the idea of doing pleasant, voluntary, educational interventions). If there isn't and banks use the info anyway, someone will make a good business out of ignoring the information.

Which isn't to say I approve of the privacy destroying business model these companies are trying to establish.

Good idea. We handled that so well with race, we should start right away.

Huh? Homosexuality was illegal in many parts of The West until very recently. I wouldn’t be surprised if it still is some places.

And is it true that homosexuality is banned throughout the east?

What’s the word for when you are ignorant of something your whole life and then you get enlightened and then immediately feel entitled to point out how much better you are than everyone else who is still ignorant? I feel like that’s what you’re doing here.

(To be clear, I have no problem with your point about homosexuality laws. I’m just objecting to your notion of what’s eastern and western. Seems like a lot of people think western=quintessential liberalism, eastern=Saudi Arabia, which is just xenophobic nonsense)

Homosexuality was once a crime in the US. So was crossdressing. So was sodomy. At one time a woman could be jailed if it was found she cast a ballot illegally. Consuming cannibals use to be totally legal, then it wasn't and now it sorta is, but only on a State-by-state basis and only because Federal courts haven't made concrete rulings. In the UK and France, it's illegal to draw underage Simpsons characters in sexual activity, but in the US and Japan it's legal (or at least a gray area). The law changes, and prohibition shows that those changes are not always for the better.

Cannibals? You might want to edit that.

OTOH , with other public services (administrative, police, healthcare) you re not even asked to agree to the terms.

Personally, I'm okay if my DNA sample helps catch a cousin, brother, or other family member that is a murderer/rapist/etc. Less okay with them using my sample for promotional material, but I've never really seen that done except for people who clearly consent(ie by starring in a commercial or photo shoot for the company).

Until false positives land you in prison. https://gizmodo.com/when-bad-dna-tests-lead-to-false-convict...

That is a general problem with DNA tests, regardless of how samples are collected or potential perpetrators are identified. And it seems like the solution is known and accepted by the courts now, at least in Taiwan: "don't rely on just 17 markers when performing DNA matching tests"

It’s not, however, a problem that can affect you if your DNA isn’t in any database in the first place.

The man in the linked story did not have his DNA in any database that the police used - they got his name volunteered from the people present at the crime scene. So yes it is a problem that can affect you if your DNA isn't in any database.

Until another regime shows up that decides to neuter or eradicate people with a specific trait.

You can do this already with a gene drive, no need to identify everyone with the trait.

Isn't this an argument against doing anything except living the life of a hermit deep in the woods?

Have a drivers license? Murderous regime will know where you live and come kill you.

Use the internet via an ISP? Murderous regime will know what you look at and come kill you.

History is littered with attempts at eradicating certain ethnicities and purging those deemed genetically inferior.

> Use the internet via an ISP? Murderous regime will know what you look at and come kill you.

This is a legitimate concern for some, hence why things like Tor exist. We don't just throw our hands up in the air and go, "What can be done?" We acknowledge that risk exists and try to mitigate it.

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