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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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.