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Comment by PietdeVries | Hacker News Reader

From the article: However, under the laws of the People's Republic, government agencies can more or less search any machine at any time in the Middle Kingdom, meaning profiles on 56.5 million American residents appear to be at the fingertips of China, thanks to CheckPeople – we assume Beijing has files on all of us, though, to be fair.

And that is exactly how the Europeans feel when their health records are handled by Google and the TSA wants to know their Facebook handle: what initially appeared as a nice-to-have is now all over a sudden a government source of data no one anticipated...

Edit - oh darn, I forgot Ancestry.com and 23andMe, which are even worse examples: US police has full access to all DNA samples provided by anyone in the past. That is 20 million DNA samples. Not name or age - full genetic info...

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I’m starting to think the Facebook / Google way of harvesting data may really be over complicated. This kind of services shows people are willing to pay to give personal data that literally defines them as individuals to a commercial entity.

A dna test was really helpful in finding all my half siblings and other family members because my biological dad is a sperm donor.

The fact that my DNA can somehow turn up at the scene of a crime somewhere and the police can query the sample I sent to Ancestry x years ago, well, let's say that I already knew that risk going into it and it will have to be what it will have to be.

In our lifetimes, I'm not seeing a way for us to dismantle the forces that are pushing for such a big surveillance state.

Therefore, by definition, you can either find a way to cope within that surveillance state, or you can move to somewhere so remote and hidden that you can't be caught doing what they don't like.

You are contributing to it though. You also added your entire close family to the searchable registry by submitting your DNA.

It reads like 'people like me are out there and don't care, so if you do you have to move to the remaining square kilometers of Jungle'

I don't think so, it reads like the surveillance state is so pervasive, the risks of leaking data to it so ever-present, and the possible use of that data in the future in ways we couldn't have guessed is largely a collective-action problem that likely can only be solved with laws, rather than individuals opting in or out of everything.

The commented completely missed the fact that they are contributing to building the mass surveillance that covers OTHERS that don't opt in. You can't opt out of 23 and me since your relatives opt in for you.

The US does not collect everyone's DNA at birth, and there would be some pushback against that. But there isn't against 23 and me because few care about others.

> You also added your entire close family to the searchable registry by submitting your DNA.

Noob question, but how does this work?

Your DNA is extremely similar to your close relatives.

Those murderers found through 23 and me data? They didn't submit their DNA, their family members did.

I may have a story saved on an old sd card somewhere.. but I think it was Italian? A major crime was solved by pattern matching DNA to a close relative, which brought about a few people in the town who's DNA was 90(?)% similar or something.. they did find the killer/rapist whatever they were looking for..

but the process of investigating and questioning led investigators, family members, and through rumor / whispering and news articles to discover that one of the grandparents (of a well known family) had cheated and birthed a love child that was assumed to be of whatever family name.. and then they had kids - and they all had positions in the town.. but now the truth was known that none of those grand kids, their families, etc were actually part of the whatever-family-name dynasty.

A whole group of people and a town and some industries changed forever because dna is similar (and much dna is not as well) - and the use of this technique roping in and affecting others that had nothing to do with alleged crime - certainly can have other real world consequences.

Roughly... Crime is committed, police find DNA sample at scene, police compare sample with online DNA registry, hits as a near-match for personX, police now know that a sibling/cousin of personX is the culprit. That sibling/cousin never allowed their own DNA to be collected.

This happened in 2018... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2018/04/27...

... police now think that ...

To me, that is the real threat - false positives. myopic reliance on the database, and an assumption the computer is always correct.

>Therefore, by definition, you can either find a way to cope within that surveillance state, or you can move to somewhere so remote and hidden that you can't be caught doing what they don't like.

The problem with this is that by submitting your DNA, you're not handwaving away your own privacy - you're also making the decision for your relatives as well to handwave away their privacy.

>In our lifetimes, I'm not seeing a way for us to dismantle the forces that are pushing for such a big surveillance state.

"It's hard so why even bother trying". Yeah, fuck this milquetoast line of thought, to be frank. The cost of liberty is eternal vigilance. Don't engage in the sort of activity that lays the groundwork for totalitarian surveillance.

No, the only problem is that the government has access to the records, not that I gave my data to some private company.

It's like saying we shouldn't use cell phones and GPS because if our phones somehow interact with each other, your location data is given to my phone, and then my phone is less secure than yours and leaks both of our info to the government.

The only fault occurring here is the government's decision to gain access to and use this data

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