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Comment by runaway | Hacker News Reader

I'm a little confused about what exactly the point of debate is here.

* Is your DNA a secret? I think the fact that you leave it everywhere means no.

* Should people be allowed to aggregate that information? It literally cannot be stopped so I think the point is moot.

I guess what I'm missing is any addressing of the reality of the situation. I'm guessing from the content of your reply that you think that the practice of cataloging DNA should be banned. Great. What happens when they do it anyway?

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> Should people be allowed to aggregate that information? It literally cannot be stopped so I think the point is moot.

Just because you can't stop something doesn't mean you shouldn't even try. Otherwise we might skip having laws altogether.

I'm just looking for a helpful, actionable response. All I've seen so far is "X is bad" (not actionable) and "Let's ban X" (not helpful).

What good will it do you that there's an international ban on DNA databases when corporations use the impossible-to-stop one anyway to discriminate against and target you or the police use it anyway to throw you in prison.

The most helpful course of action imo is to learn how best to cope with this new reality. How should we set our expectations when our DNA is public and searchable? Are there behaviors that would once be safe but will not be in the future? I think those are the more relevant questions.

To your first point, you can go out to the street and bring home someone’s random dna, but there is no way you’d ever be able to know who’s dna it was.

... unless you were to look it up maybe, in this leaked dna database.

Dna is not inherently an identifier. It needs the lookup code in order to act as one. A database like this MAKES it no longer a secret.

I'm not talking about taking random samples off a sidewalk. I'm saying if you follow a person you know and collect something they've discarded, now they're in the database. Do that enough times and everyone's in it. That's the exact technique the police use to collect people's DNA without their consent.

> Is your DNA a secret? I think the fact that you leave it everywhere means no.

There is a complicated procedure to convert this skin scales to data. Not everybody is able to do it, so if is not a secret, neither is exactly open data.

Yes your DNA is a secret, just like your fingerprint is a secret.

Companies shouldn't be allowed to aggregate and resell that information. Hope the GDPR will give grounds to close shops doing that.

edit: typo DNS instead of DNA

> Yes your DNS is a secret, just like your fingerprint is a secret.

But is it really? I think the point being made here is that actually it is relatively easy to obtain someone's DNA. Is there a law that prevents someone who knows your name from picking up a discarded coffee cup and extracting your DNA? I think it's an interesting debate. Is your face private? Is the sound of your voice private? Those things are unique to you but anybody that interacts with you will be exposed to those features including possibly your DNA. I guess the concern is how the data is collected, what it is used for and in the case of DNA the impact it has on anybody that has a genetic link to us. I think it's fair to consider DNA in separate category. There's only so much that can be deduced from your face as compared to DNA. It's tricky...

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