Hacker News Reader

> Having said that there might be some marginal benefit for FDA to have some data for which the FDA should incentivize users by asking them to give consent, offer discounts and promise anonymisation.

If the executive branch (which the FDA falls under) is so far beyond reigning in that we have to resort to disabling an important functionality of government instead of improving the check on power (which is where I believe the focus should be), then why would you assume that they're being honest when they promise you that they're anonymizing your data? You're arguing that the executive branch is out of control but you're willing to trust them if they promise to anonymize the data they collect? That makes no sense to me.

If you're going to use the "rogue administration" argument, then how exactly does FDA, which falls under the executive branch, not fall into the same rogue behavior category?

How will one data point (did this person test positive?) be used against minority groups? I'm as skeptical of govt data collection as the next HNer, but I fail to see how this particular piece of information could be weaponized.

Off the top of my head:

Micro:

A positive test is reported to the FDA. DHS gets this information. It is determined the individual "exposed others to Coronavirus". A "common sense" remedy is applied like, say, prohibiting the individual from boarding airplanes.

Individual is now on a possibly secret "no fly list" with terrorist connotations.

Macro:

Minority groups are skeptical of the government because of historic abuse. They tend to take fewer tests. Majority groups trust the government because of being treated well historically. They tend to take more tests.

More cases are found in majority groups per capita because they took more tests per capita. Data shows more cases in majority areas. More resources are sent to majority areas. Minority areas are neglected and do not receive the resources they need. This perpetuates the experience of mistreatment and discourages future cooperation.

The chilling effect is real, and concern is reasonable on the part of individuals. Who wants to defend a group of bioterrorists anyway?

It certainly seems like a person oughta be able to opt-out... the data they need is all statistical anyway.

> With terrorist connotations.

That went from a reasonable thing that might happen — you're temporarily prevented from boarding a plane while you are bearing a highly contagious, deadly illness that can spread to whoever you breath on — to... Now you're labeled a terrorist because you got sick? That seems like a pretty large leap. Especially since millions of Americans have already tested positive for COVID using the existing infrastructure (that reports to health authorities already) and none of this has happened. Why do you think having at-home tests will suddenly result in labeling every positive case a terrorist?

> Who wants to defend a group of bioterrorists anyway?

I feel like the main stretch of imagination here that I find difficult to believe is that everyone who contracts COVID (which will likely be millions more Americans) will be labeled a terrorist, because they took the test at home instead of at a doctor's office or testing site. The existing testing infrastructure that has tested millions upon millions of Americans, and found millions of positive cases, already reports to health authorities: why would having a more convenient test that does the same thing result in dystopian madness?

> That went from a reasonable thing that might happen — you're temporarily prevented from boarding a plane while you are bearing a highly contagious, deadly illness that can spread to whoever you breath on — to... Now you're labeled a terrorist because you got sick?

To be clear, I am not talking about temporarily preventing sick people from boarding planes. I'm talking about DHS drawing their own conclusions from FDA/medical data. The scare quotes on "common sense" were meant to point this out. Preventing infectious people from boarding a plane is reasonable. That means FDA may very well share data with DHS and feel perfectly fine about it. But how does DHS achieve this? Do they diligently maintain a list of diagnosed individuals and scrub names when those people are healthy? Or do they re-purpose an existing mechanism that has the desired immediate effect?

The "no fly list" also contains terrorism suspects. These lists existed before Covid and contain names of people who have never been suspected of wrongdoing but just share a name with someone who is, or not, who knows. These individuals still live with the consequences of being suspected terrorists.

This is the terrorist connotation I speak of. It is not a stretch. Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List#Notable_cases.

> Why do you think having at-home tests will suddenly result in labeling every positive case a terrorist?

I didn't say this.

> I feel like the main stretch of imagination here that I find difficult to believe is that everyone who contracts COVID (which will likely be millions more Americans) will be labeled a terrorist,because they took the test at home instead of at a doctor's office or testing site.

I didn't say everyone. In fact my hypothetical constructs a situation where minorities are disproportionately placed on the lists. The macro outcomes lead to micro outcomes which lead to further macro outcomes. This is systemic bias.

Regarding the difference between home and on-site tests: is the home test data protected the same way as other tests? How many people have not been tested because they are afraid of a situation like my hypothetical?

Can LEO get a search warrant for your home, find the testing device and retrieve the results? What if they search your phone?

We don't know anything about the home test data. We don't even know if sharing it will be mandatory. If it were mandatory, I find it a little unlikely that it'll be treated massively differently than the existing COVID test data that is shared from current test sites such that DHS will start labeling people as terrorists for testing positive or that law enforcement will start kicking down people's doors if their test doesn't report back (I mean, imagine if the WiFi went out, or they ran out of data on their data plan?). Given how the lockdowns have been policed on private citizens — that is to say, extremely lightly if at all — I find it a bit far-fetched that at-home COVID tests are what will push us over the brink into fascist dystopia.

What you find far fetched is in fact commonplace in America in 2020. It is important that we acknowledge this and fight it. The people need to be able to trust the government in situations like this. Today, rightfully, some people do not.

Thanks for asking this question. There is nothing "minority" about this, every group needs same protection and no one should be targeted. A reasonable person can not even guess how evil the government can get.

- Trump wanted to target certain folks with work authorizations. There was no legal way for him do end the program easily. So he insisted they are a threat to national security. Then he demanded they submit their biometric data every time they want to renew they authorization/visa (note that DHS or State Dept. already have their biometric data). Then all they had to do was to reduce work force in the biometric collection centers. As a consequence now the processing of these visas/work authorizations can take upto 18 months. Which effectively forces these people out of jobs. This is being done in the name of protecting Americans from terrorism.

There are number of ways this health data can be weaponized against immigrations or minorities.

- A rogue administration can classify infected immigrants as a public threat. (If that sounds a stretch remember kids from Iran are already a public threat, and children of Indian H1B holders have to submit their fingerprints every 3 years to ensure they are not public threats).

- If you ever have lied on any form about your covid infection or knowledge about it, but government data suggests you had covid during that time and you knew about it, that can be considered "bad moral character" and you naturalization can be denied or even revoked.

- Imagine a poor neighborhood where a particular "undesirable" group lives and a lot of people there test positive, now government can engage in propaganda that this evil group is spreading COVID.

Secondly, trust the creative ability of people like Stephen Miller to come up with more wide ranging excuses.

We're still not sure how liability plays out in the courts in terms of going out into the community while potentially infected. From a legal standpoint, it's probably better to just not know, than to know and be on the hook for something.

Again, that's from a personal, legal liability standpoint. Not at all from a public health standpoint or a moral/ethical standpoint.

Sheesh, it seems like you would be against everything just because the information can be used for bad things... To use your logic (at least how I'm interpreting it), we should also abolish driver licenses as well, because look, there's a database of people! With addresses, etc!

And that would be a bad idea because untrained drivers may cause injury to others. The same logic applies to disease tracking, we have to know because someone might harm someone else. It's being measured so we know if prevention methods like lockdowns and masks are working. And just like a driver's license is not something you can volunteer to have (or not), neither should the knowledge of your virus status be optional.

Imagine running a country and being asked "So, how is your country coping with the virus?", and answering "I don't know, we don't have the numbers."...

This is why we here in the US call it a free country. It is very different from the democratic freedoms of other countries. We founded this nation because of misuse of government power. You should always be skeptical of government oversight. Our constitution was written by very bright people who understood that mob rule and government overreach are very easy to fall into. Think of how phishing attempts sometimes use your emotions/anxieties against you, “Urgent, this is your boss, I need your email and PW to log in.”

The same fear mongering has been used to shut down schools across the US when there is little statistical evidence showing spread occurs in schools. Many other nations know this and kids are still going to school. This is a prime example of when government overreach is entirely misguided and political.

Edit: Thank goodness we still have free speech here. I fear many of our freedoms can easily be eradicated by the, “saving just one life,” argument.

Edit edit: Also not trying to be too inflammatory but China has all the data in the world and they fudged the numbers they sent out. We already have entirely data driven societies and you can ask Hong Kong how much they wanted it.

If people just don't test because they don't want to give info to the government, that's not an information gain for the government, it's just a loss for everybody else.

> that would be a bad idea because untrained drivers may cause injury to others

One can always justify more government power and more government micromanagement of people's lives by claiming it will prevent some hypothetical harm. Here in the United States we're not supposed to accept that.

> Imagine running a country

Imagine having a country where no one person or small group of people gets to "run" things--where, instead, every adult citizen is assumed to be responsible for their own life and their own actions, and to suffer appropriate consequences if they cause harm to someone else. Where nobody is allowed to just declare by fiat what everyone else has to do or can't do. Where collective action is done by reasonable people persuading other reasonable people that a particular course of action is best for all, not by some people just dictating to everyone else what the "right" thing to do is.

The United States of America is supposed to be that kind of country.

Geez, you can fantasize all you want but that's not what we currently have. As Donald Rumsfeld said (I think he's a war criminal but at least what he said here makes sense): "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time."

And governing by ignoring reality is not effective governing, sure you can say "Everyone has to be emancipated and be masters of their own fate!", but again that's not what we have right now, people are dying now. You can't just say "well, in the ideal USA, we just need to inform them how to protect themselves and they'll follow those 'suggestions', so that's what we'll do." because this is not the ideal world and people are too uninformed or have too many self-interests to listen.

> A lot of people will call me a Libertarian [a]sshole [...]

If you want to to force unusable fantasy world rules in this current world, well...

> that's not what we have right now

In other words, you're saying that most adult Americans today are not capable of managing their own lives and being responsible for their own actions?

Very freaking much so! Just look at who sits in the White House, as a cheap rhetorical example. At least on the topic of responsibility.

If you're saying otherwise, you're insanely delusional, but well, that's probably how you see me.

> If you're saying otherwise, you're insanely delusional, but well, that's probably how you see me.

My question to you is simple: do you see yourself as capable of managing your own life and being responsible for your own actions? I certainly see myself that way. My belief is that most Americans do too, so I assume you do as well. And if you do, then you are insanely delusional to be talking as though people need someone else, whether it's the government or "experts" or whatever, to tell them how to manage their lives.

Perhaps I'm wrong in my belief. Perhaps you honestly think that you yourself are not capable of managing your own life and being responsible for your own actions. Perhaps most Americans are like you and not me.

If you in fact don't think you're capable of managing your own life and being responsible for your own actions, then I have another simple question for you: who else do you expect to do it? If you expect our politicians and other so-called "elites" to do it, then once again, you're the one who's insanely delusional, not me. If you honestly don't think you're capable of managing your own life and being responsible for your own actions, my strong advice to you is to learn how, quickly, because otherwise you are putting your life in the hands of people who cannot be trusted with it.

I suppose there is one other possibility: that you think you, yourself, are capable of managing your own life and being responsible for your own actions, but you don't think most other Americans are (presumably including me). If so, once more, you're insanely delusional, unless you have very, very strong evidence that you are that much more capable of managing your own life and taking responsibility for your own actions than most other Americans.

Ever heard of Dunning-Kruger? Geez. Subjective opinion of one's self can be vastly different to the objective truth.

I wonder what drunk driving stats currently look like, despite harsh laws against them. These are people who believe "I'm fine to drive" and disregard the health of others when they get on the road. Imagine if in your magical world there are no drunk driving laws, because hey, let's trust everyone to be capable blah blah blah. On that topic, substance abuse.. but hey "my body, my problem?" right? Except substance abusers become a problem when they commit crimes against other people so they can get their fix, and when they fall over in public and start foaming in the mouth needing the ambulance. (Not familiar with the libertarian cult ideology, does one need a fat credit card before the ambulance start treating one's self?).

Whatever magical believe you have about those capabilities, yeah, most people in the world don't have them to the degree of perfection you think you have. Should I study more to advance my career? Yes. Should I have a better work-life balance? Yes. Am I doing those things? No, instead I'm spending time responding to crackpots on the Internet.

So yeah, trying to govern a society with your (IMO idiotic) assumptions is a stupid idea, because it's a society we don't have. Should we just cancel all drink driivng laws because we should assume right now that everyone will be responsible and not drink drive? To expand that, should we cancel all police because we can assume everyone will be responsible citizens and not commit crimes against others? What a genius idea. /s

> A lot of people will call me a Libertarian [a]sshole [...]

I did not say this; you must be quoting someone else.