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Comment by Gustomaximus | Hacker News Reader

What would the pros/cons be if we did the opposite, if everyone at birth had a DNA swab taken and recorded. Apply strict rules about individual viewing access for criminality only with clear logs and then it was open at some anonymised / grouped level for research.

It kind of feels wrong but why? I absolutely see issues if this was open information or if the private sector was allowed to use it in decision making about people. But if done with strict implementation around usage and privacy for criminal activity would this create more societal benefit than negative? Also people could request their own information for health risks type information and then adjust life if this would benefit possible health outcomes. Are the risks focused around bad implementation of the system and/or slippery slope type arguments?

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>What would the pros/cons be if we did the opposite, if everyone at birth had a DNA swab taken and recorded.

Then I'd have my baby at home with a midwife.

>Apply strict rules about individual viewing access for criminality only with clear logs and then it was open at some anonymised / grouped level for research.

Like the strict rules we have here in the United States preventing the CIA, the FBI and the NSA capturing and sifting through the communications of US citizens? Rules that are routinely violated and ignored with no criminal penalties or sanctions ever handed out?

https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-and-h...

>It kind of feels wrong but why?

Because if history has proven anything, it is that people in power are above the law. They can not and should not be trusted with our genetic information.

>Are the risks focused around bad implementation of the system and/or slippery slope type arguments?

No, rather the total opposite. In every single case where information is available to the government and/or those in power, that information has been accessed, shared and data mined, without exception, without regard to the law and without any legal sanction to those who break the law by illegally accessing this information. From, "parallel construction" to the Snowden revelations to the recent abuses cited by Senator Wyden, only willful ignorance can possibly allow anyone to trust the government and the powerful to follow the law.

Sweden currently has a system where when babies blood are tested, a small sample is kept, recorded, and stored. There are strict rules about viewing access and purpose.

Politicians violated those rules once in late 90s when a high positioned politician was murdered and they wanted to catch the criminal by doing a dna search, which resulted in a match.

From a pure practical perspective, the result of allowing police access to dna databases is that more criminal cases will be resolved than if they aren't, be that a database of rape victims or research database with blood of infants. The biggest ethical problem is that by violating the purpose of those databases, the result might be that people stop volunteering to be in those databases. There are also a slippery slope argument that by allowing police access to the database you are also inviting abuse of the information within in, both legal (in terms of politicians creating new use cases) and illegal.

There is also this icky feeling that comes when people violate the purse of collected personal information for purposes which people have not consented to.

You have the story wrong. There is no searchable database of DNA. There are only blood samples from newborns.

The police wanted access to the sample of a single suspect. The straightforward thing to do would of course have been to get a sample directly from the suspect. But as the case was so high profile and there had just been a public debacle with another arrested and eventually released suspect, the police preferred to risk the integrity of the scientific research project rather than do their job the normal way.

It's infuriating because it was so unnecessary. But police prestige was on the line and here we are.

Edit: source (Swedish) https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordet_p%C3%A5_Anna_Lindh

All 50 states require DNA samples at birth.

Some states destroy the blood spots after a year, 12 states store them for at least 21 years.

California has stored a DNA samples indefinitely and has collected from every baby born after 1983. They mainly sell the data to research companies.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/califo...

And yet they couldn't have sold the data to 23andme to save me the trouble of swabbing my cheek?

Sure, because we know that "strict rules" are never broken.

I guess I'll take the Godwin point. What if the Weimar republic had a lot of strict rules to build such a DNA database? That would have "helped" a lot of folks in 1933 to speed things up.

The Dutch kept records of peoples' religions. Their Jewish population fared remarkably worse than the rest of Western Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Net...

Are you including Germany in the rest of Western Europe? Because in that case, you're incorrect.

And the only country you can actually compare to in Western Europe is Belgium. Luxembourg was directly annexed, and France and Italy were in very specific situations ( collaborationist government with some limited autonomy that collaborated on Jews, ally with more autonomy that barely collaborated on Jews vs direct military occupation by German authorities). Belgium and Netherlands were ruled more similarly to Eastern European occupied countries ( directly by Reichscommisars), even if in a much more civilized manner.

The 1930s are exactly the time when business machines enabled automated national population censuses. Business machines allowed countless new ways to sort and segregate the population by gender, ethnicity, religion, political affiliation, mental (dis)abilities. It was simply too tempting. The only reason the DNA wasn't used was because it hadn't been discovered yet.

Paternity fraud would either be completely eliminated or something the state willfully assists in committing.

It'll still be the latter. Courts have argued that even in the case where it is known the child does not belong to the "father", he's still required to pay child support.

(In France)

And in many US states:

https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/can-i-be-required-to-pay-c...

I'm American, so US law is what I have some familiarity with. I would assume many countries have similar laws.

What would be the pros? What good could come from it?

There is an entire class of crime that would all of a sudden become much easier to solve. It's very hard to rape someone or to break into a house without leaving any DNA trace.

I understand all the counter arguments, and I don't take them lightly, but I think that properly implemented this could be a net benefit to society. And if it doesn't work as desired we can simply change it or stop doing it. The press and parliament are sure to keep a close eye on this. (I live in a democracy that functions fairly well, I'm not sure I would still be in favour if I lived in another country).

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