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Comment by Culonavirus | Hacker News Reader

Turns out that people who were saying that these kinds of services are going to give access to Government actors, sell their databases or just have them hacked/stolen by malicious actors because of garbage security were, in fact, correct. Color me not surprised.

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If you think that governments are not already building gene pools of their populations, I can color you a hip shade of naive, too, if you consent of course.

Ok, I'll bite. Which governments are you referring to? And how are they doing this? And how do you know of this?

Many nations have public gene banks. These banks contain many indigenous organisms' gene sequences as well as anonymized gene sequences from people from their respective countries, which is used for national and international medical research. These gene banks exchange information regularly. One of the most public ones is US' own NIH GenBank [0].

A small search surfaces a lot of gene banks which store human and non-human DNA. Use your favorite search engine for this.

Generally submissions are done with patients' consent, but I'm not very sure that some of the blood samples are directed to national private databases for countries' own use and research.

The reasons doesn't have to be nefarious. Knowing your population's genetic weaknesses is a good way to defend it, and having access to a wide pool allows a deeper understanding of genetic conditions and how genetic therapies are working.

Also, earlier comments than mine already cited how law enforcement in US is already using this as evidence.

I'm an ordinary person. I don't have access to more information than you do.

[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/

That's crazy that US law enforcement is storing genetic data about people they arrest. I understand that governments would store the data with consent from people, but without consent is not great...

That's how they caught the golden state serial killer

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/dna-from-genealogy-site-used-t....

Also, the government keeps all DNA from people arrested (not convicted) for anything

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/your-dna-police-database-...

I’m not the person you’re responding to but their claim doesn’t seem so contentious.

> Which governments are you referring to?

Any that has an intelligence service. (And probably most others too.)

> And how are they doing this?

They get the data from breaches like this or otherwise purchased from services like this.

> And how do you know of this?

I’d suspect less that they know and more that they have a reasonable suspicion. I personally have that suspicion because 1) it’s feasible and 2) governments would be interested in the data.

"How to get a free genealogy test, courtesy of the Hampden DA’s office"

https://www.masslive.com/news/2024/01/how-to-get-a-free-gene...

Isn’t it true that it’s already widely known that some US states (or the US itself; can’t remember details) stores DNA of anyone ever booked by the police even if not charged or charged and acquitted?

> give access to Government actors, sell their databases or just have them hacked/stolen by malicious actors

one of these is not like the other

It’s a big club, and we ain’t in it!

I will color you cynical instead.

Sometimes cynicism is well warranted. Security is just very hard to get right, in general, regardless of who you are.

Is it still cynicism if it's accurate?

We only highlight the cases where the cynicism paid off...and in this case praising someone who is saying something pithy _after the fact_.

It's easy to throw out cynical opinions. It's also easy to come along later and say "I _knew_ this would happen"

Acuracy does not factor into whether a statement is cynicism.

It is if the future is stupid.

I have bad news for you...

This isn't cynicism. It's intelligence - making an accurate prediction of future events.

Just because something ended up being right doesn't mean it was intelligent. Things don't work in absolute, most things are a bet.

If one outcome is 99% likely and the other 1%, the intelligent thing is choosing the 99% likelihood, but that still means that sometimes the person making the bad choice was right.

That doesn't make them intelligent, it makes them lucky.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Intelligence is being able to _consistently_ make accurate predictions of the future.

Cynicism is a general distrust in other people’s motives. How does one conclude that distrust expressed in a single event constitutes general distrust? Don’t we need many more examples of distrust from this person before branding them as cynical?

Cynicism is often a coping mechanism for people that have seen too many such events happen. It's actually only a problem when it guides choices from decision makers ahead of time, there's nothing wrong with some cynicism as long as it doesn't guide your actions.

How is one not cynical today?

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