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Comment by yannyu | Hacker News Reader

This is a particularly incendiary way of putting this information out there.

What is collected and stored is a small blood-spot sample from a heel prick on a newborn. This is used to test for various kinds of conditions that affect newborns.

This isn't a full DNA genome sequence or even any data at all, just the blood-spot specimen.

Law enforcement does not have automatic access to this sample, but individual samples have been given to law enforcement through court orders or warrants. There isn't a clear SOP for how law enforcement typically gets this information or how often it's given to law enforcement, but there's been proposed legislation to make this more transparent.

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The blood sample isn’t a DNA sample right up until the point they decide to sequence it. This is the same legal doctrine allowing the government to systematically collect all of your personal data without violating your privacy as long they don’t look at what they collect without a warrant.

The government has granted themselves an option on your personal data that can’t be revoked.

I agree with you in principle. And I agree that the government has been steadily eroding our privacy. And I agree that California probably shouldn't be retaining these samples forever.

However, the likelihood of being able to "sequence" the biomatter on a blood spot is quite low, and the probability of getting good signal out of it continues to go down over time. It'll still remain useful for various kinds of spot testing and genetic disease testing, but it's not going to produce a fully validated genomic sequence or even be that useful for forensic purposes.

This isn't some sort of sealed blood vial, it's literally just blood on paper.

This is wrong, the sample efficiency of DNA collection, amplification and sequencing technology has gone way up, to the extent that for example bubonic plague could be identified from DNA samples in the dental plaque of skulls which are multiple centuries old.

Also your statement directly conflicts with the purported confirmed utility of law enforcement getting warrants to use said samples.

You don't think that it's easier to identify whether something is bubonic plague than it would be to identify whether two DNA samples are related? Especially when one of them is aged such that it's not even a whole sequence anymore?

Yes, our ability to manipulate and read DNA has increased significantly in the past 40 years. But you can't create data from something that isn't there or has been corrupted beyond recovery.

And as far as the efficacy of police goes, I don't think that a warrant is sufficient to prove that there's confirmed utility in getting these samples.

I agree but the State has already the monopoly on violence, which is something that only the State has. If they have a warrant, they can also break into your private property and you have to accept it. This is not too dissimilar.

They can arrest you (with a warrant) and take your DNA whenever they want so I don't see what your point is.

They don’t need to arrest you to obtain your DNA, which is the entire point. They don’t need to arrest you to use your DNA, previously collected, to identify a family member.

The government has my biometrics. Most people should assume, by default, that the government has theirs as well.

Then they don't need to recollect it for "any applicant, petitioner, sponsor, supporter, derivative, dependent, beneficiary, or individual filing or associated with a benefit request or other request or collection of information, including U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals and lawful permanent residents, and without regard to age"

> but individual samples have been given to law enforcement through court orders or warrants.

Then I can easily guarantee you that individual samples have been given to law enforcement _without_ orders or warrants.

> There isn't a clear SOP for how law enforcement typically gets this information

Which means there is zero oversight, logging, or auditing.

> This is a particularly incendiary way of putting this information out there.

Was it inaccurate?

It's about as accurate a Buzzfeed headline, but I guess that's par for the course on the internet these days.

It's not a "DNA sample" in the way that most people would consider it these days, no more than a used cup would also be called a "DNA sample". But to your point, it can still be used for surveillance and tracking.

Also, your phrasing is designed to make it seem like a huge overreach, when this act has likely saved millions of lives through early diagnosis of preventable diseases and early intervention on disabilities. I have personally experienced this.

So yes, I do think your framing here is inaccurate through omission of key facts.

> this act has likely saved millions of lives through early diagnosis of preventable diseases and early intervention on disabilities

Why does the state have to collect and keep the sample for that to happen? Why can't it be the private property of the parents, provided to whatever private testing labs are used to do the tests?

That seems like a fair criticism. I don't know enough to quantify the benefit of retaining these samples, but I do know that the reason for keeping samples primarily relates to quality control, research, and development of tests.

There is a process for people to have the sample destroyed, I also have no idea how easy or how often that is used.

the implication was misleading, yes. the implication being that California has database of its citizens' genetic data. when the reality is that CA has a _physical sample_ of blood.

A collection of cars is also a collection of steering wheels, a collection of tires, a collection of seats, a collection of engines a collection of seats, ...

as blood contains white blood cells, and these cells tend to contain DNA, yes a collection of identified blood samples is also a collection of DNA (molecules).

A DNA collection doesn't need to have been sequenced to qualify as a DNA collection.

On the other hand blood samples degrade over time depending on how you store it. This makes DNA sequencing more difficult and/or impossible. Presumably the ROI (in a non-dystopian society) of storing those sample long-term doesn't make sense, especially if the primary usecase is screening for diseases (a random PDF from the Association of Public Health Laboratories says biomonitoring/biothreat samples are stored 1 year https://www.aphl.org/AboutAPHL/publications/Documents/ID_Spe... ).

So yes a collection of blood sample is technically also a collection of DNA sequences, but it has an expiry date (a short one compared to the lifespan of an individual!) contrary to a DNA sequence that's pure data.

It's very inaccurate.

OP made it sound like Cali was genome sequencing everyone born in the state and then storing that.

What's really going on is they're doing routine blood tests.

So yeah, pretty inaccurate.

Blood isn't stored after routine blood tests?

It didn't sound like that at all, it just says DNA samples are collected and stored. The implication that such DNA in such samples can be sequenced after the fact is not novel at all, every time DNA is sequenced, it is first collected.

it was misinformation, the DNA in such a sample is not only miniscule and unstandardized, but also not treated for longterm archival specimen retention.

the blood "spot" is about general morphology, and antigenic specificity.

It is as accurate as any of the incendiary Pravda propaganda pieces[1] about how the capitalist swine lived. Other posters have helpfully pointed out the specifics of why your particular spin on it is not entirely honest.

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[1] Often mostly factually accurate, but I doubt you'd find much common ground with the particular spin they'd put on describing your daily life.

> This is used to test for various kinds of conditions that affect newborns.

Then why do they keep the samples?

Because the US has laughably weak privacy laws and most Americans snicker at the EU GDPR because of "cookie banners" (which btw isn't a thing - most consent dialogs are non-compliant as they shouldn't serve to just inform you but to actually obtain voluntary, revokable and specific informed consent) instead of thinking about what it means to actually have a fundamental human right to privacy and ownership of your own data or not.

They keep the samples for the same reason US tech startups keep deleted data and track seemingly useless behavior. Because they might find a use for it someday and there's literally no law preventing them from doing it.

No, they are correct, and it's disingenuous to claim otherwise. They have a DNA sample of everyone. Those samples haven't been sequenced. As you've pointed out, they are sequenced when the state needs them to be.

It would be like scanning your drivers license and putting it in a sealed envelope and claiming "I don't have your home address!", when I'm known to get the home address from other peoples envelopes when asked for it.

At least they can't trawl them for random matches when they're like that, the cost of sequencing is a barrier. Probably even more in that a 20 year old blood spot on a piece of paper isn't an ideal DNA sample.

"There isn't a clear SOP for how law enforcement typically gets this information..."

Then no, it wasn't an incendiary claim.

Ag puhleez

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