[HN Gopher] Police are getting DNA data from people who think th...
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Police are getting DNA data from people who think they opted out
Author : ilamont
Score : 169 points
Date : 2023-08-18 17:28 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theintercept.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theintercept.com)
| [deleted]
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Using a back door. I expect charges and jail time, as is done
| with other CFAA violators like Aaron Schwartz. /s
| chrisjj wrote:
| https://archive.ph/LUC20
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I'm a genealogist. I discourage everyone I can from uploading
| their DNA. For DNA to be secure, there doesn't just need to be
| firm walls, they can't ever be breached for a moment - not now or
| a generation from now.
|
| Holders of DNA can't be bought out or come under the control of
| leadership that doesn't fully grasp and exercise privacy
| safeguards. They can't allow laws to be bought or leveraged that
| will compromise their ability to safeguard it.
|
| LEO's use of DNA is a surveillance method and powerful interests
| will always feel compelled to use it to hunt people they perceive
| are enemies. Whatever info we may get by uploading it can't
| possibly be worth the risk to our descendants and relations.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| In my view DNA privacy is already defeated, enough people have
| already submitted that the intersection of distant relatives
| really narrows down who a given sample could be. When I
| submitted my own I had a long list of distant relatives on both
| sides come up and I suspect that is pretty typical for
| Europeans.
| andersrs wrote:
| There is always that one asshole in your family that thinks
| they're clever by uploading their DNA to one of the ancestry
| services. By doing that they've leaked a fair bit of
| information about their relatives who never consented.
| 14 wrote:
| I have a dumb brother who I won't talk to decides to be a
| shitty career criminal. They took his dna so I'm in the same
| boat as family uploading it. Not that I am worried about it
| being used for a crime but I worry in future people will be
| discriminated on by dna. Life insurance could be more
| expensive if they know you have a slight chance of x disease
| for examples.
| greedylizard wrote:
| Why is this being downvoted? Is it not true? From what I've
| seen, this comment is accurate. Genuinely asking...
| rolph wrote:
| >> The loophole, which a source demonstrated for The Intercept,
| allows genealogists working with police to manipulate search
| fields within a DNA comparison tool to trick the system into
| showing opted-out profiles. In records of communications reviewed
| by The Intercept, Moore and two other forensic genetic
| genealogists discussed the loophole and how to trigger it. In a
| separate communication, one of the genealogists described hiding
| the fact that her organization had made an identification using
| an opted-out profile. <<
| dylan604 wrote:
| The fact you have to trick the system to do something should
| give pause then and there that maybe what you are doing is not
| the expected behavior. By deliberately doing something like
| this acknowledges the user is aware of the behavior and is okay
| with doing it anyways. This should be used in determining level
| of "guilt" or curiosity getting the cat.
| 14 wrote:
| If this was a "hacker" who got caught doing this you know
| damn well that key point would be used to say "unauthorized
| access"
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > The fact you have to trick the system to do something
| should give pause
|
| This sort of Exceeding Access isn't being used to violate
| copyright or expose Gov wrongdoing. There is zero politician
| outrage over it, purchased or otherwise.
| kelnos wrote:
| I'm surprised that evidence gathered through this method can't
| be thrown out in court. The customer that provided the DNA did
| not give consent to sharing the data, and the company holding
| the data did not give consent to share it with law enforcement
| (would be entertaining if the act of exploiting a security hole
| in the search form could be a CFAA violation on top of that).
|
| Of course, this doesn't stop parallel construction; once they
| find their likely suspects through the illegally-obtained
| genetic search, they can likely often construct a case without
| even mentioning the genetic tracing.
| rolph wrote:
| >> they can likely often construct a case without even
| mentioning the genetic tracing<<
|
| I think that would be cause to throw the whole thing out, if
| it was eluted during discovery.
| superkuh wrote:
| Using the interface in unintended (by the creators) ways is a
| prosecutable crime under the CFAA. People can be and have
| been imprisoned for it.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev#Trial is a notable
| example.
| sobkas wrote:
| They were imprisoned because there was political/economic
| will to throw book at them. It's only illegal if you get
| caught and there is someone willing to prosecute(and
| sentence) you.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| If incrementing a counter in a URL got somebody sent to jail
| this absolutely should render evidence acquired this way
| inadmissible at the very least.
| theptip wrote:
| Seems to be a CPRA violation for CA citizens?
|
| https://www.bytebacklaw.com/2022/02/how-do-the-cpra-cpa-vcdp...
|
| Though not sure if law enforcement exemptions apply, AFAICT you
| need a subpoena to get a company to disclose sensitive personal
| information like DNA.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| More and more, the governments of the world try to erode the
| status of the lone, average human, for they think their efforts
| will protect countries and governments.
|
| Fear has been the primary motivator in the world of government
| ever since 9/11. America is so scared of itself it has turned
| inward, against itself. She's willing to forget about the 4th
| Amendment, the 13th Amendment, and even her own founding
| document, as long as they get a little more data they can abuse
| on their own citizens.
|
| At what point do we accuse the government of treason? None of
| this invasion of privacy was part of the deal, and Americans
| stand to gain nothing from these false assertions of privacy and
| opting out.
|
| Our government is betraying us and the dominant ideology is to
| lay down and take it. This country will never improve until we
| can fight back against surveillance. They couldn't keep us safe
| during 9/11, and none of their desperate "security" efforts have
| protected us.
|
| Again I ask, when do we accuse the government of betraying us and
| the social contract?
| zapdrive wrote:
| Don't forget the attacks on the first and the second amendment.
| edrxty wrote:
| Say what you want about the second, the fastest growing
| groups to embrace it are black communities and the LGBTQ
| community and they as a whole take it fast more seriously,
| borderline professionally, than any other group I've ever
| seen. I used to be a skeptic but seeing that has really been
| eye opening.
| koolba wrote:
| Without the 1st and 2nd, it's pretty hard to stop attacks on
| the 4th or 6th.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| One of the issues that has emerged is a strange fixation
| (which the Anti-Federalists warned of) on the Bill of
| Rights as the source of these rights. But the Bill of
| Rights is merely a non-exhaustive index, not a grantor, of
| our natural rights. These rights do not depend on a
| document, they exist regardless.
| edrxty wrote:
| It's frustrating because unless it's written in stone
| Americans won't even pretend to agree on it, we're a very
| chaotic culture that craves the predictability of rules
| and laws (unless they impact me specifically). There's no
| concept in American society of a universal ethical
| standard at even the most fundamental level, probably
| stemming from how much inequality exists.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| Do you have some alternative in mind? If you don't
| communicate an idea, you don't even have the chance to
| agree on it because many people may not even consider it.
|
| I really fail to imagine how a society can arrive at a
| universal ethical standard without writing a couple ideas
| down here and there. You're asking for a utopian society
| of mind readers, which hits me as just a touch
| unreasonable.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| The standard used to be the concept of Imago Dei.
| Regardless of one's individual beliefs it sets up an
| axiomatic basis for the worth of every individual and
| balancing that with the needs of a society.
| greedo wrote:
| I'm sure that'll work well in a polytheistic world. Oh
| wait, we've already tried that.
| kelnos wrote:
| I'm not convinced a society can arrive at a universal
| ethical standard, period.
|
| I was about to say, "we can at least agree that murder is
| bad", but I'm not sure that's even the case, given that
| it seems like some people would think it's ok to murder
| their political opponents if given the chance.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| I think the reason for this is because natural law
| assumes individual responsibility, and things have gotten
| far too comfy for most people to want that. So they
| outsource it to text and there are many experts at
| manipulating text.
| edrxty wrote:
| That's an incredibly good way of putting it. As long as
| you can justify your comfort over someone else's, you
| golden.
| koolba wrote:
| > These rights do not depend on a document, they exist
| regardless.
|
| Damn straight!
|
| One approach I've tried in the past is to explain that
| the people start with all rights, the government starts
| with zero privileges, and the explicit examples codified
| in the Constitution are simply bare minimum examples of
| lines that shall never be crossed.
|
| The militia prefatory clause of the 2nd amendment is a
| great example of this as explained by Scalia in Heller.
| It's not that that the right to bear arms is solely for
| members of a militia. It's simply one example of how the
| individual freedom (that innately exists!) may be
| exercised.
| rolph wrote:
| yes it would be difficult to succeed when one rounds up a
| militia of torches and pitchforks, vs an opposor equipped
| with muskets.
|
| an inherent right to defend ones self includes ability to
| equip to do so effectively
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| Have you ever considered that the people who vote for the
| government don't agree with you? Who decides what this social
| contract is?
| zlg_codes wrote:
| > Who decides what this social contract is?
|
| I think about this question a lot. So much of our philosophy
| of government is about some nebulous "contract", as if we
| agreed to be governed. Sometimes you'll be asked, "Do you
| believe in the rule of law?" Why would one need to _believe_
| in it? Is it a religion? (I think it is one, personally)
| Government sometimes likes to claim a "monopoly" on violence
| as well. One generally cannot trade or purchase violence _per
| se_ , so to act like it's a market, or that a government has
| any truly effective means of preventing the _choice_ to
| commit violence, is silly to me. Police are typically late to
| the scene of a crime, after all, and even with their monopoly
| are terrible at de-escalation or deterring.
|
| I think the social contract is different in every society,
| and changes based on the makeup of the groups. It's an
| amorphous thing that is always referenced, but never spelled
| out. It irks me that it gets referred to sometimes, but I
| think if we have them, they should be bidirectional and
| mutually beneficial.
|
| In general, I think a government who expects something but
| doesn't offer anything in return is merely tyrannical. If
| we're going to go on with these fantasies of contracts
| without signatures and choices without markets, then the
| least that can be done is for a government to act in good
| faith that they are protecting or improving the lives of
| those they gave themselves permission to rule over.
|
| As an American I do not see my "representatives" representing
| or helping me.
| sph wrote:
| > Again I ask, when do we accuse the government of betraying us
| and the social contract?
|
| "Ah, it's simple. It's the fault of _this_ government, but when
| my party gets finally voted in, things will change. "
|
| And so the circle of the naivety perpetuates. We might hope for
| a better future only when citizens will realise that both sides
| are exactly the same, and that they've been lied to since we
| invented the career politician. Apparently 4 years is how long
| it takes people to forget whatever bullshit they were sold last
| time.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism
|
| But seeing how everybody is politicised and ultra-partisan
| today, I can only shake my head and despair. People get the
| government they deserve.
| tamimio wrote:
| >People get the government they deserve. Spot on
| zlg_codes wrote:
| Both-sidesism? This goes beyond political party. Creating
| parties was where we fucked up. First-past-the-post almost
| ensured that our elections would end up becoming team sports,
| at that point.
|
| I'd be much more trusting of democracy or even representative
| democracy if the _demos_ had a real say -- We should be
| voting on issues more than we do people. People can betray
| trust or twist a vote 's meaning. Most of politics, as
| practiced, is sleight of hand and misleading people. If we
| vote on issues and then also vote on people whose leadership
| we trust to _execute_ said issue conclusion, we 'd get much
| closer to something representing the will of the people while
| also guarding against populist BS. That is the supposed goal
| of representative democracies, and yet in practice it's
| bread, circuses, and zero accountability from the top. Losing
| an election is not a replacement for consequences or taking
| responsibility for defying the will of your constituents.
|
| But, you can't sell that as a sport to people and foment
| tribal thoughts as easily, so that's no good. /s
| sph wrote:
| > you can't sell that as a sport to people and foment
| tribal thoughts as easily
|
| Panem et circenses. My niche theory on why we've become so
| politicised, is because it's become entertainment. Trash
| reality TV.
|
| Today the circenses are not the gladiators fighting for
| their lives, but the Orange Man vs Old Geezer sitcom on
| dinner time TV and in the front page of your newspapers.
| One will find there is little difference between the trashy
| TV fan and the person avidly following political debates.
|
| Meanwhile those reality stars keep stealing and making
| their friends richer, disregarding any laws because they're
| the ones making them.
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| You are, right now, in a we-gotta-do-something mindset. This is
| natural and understandable. You could revolt against the
| landlord back in the old days.
|
| People don't understand how big has the world become. Because
| they can't. The scale of the current world is unintelligible.
| Economy, resources, war, geopolitics, politics. The way we live
| our lives is not under our control, it's not under anyone's
| control. The average person has no more freedom than an ant in
| his colony. An _emergent_ collective mind rules the world,
| comprised of the technology and desires of the mankind. You can
| 't predict the outcome of a certain quantum state, but in the
| grand scheme of things everything moves deterministically as
| per the laws of Newton.
|
| Read some Ted Kaczynski.
| barrysteve wrote:
| It is not difficult conceptually to control that.
|
| You just scoop out the centralized means of access to
| resources and the semi-anarchist masses don't have anything
| to with their power.
|
| You can't predict quantum states, but you sure can build
| walls around valuable resources and imprison unpredictable
| quantum technologists.
|
| All it takes is a conspiracy/agreement among the heads of
| resources industry and the world is 'owned' again.
|
| Not advocating for that outcome, it's just unfortunately
| true.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Again I ask, when do we accuse the government of betraying us
| and the social contract?
|
| With kindness, I offer that voting for officials who've
| expanded surveillance isn't in harmony with the above
| sentiment. Neither is us failing to speak out to news orgs that
| are rarely willing to elevate surveillance abuses over far less
| important content.
|
| Part of the equation: Better behavior by us.
| krisoft wrote:
| > Fear has been the primary motivator in the world of
| government ever since 9/11.
|
| Ah. I really don't want to tell you what basis to build your
| private mythology on but fear as the primary motivator did not
| start with 9/11.
|
| We feared the bear so we become the hunters and killed it. We
| feared the night so we made fire. We feared the others in the
| next valley so we sharpened our sticks.
|
| We feared the flood so we built dams. We feared death so we
| invented delusions to placate ourselves.
|
| Even if you somehow constrain yourself to the history of the US
| government, would you say the cold war was not driven by fear?
| zlg_codes wrote:
| Perhaps it's better to call it another wave, or another style
| of fear. The point is that the events of 9/11 scared
| Americans enough to hand over their freedoms with the PATRIOT
| Act. The impact of surveillance everywhere in society has had
| an overall chilling effect on public discourse and activity.
| People act differently when they know they're being watched.
|
| I'm reminded of Ben Franklin: _" Those who would give up
| essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety,
| deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."_
| [deleted]
| jamesdwilson wrote:
| [...] But O good Lord! What strange phenomenon is this? What
| name shall we give to it? What is the nature of this
| misfortune? What vice is it, or, rather, what degradation? To
| see an endless multitude of people not merely obeying, but
| driven to servility? Not ruled, but tyrannized over? These
| wretches have no wealth, no kin, nor wife nor children, not
| even life itself that they can call their own. They suffer
| plundering, wantonness, cruelty, not from an army, not from a
| barbarian horde, on account of whom they must shed their blood
| and sacrifice their lives, but from a single man; not from a
| Hercules nor from a Samson, but from a single little man. Too
| frequently this same little man is the most cowardly and
| effeminate in the nation, a stranger to the powder of battle
| and hesitant on the sands of the tournament; not only without
| energy to direct men by force, but with hardly enough virility
| to bed with a common woman! Shall we call subjection to such a
| leader cowardice? Shall we say that those who serve him are
| cowardly and faint-hearted? If two, if three, if four, do not
| defend themselves from the one, we might call that circumstance
| surprising but nevertheless conceivable. In such a case one
| might be justified in suspecting a lack of courage. But if a
| hundred, if a thousand endure the caprice of a single man,
| should we not rather say that they lack not the courage but the
| desire to rise against him, and that such an attitude indicates
| indifference rather than cowardice? When not a hundred, not a
| thousand men, but a hundred provinces, a thousand cities, a
| million men, refuse to assail a single man from whom the
| kindest treatment received is the infliction of serfdom and
| slavery, what shall we call that? Is it cowardice? Of course
| there is in every vice inevitably some limit beyond which one
| cannot go. Two, possibly ten, may fear one; but when a
| thousand, a million men, a thousand cities, fail to protect
| themselves against the domination of one man, this cannot be
| called cowardly, for cowardice does not sink to such a depth,
| any more than valor can be termed the effort of one individual
| to scale a fortress, to attack an army, or to conquer a
| kingdom. What monstrous vice, then, is this which does not even
| deserve to be called cowardice, a vice for which no term can be
| found vile enough, which nature herself disavows and our
| tongues refuse to name? [...]
|
| -Etienne de La Boetie's Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1548)
| Terr_ wrote:
| > If two, if three, if four, do not defend themselves from
| the one [...] Two, possibly ten, may fear one; but when a
| thousand, a million men, a thousand cities, fail to protect
| themselves against the domination of one man
|
| I get that the author is trying to motivate people, but
| logically that's a straw-man: Nobody _actually_ thinks that
| the average individual Dirt-Farmer-Guy is being oppressed
| _solely_ because they 're terrified of Shiny-Hat-Guy's
| bulging biceps (2) and shouty voice (1).
|
| No, each Dirt-Farmer's decision-making comes from a fear of
| _very large numbers_ of violent angry men or institutions
| capable of destroying them financially and socially, fears
| which are often _entirely justified_.
|
| If things were truly as straightforward as Etienne is
| suggesting, _he wouldn 't need to write about it_: He could
| walk up to any random dude and say: "Hey, you're getting
| screwed, with _two_ of us we could kick the Shiny-Hat-Guy 's
| ass". And they'd do it, since every single person they'd meet
| would automatically join the mob or at least stand aside.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| That was an interesting read! I relate to that very much,
| thanks for sharing. We read all about the rise and fall of
| governments, of political goals, of cultures... and yes,
| there is a certain moral failing or disconnected apathy that
| allows the greedy and sociopathic to prey upon their own
| kind. It's rather depressing to think of so many people
| convinced they can do nothing, by a group of people who is so
| scared of their people they sign deals with businesses behind
| closed doors.
|
| I'm convinced many of our "leaders" could not argue their
| positions adequately if they were forced to defend them. I
| remember reading about events like the Million Man March on
| Washington DC, and I wonder how America would handle a
| massive, peaceful demonstration communicating the general
| discontent of the citizen with this _potentially_ great
| country.
|
| It seems there was a period in American history where the
| common man COULD and DID stand up for their countrymen, for
| the health and endurance of _the entire country_ instead of a
| handful of rich fucks. Why do we not see these shows of
| solidarity in the modern age? I ask mostly rhetorically but
| the America of today looks and feels characteristically
| different from what it sells itself as or even who it was a
| mere 50 years ago.
| snerbles wrote:
| > Why do we not see these shows of solidarity in the modern
| age?
|
| When did you last sit down and have dinner with your next-
| door neighbor? Discuss the local happenings and politics of
| the neighborhood in person?
|
| You might be able to answer that question in the
| affirmative. But many more don't. We're too busy isolating
| ourselves from one another to grow any form of culture from
| which organized efforts would spring.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| Great point, the feeling of community has slowly faded
| from many parts of the country. Not all, of course. Hard
| to do it completely. But the loss of "third places" --
| places you can exist with others in a non-vocational or
| business context -- is probably a big part of it.
|
| Many places still sort of exist through stuff like
| farmer's markets, some clubs, libraries, swap meets, etc,
| but they seem less generalized for socializing.
|
| I haven't met with my neighbors or sat down to chat with
| them. It does feel kind of alien and, dare I say it, rude
| to intrude on someone's life that way. Maybe it's not
| really an intrusion, and an atmosphere of fear and
| distrust has trained us to separate. I remember my
| parents meeting people and scheduling times to hang out
| all the time. Children from different families would
| mingle while the adults mingled, everyone got some dose
| of community.
|
| I couldn't tell you where programming hobbyists meet up
| in my area. I might have to go up to Tacoma before I find
| any no-or-low-cost hacker groups. But, don't many
| communities also have common places they go routinely?
| I'm thinking gaming and TTRPG, TCG shops might be a good
| start to build a third place, despite being a business
| themselves.
| gumballindie wrote:
| Not an american, but the EU/UK are following the same trend.
|
| What is the proposed alternative? As we can see there are bad
| actors in our society that pose a higher risk than ever before,
| and their tools are ever more sophisticated.
| kelnos wrote:
| Are these bad actors actually that big of a threat, though?
| And are they really that smart/sophisticated that they can
| elude more standard, "old school" investigative methods?
|
| The problem is that we just don't know, and law enforcement
| agencies aren't giving us a detailed breakdown of which plots
| were foiled (or at least successfully prosecuted after the
| fact) via privacy-invading means vs. old-fashioned police
| work. Of course they'll never give us this data; we probably
| don't even hear about most investigations, even after the
| fact.
|
| Just trust them? No thanks. They are very publicly
| incompetent in many ways (e.g. all airline "security"
| procedures developed post-9/11 -- except for locking and
| armoring cockpit doors -- seems pointless, and don't catch
| people during sanctioned penetration testing), and I don't
| see why they deserve any blind trust here.
|
| We don't know if this sort of dragnet genetic database
| trawling will broadly close cases. Sure, it worked with the
| Golden State Killer, when no other methods seem to have
| worked. But that's just a single data point. And I'd rather
| that the occasional -- _very_ occasional, as it turns out --
| serial killer goes free, rather than live in a police state
| with no privacy.
|
| This is a meandering way for me to say: we on the outside
| cannot propose alternatives, because we have scant data and
| little understanding of what works and what doesn't. And the
| people in power consider it a feature that we don't have
| access to this information.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| "I would rather have one serial killer get away with it"
| would make for a hell of a sound-bite for your opponent in
| an election campaign.
|
| Honestly this issue was already decided. No new arguments
| have been presented. I'm old enough to remember it. One
| side talks about hypotheticals and constitutional
| principles. The other side holds up a photo of some poor
| murdered child. Can't win this one.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| That's the most annoying part. They have literally every
| other tool and technology and scientific
| equipment/personnel to find out (sometimes even parallel
| construct) whatever they need for a case, why do they need
| to have access to ALL your private data and thoughts? How
| did thry ever solve a crime before the mass proliferation
| of all the data-rich personal tech we have today?
| gumballindie wrote:
| Oh believe me they are. Even back when the london olympics
| took place people were quietly muttering about the risk of
| terrorist attacks. To be fair the UK/MI6 are doing one hell
| of a job at keeping people safe, but the risk is massive.
| If the US wouldn't be as paranoid as it is believe me it
| would be worse. I am not justying the level of government
| oversight, I am genuinely curious what the alternatives
| are.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > we accuse the government
|
| this is a partisan topic, since +1 million adults in the USA
| are actively enrolled and paid by the systems that demand
| identification at each step, most wear a uniform, and their
| employers are entrenched in the political process.
|
| high-minded words plus the air used to say them, equals what?
| in reality I mean, not on chat boards
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| the postal service? blue collar welfare recipients? union
| workers?
| edrxty wrote:
| Walmart? McDonald's? Amazon? I'm not even sure what we're
| doing whistling about but I guess that's the point?
| barrysteve wrote:
| It's not fear, or not just fear.
|
| It's grief.
|
| The concept of a corporation and instutional society has died
| and we don't really want to admit it.
|
| The government is the last leg standing.. otherwise it's just
| everyone out for themselves.
|
| Rational thinking and debate is not leading the way, it's
| following. Getting the kind of verbal and rational agreements
| the baby boomers enjoyed, in today's system, is not happening.
|
| It is trivially easy to release personalized media that pumps
| up the grief and isolates people even more, then offer
| political and commercial products as a salve.
|
| We all pretend the primary cause is an great computing
| conspiracy, and we are being manipulated by our devices.
|
| Primarily, people have changed and tech is capitalizing on a
| more emotional and feelings based populace, whilst it's leaders
| head for dry land and buy up farmland.
|
| The popular Nietschze quote about the death of God and washing
| away infinite blood, doesn't go far enough. The conscious,
| alienated, knowledge of what _should be_ and the subconscious
| social experience of grief - combined together - is absolutely
| deadly.
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| Cats already out of the bag. Cousins already uploaded this stuff
| to 23andme. Really annoying.
| paulpauper wrote:
| police/feds will look for anything to get an edge to make cases
| easier for them
| Zigurd wrote:
| That is, in fact, an optimistic position. Police are so
| ineffective at solving crimes that "easier" and "getting an
| edge" overstate the possibility of a publicly minded motivation
| to cheat.
|
| Instances like the Massachusetts crime lab scandal should
| destroy all confidence in evidence handling:
| https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/05/massachusetts-cr...
|
| All evidence handling and analysis should be performed by an
| independent agency, maybe answerable to courts, not cops.
| rolph wrote:
| i would go a step further, and insist that test results of
| evidentiary DNA be provided for defense discovery, before
| probative DNA [sample from accused] is even touched by an
| examiner from forensic services lab.
|
| as is the only thing stopping probative DNA from ending up in
| the evidence lane is a promise not to abuse the opportunity,
| that also says nothing about "by mistake" occurances
| LispSporks22 wrote:
| Jesus what a shit show. What's the point if the sites can change
| their ToS and flip opt-out to opt-in at whatever whimsy they do
| choose. Needs to be some kind of uniform privacy enforced.
| hn_shithole wrote:
| [flagged]
| Anon_Forever wrote:
| In our lifetime, there will be a government system that will
| record DNA data for every baby born. It'll happen, just a matter
| of time.
| andersrs wrote:
| How do you know it's not already happening? It's standard
| practice to do bunch of 'tests' done at birth.
| ImJamal wrote:
| This is already happening in California (since the 80s). I'm
| not sure about other states.
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-biobank-dna-babies-w...
| dmitrygr wrote:
| One of the many reasons i had told my SO that we have to
| leave CA before having any kids.
| menus wrote:
| I understand criticisms against CA, but thinking this does
| not happen in other states regardless of their political
| affiliation is naivety at best.
|
| The linked article clearly says "Like many states.." but
| does not list which states.
|
| The only way you are beating this is by birthing at home
| and hoping no complications occur.
| ImJamal wrote:
| While other states may also collect DNA, it is amongst
| the worst since they do not later destroy it.
|
| >Some states destroy the blood spots after a year, 12
| states store them for at least 21 years.
|
| >California, however, is one of a handful of states that
| stores the remaining blood spots for research
| indefinitely in a state-run biobank.
| dylan604 wrote:
| isn't it standard practice to take a blood sample from the
| newborn? i just automatically assumed this was part of the
| intended tests for that sample
| ImJamal wrote:
| The problem is that it is not just used for running tests
| to see if the child is healthy.
|
| From the article
|
| >But while the state may not be making money off your
| child's DNA, Lorey admitted that there is the potential
| for outside researchers to profit off your child's
| genetic material.
|
| And
|
| >Law enforcement also can -- and does -- request
| identified blood spots. We found at least five search
| warrants and four court orders, including one to test a
| child's blood for drugs at birth.
| dylan604 wrote:
| That's my point. I just assumed DNA samples were being
| taken as well. Generously, I'd assume part of that was
| some sort of paternity testing since Maury Povich isn't
| on the air any longer.
| jstarfish wrote:
| It's always been a bit disturbing that there is no accounting
| for your tissue or organs after they're removed.
|
| The cops don't need to swipe your DNA from a complimentary
| drink during questioning. They'll just pull your foreskin out
| of cold storage.
| hammock wrote:
| > It's always been a bit disturbing that there is no
| accounting for your tissue or organs after they're removed.
|
| The hospital definitely has an accounting for them. Typically
| tissue or organs removed are sent to pathology, where they
| may be further tested and/or sold for research, data or other
| purposes. It's a dirty secret that hospitals make a ton of
| money off of parts of your body that they cut out.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >there is no accounting for your tissue or organs after
| they're removed.
|
| something I had never thought about, but what does an organ
| transplant do to these tests if a sample was taken from a
| recipient?
| hammock wrote:
| Organ transplants have the DNA of the donor, not the DNA of
| the recipient.
| dylan604 wrote:
| right...so is there a way of taking a sample from the
| recipient and have dna show up from the donor in a way
| that would confuse a police inquiry?
| hammock wrote:
| Have them sample the transplanted organ
| andersrs wrote:
| > They'll just pull your foreskin out of cold storage.
|
| It's fucked up how normalized circumcision is. Apparently
| some hospitals do it without even asking. Imagine your son's
| penis being mutilated so some person can have child-sacrfice
| skin cream.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Who puts a foreskin in cold storage? Though I know of one
| mother who saved her son's for a scrapbook, and I thought
| that was very strange.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| And that system deserves to be targeted, because nobody
| deserves access to that data.
| arsome wrote:
| Barely event matters, if your great aunt sends her DNA to
| some online heritage service, the game is basically over.
| Unfortunately, like it or not, your DNA isn't yours.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| Perhaps not in the current legal climate, but those can be
| changed. Since DNA is the source code to your body, I think
| we're in for some interesting times. It can be argued that
| your DNA is a part of you, since it _made_ you, and it can
| be made illegal to gather or even sequence our DNA unless
| certain thresholds are crossed.
|
| Like it or not, politics is not a singular immutable thing.
| We can reframe things, just as governments do to justify
| their garbage. Society is but putty, and we can mold it to
| our liking, or sit quietly like livestock and await
| government to decide what we're allowed to think and feel.
| [deleted]
| dylan604 wrote:
| Even if we change it today, wouldn't all of the docile
| little sheep that used ancestry.com or 23andMe type sites
| provide such a baseline that for generations future
| humans could be traced back. Supposedly, they can track
| back a very large portion of the population to Genghis
| Khan
| PeterisP wrote:
| It seems that the point which parent post wanted to make
| with "your DNA is not really yours" is that matching your
| DNA does not really need your DNA, as the DNA of your
| relatives (e.g. that aunt which opted-in to some genetic
| testing) is sufficient - your DNA isn't really yours
| because all your blood relatives share big parts of it,
| so their consent to use their DNA effectively provides
| most of your DNA as well.
| drdaeman wrote:
| > Unfortunately, like it or not, your DNA isn't yours.
|
| The current trends seem to go against this, saying that
| even things like image, voice, or memories about us are all
| somehow private even in a public setting, and cannot be
| used without a permission of their owner. DNA is
| essentially in the same category - even more so, we leave
| it just about everywhere, yet most people think about it as
| something extremely intimate, much more so than a picture
| from a public venue (where opinions sort of diverge).
|
| And whenever I agree on disagree, I can totally understand
| why this is happening and why the current trends are like
| this. It's basically a reaction of the society trying to
| protect itself from abuse by the entities of similar
| (large) scale.
|
| All this stuff is basically a (relatively) new dilemma of
| the information age, where we've gained an ability to
| store, analyze and transfer large arrays of data
| efficiently. Paired with technologies (such as cameras or
| sequencers) becoming more affordable to deploy at scale.
|
| Sadly, consumer technologies (empowering "normal" people)
| drastically lag behind business and government tech, so
| before your casual Joe ever gets a chance to have some
| meaningful (and not really privacy-breaking; although
| there's rarely an incentive to develop tech that doesn't
| break this) use cases, large corporations and governments
| ruin everything.
| andrewxdiamond wrote:
| What is the impact of this?
|
| I have the same aversion to government power built into my
| bones but I can't think of a concrete way the government would
| be able to abuse this capability to assert power over me.
| sublinear wrote:
| They can derive health data from your DNA. Say if we finally
| move to "single payer health care"... but this is america so
| you get a tax penalty for being more prone to illness.
|
| Now imagine they have the wrong DNA on file for you!
| code_duck wrote:
| There could be various forms of discrimination by the
| government or private entities based on genetic
| characteristics. For instance, you could be denied health
| insurance or required to undergo a therapy or treatment based
| on genetic traits. If a government was to become more
| abusive, they could practice some form of eugenics such as
| forced sterilization.
| donmcronald wrote:
| > undergo a therapy or treatment based on genetic traits
|
| Person X has a genetic predisposition that results in anger
| control issues in 87% of people, so they must subscribe to
| weekly anger management counselling or they'll be denied
| access to public areas such as malls and schools. The
| government certified and licensed suppliers are A, B, C.
|
| Imagine the profits of legally compelling people to buy
| your stuff. History shows there would be a long lineup of
| people eager to exploit something like that.
| [deleted]
| zlg_codes wrote:
| I think in such a system, the people would rightfully
| target the law as the enemy and ramp things up until
| enforcing the law becomes too dangerous to attempt.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Too late. There's too much surveillance - how would you
| even discuss it with each other? The first thing they're
| going to do is target your phone and computers. Expect
| terrorism charges.
| donmcronald wrote:
| > What is the impact of this?
|
| Maybe guilt by association? Imagine going into a business,
| having some DNA based system identify you, and being denied
| entry because the majority of your relatives are criminals.
|
| Realistically, I'd say the opposite will happen though. Being
| related to someone wealthy or influential will automatically
| get you special treatment and you won't even have to ask "do
| you know who I am?"
|
| > but I can't think of a concrete way the government would be
| able to abuse this capability to assert power over me
|
| I think the war on drugs in the US is a pretty good example.
| If I say it was used to marginalized and disenfranchise one
| specific group of people, everyone knows what group I'm
| talking about, so, IMO, that's a good indication it was
| intentionally targeted at that group.
|
| Now imagine the same thing, but you're in the targeted group
| and, instead of having the police roaming your neighbourhood,
| you're simply locked out of all the "opt-in" systems that are
| necessary to have a decent life; banking, real-estate,
| licensing, etc.. Maybe you're even prevented from shopping at
| stores that have reasonable prices and have to overpay for
| food because you're a "bad person".
|
| Opting in to beneficial systems, with less beneficial
| defaults, is the new way of discriminating IMO.
| dylan604 wrote:
| those very bones with that built in aversion contain the very
| identifiers used to hunt you down
| Vvector wrote:
| Watch Gattaca.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| It will be harder to get away with crimes if everyone's DNA
| is on file.
|
| Of course if you recently visited the place where a crime
| took place you might also be falsely accused.
|
| I suppose they could also use it to track your movements if
| there was some way to massively collect DNA samples from the
| environment.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > It will be harder to get away with crimes if everyone's
| DNA is on file.
|
| A core problem with any surveillance is that it is
| disproportional and only available to the powerful. If
| access to surveillance were as universal as possible,
| powerful interests would suddenly find the will to wind it
| back.
| rolph wrote:
| There is some way to massively collect DNA samples from the
| environment.
|
| https://www.newscientist.com/article/2375624-air-
| pollution-m...
|
| https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230606-how-air-
| pollutio...
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S09609822
| 2...
|
| these can be deployed at great density in an array
| providing granularity made to order.
| jart wrote:
| Wow this sounds like a slam dunk for my next YC
| application.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Or they could bust a place where religious services were
| held in secret, or an apartment where gay people gather to
| socialize, or an underground abortion clinic, suck up the
| DNA and get warrants for everybody.
|
| That isn't being falsely accused, it's worse.
| throw7 wrote:
| baby steps... and then you have the movie gattaca.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Right now, the most likely outcome is that you will get
| convicted of a crime somebody else did because you "won" the
| lottery of being the false positive on the database.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I hate to go Godwin but within living memory we have an
| example of what governments do if they have (or think they
| have) information on your heritage or genetic background.
|
| Or go back a few more generations, even here in the USA you
| might legally have been declared to be 3/5 of a person.
|
| You think people have _really_ changed since then? I don 't.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Definitely had, not just think they had:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
|
| Lack of a detailed census in your country was indisputably
| protective for Jews during the Holocaust. Plenty of people
| only discovered themselves that they had matrilineal Jewish
| descent during the Holocaust, because the Nazis had all
| those punchcards.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Many states in america had laws that would allow for
| castrating "undesireables" and not that long ago.
| peyton wrote:
| If you are born in an area that later hosts a separatist
| movement, you can be denied freedom of movement using a
| saliva swab. I believe the mostly likely abuse is to erode
| support for political factions.
| noman-land wrote:
| You can conjure many insane possibilities in a future
| unknown.
|
| DNA could be tested for traits that are "more likely to cause
| criminality". People with those traits can be more heavily
| scrutinized and surveiled. Or have their employment
| opportunities limited.
|
| DNA could be multiplied and planted as evidence.
|
| DNA could be cloned, or used in scientific testing without
| consent.
|
| DNA could be used for targeted biological warfare.
|
| People leave traces of DNA everywhere they go. Who knows what
| type of detection mechanisms will exist in the future?
|
| There's also the very likely scenario that a central database
| like this becomes a prime target and leaks. It's borderline
| guaranteed.
| m463 wrote:
| They could clone you, force the clone to perform a crime,
| then arrest you for the crime based on dna evidence.
| drdaeman wrote:
| Most sci-fi stories involving human cloning that cover
| legal aspects seem to predict that laws will be updated
| to account for a possibility that crime was performed by
| a clone. Laws tend to lag behind technologies, but not
| too drastically.
|
| It's also much cheaper to just fabricate evidence (cf.
| XKCD #538 aka $5 wrench vs security). Worked well since
| time immemorial, and doesn't leave a clone.
| plagiarist wrote:
| > DNA could be tested for traits that are "more likely to
| cause criminality". People with those traits can be more
| heavily scrutinized and surveiled. Or have their employment
| opportunities limited.
|
| I don't think you need to consider other possibilities,
| this is a good enough example. And unfortunately it is not
| insane in the sense of paranoid, because this is what Nazis
| would be doing with it. Or NK jailing entire families for
| one member's crimes but basing it on DNA matches.
| drdaeman wrote:
| > DNA could be used for targeted biological warfare.
|
| I'm no biologist, but I've heard that ethnic bioweapons (in
| a way portrayed in science fiction or conspiracy theories)
| are basically a myth and/or convenient propaganda fuel.
| greedo wrote:
| Read The White Plague by Frank Herbert. Scared the heck
| out of me as a teen. Considering how humanity still
| hasn't escaped tribalism even after two hundred
| millennia, just the thought of genealogically targeted
| viruses are a wonderful thought.
| noman-land wrote:
| I'm far from a biologist as well but we're talking about
| an unknown future. We're entering an era of personalized
| medicine. Maybe you can't target an ethnic group but you
| could target a specific person. You could theoretically
| poison the water in a whole city to target one person.
| Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But in 10 years? 20
| years? 50 years?
| miguelmota wrote:
| Social stratification, genetic elitism, genetic profiling,
| bio-surveillance, etc. are all very real concerns. Brave
| New World will become non-fiction.
| drdaeman wrote:
| Really? What are the signs of this coming?
|
| While racism is definitely a thing today, it seem to be
| dying. Slowly, but the trend is certain: modern society
| is way less racist than it was, say, a century ago (or
| worse, a few centuries ago). People stop caring about
| ethnic origins. The care about cultures and nationalities
| those days (notice how even the meaning of "racism" had
| shifted to account for this), and those are rapidly
| becoming less and less correlated with genetics.
|
| While people won't stop being xenophobic (unless, idk,
| some miracle or catastrophe happens), in the modern
| world, when it comes to identity, genes are rapidly
| losing battle to memes.
| tamimio wrote:
| >There's also the very likely scenario that a central
| database like this becomes a prime target and leaks.
|
| Leaks/bugs already blamed, in the article:
|
| >GEDmatch tools that provided access to DNA profiles that
| were opted out of law enforcement searches, which she
| described as "a bug in the software."
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| Check out a great sci-fi movie named Gattaca.
|
| Remember that you shed cells everywhere you go, so soon the
| tech will be advanced enough where we can do nearly real-time
| DNA matching. If you sneeze, a sniffer could pick that up and
| figure out who you are.
|
| Imagine a camera that films not things that are visible, but
| people who were _there_ , at that protest, in that store, in
| that hospital, boarding that plane. It's practically
| irrefutable (or currently legally is, even though it's
| inherently flawed.)
|
| And you can never change that identifier. Once that data is
| out, it's out.
|
| The last headline in that article, "Solving Crime Before It
| Happens" could have easily been entitled "Minority Report"
| (another great sci-fi movie that's not so fictitious
| anymore.)
| foxyv wrote:
| The thing that broke my brain about Minority Report is,
| that after stopping the murder, they could have just let
| the people go a few days later. The person would know they
| couldn't get away with the crime and then wander off to
| take up pottery or whatever. Instead they Haloed them all
| for no good reason. No victim to seek retribution and no
| reason to restrain them any more.
|
| At the same time, when you look at real life justice
| systems through the same lens we look at Gattaca and
| Minority Report it looks even more bizarre. We are pretty
| much running criminal training camps almost designed to
| make people more criminal, and then after they get out of
| the camps we structure our society to almost force them
| back into crime to survive. It's bonkers.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| If you are called the 'Justice' system you are out of a
| job when there's no longer a need to implement 'Justice'
| because you solved the issue higher up the food chain.
| Why would they put themselves out of work?
| pessimizer wrote:
| It seems bonkers, until you realize that that person who
| gets 5 years in prison for his 4th petty shoplifting
| offense is generating hundreds of thousands of dollars of
| checks being written to people who work within and who
| are contractors for the justice system. And on the
| streets, fighting crime is another place where massive
| checks are written in order to protect the public from
| small-time street and property crime.
|
| If people are robbing other people for $100, especially
| in 2023 dollars, that's too stupid to be a failure of
| society, that has to be because small-time crime is a
| resource for a lot of justice system-connected
| industries, and as long as maintaining the level of it
| doesn't pit those industries against real estate
| interests, they can lobby for crime.
|
| I think there are really three kinds of crime:
|
| 1) Crimes of need, where people need to feed themselves
| or their loved ones, so resort to crime because they're
| willing to risk their lives and their freedom,
|
| 2) Crimes of stupidity, where people just don't
| understand how unlikely they are to get away with
| something, or how bad the punishment could be, so they
| undervalue the cost of undertaking those crimes for the
| benefit they stand to gain, and
|
| 3) Crimes of compulsion, where people have enough, and
| mostly understand the costs and the benefits, yet risk
| their lives and freedom for more for some irrational
| reason; degenerate gamblers.
|
| We can prevent all crimes of need immediately and easily.
| It's more difficult to prevent crimes of stupidity, but
| pouring education into everyone is the answer. It's
| idiopathic crimes of compulsion that are hard to deal
| with, because people have wildly different reasons for
| their compulsions.
|
| As a society, we pour _all_ of our efforts into crimes of
| compulsion, the only kind of crime that we 're virtually
| guaranteed to be ineffective at stopping, and bad at
| controlling. Where the discussions between political
| factions are about whether we should kill them, give them
| therapy, drug them, corral them far away from people, let
| you look them up on a website after they're free, refuse
| them work, let them vote, etc., in the context of
| assuming that the vast majority of crime has unique
| causes and solutions. To assume that, we have to ignore
| that people are still sticking other people up for $100.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| You forgot the crimes of "I can get away with it", or
| else perhaps you don't live in San Francisco or Jalisco
| or Sinaloa.
| whatshisface wrote:
| > _pouring education into everyone is the answer._
|
| That sounds good until you realize that algebra won't
| help... You're proposing a "scared straight" program,
| essentially.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| But it's very very profitable.
| rolph wrote:
| thought crimes:
|
| https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol118/iss5/4/
|
| https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti
| cle... [PDF]
| Joeri wrote:
| Politicians don't get votes for reducing crime, they get
| votes for being tough on crime. Building out ever larger
| repression systems instead of investing in prevention and
| rehabilitation is the better political strategy.
| tehlike wrote:
| not quite needed. People already volunteer this information. It
| only takes one relative to identify with reasonable certainty
| who you are based on a random blood sample because of this.
| tcoff91 wrote:
| This definitely seems like a CFAA violation.
| justinclift wrote:
| Super ironic: "If you're doing something you
| wouldn't want blasted on the front page of the New York
| Times, Moore said, you should probably rethink what you're
| doing."
|
| Then proceeds to deliberately search the DNA of people who
| explicitly opted out of sharing genetic information with police.
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