Earlier quoted context omitted.
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> corporate, neoliberal, infantile fascism Not so infantile anymore. > "pussification" ... "SJW" Please keep this words limited to 4chan.
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DNA of every baby born in California is stored. Who has access to it?
111–120 of 136 posts
Re: DNA of every baby born in California is stored. Who has access to it?
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's why people are downvoting this guy? I totally agree that there's a more privacy-respecting solution. I was asking why people were downvoting this comment.
While I hate getting meta and discussing voting in HN comments, the best thing to do in the future is instead of asking why votes are going in one direction or another, instead, either vote yourself, or if it calls for it, offer up on-topic commentary. Comments that stir good on-topic discussion should never be down voted, regardless of whether you disagree with them or not, or even if they are missing a point. Down…
I hate getting meta, too, and I almost always vote up instead of commenting.
In this case I'm pretty disappointed by the replies I got to my question.
Re: DNA of every baby born in California is stored. Who has access to it?
#113I can comment on this firsthand. I was born in a hospital here in California, so my DNA was collected. A couple years ago I heard about this program, which I believe to be a gross violation of privacy and overstepping of authority. I read somewhere that you can have your/your child's sample destroyed by filling out a form and sending it to a state health agency (don't remember the specific one now). You have to provi…
I think it's an extreme overstep as well, but I do believe it's possible the data is anonymous. A secure hash of the fields you were talking about would make it possible to lookup when given the correct information, but impossible to reverse. Of course, it's just as likely, this already being a government program and a massive overreach at that, that your identifying data is stored in plain text. I just wanted to thr…
I don't think so, even if it was only stored that way the government will still have (name, dob, hospital) info for most citizens saved in some db/list making it easy to recreate the link back to the real person with pretty high accuracy I would assume.
Re: DNA of every baby born in California is stored. Who has access to it?
#114I can comment on this firsthand. I was born in a hospital here in California, so my DNA was collected. A couple years ago I heard about this program, which I believe to be a gross violation of privacy and overstepping of authority. I read somewhere that you can have your/your child's sample destroyed by filling out a form and sending it to a state health agency (don't remember the specific one now). You have to provi…
I think it's an extreme overstep as well, but I do believe it's possible the data is anonymous. A secure hash of the fields you were talking about would make it possible to lookup when given the correct information, but impossible to reverse. Of course, it's just as likely, this already being a government program and a massive overreach at that, that your identifying data is stored in plain text. I just wanted to thr…
>A secure hash of the fields you were talking about would make it possible to lookup when given the correct information, but impossible to reverse.
Think about the inputs of the mechanism you just described though. Presumably the goal of the "secure hash" is to prevent government workers from grabbing samples of specific people to do whatever with, so let's break it down. To calculate this hash you apparently need:
1. The name. If you're going after a specific persons sample, you already know this.
2. The date of birth. I don't know when this program started, but if you're alive today you definitely aren't more than 43,830 days old (365.25 * 120).
3. The hospital. I have no idea how many hospitals exist or have existed in California, but lets say there's been 100,000.
So the total number of possible hashes given only the name is 4,383,000,000. Sure, you could salt it as well, but the people we're trying to defend from have access to the DB and thus the salt, so we gain nothing from that. Here's some hashcat benchmarks: https://gist.github.com/epixoip/a83d38f412b4737e99bbef804a27...
Looks like 1000MH/s is a reasonable rate to be able to process sha-512 hashes, so according to that benchmark you should be able to generate the complete rainbow table in about...4 seconds.
It's probably longer given drive speeds and such, I've never actually tried to do what I'm describing, but it does seem like a less-than-one-work-shift process to calculate the hash of a specific person on commodity hardware if that's the only three inputs required. If that's the case, hashing it hasn't made it anonymous.
Re: DNA of every baby born in California is stored. Who has access to it?
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In the Netherlands, gym membership require drug tests Ehh, that's bull. It doesn't. (source: Dutch, with gym membership)
Does it maybe require accepting that random or targeted drug tests can be carried out and you have no right to refuse? Source this is the case in several countries.
I've never heard of this happening in The Netherlands. I googled around on the Dutch 'net, but nothing came up.
Also, there is no legal basis for subjecting employees or applicants to drug tests. So it does not happen here.
I'd be interested to know which countries you are referring to.
Re: DNA of every baby born in California is stored. Who has access to it?
#116In Sweden a blood repository from babies has already been used by law enforcement for DNA matching purposes [1], even though that was not the intended purpose of the repository.
[1] https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&ar...
Re: DNA of every baby born in California is stored. Who has access to it?
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I was told that I could not opt out and that the sample becomes the property of the State and there is nothing I could do about it. That is so disgusting. For all the talk about individuality and liberalism, it's amazing how liberal societies are so authoritarian and controlling. If you don't own your DNA, then what do you own? But I guess big brother knows what's best for us.
Well, when you don't own the majority of the fruits of your own labor, then I'd say your "DNA" is a drop in the bucket in comparison. But yeah, precisely how you feel is how Libertarians and other actual free-minded individuals feel about concepts such as taxation. Personally, I don't see DNA as that intrinsic or important as others do. It's just a piece of information about the composition of my body. Sure, if they…
I’m most worried that in the future our DNA could be used by health insurers the way financial institutions use credit scores. Those with genetic predisposition to expensive conditions might never be insureable.
Re: DNA of every baby born in California is stored. Who has access to it?
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, when you don't own the majority of the fruits of your own labor, then I'd say your "DNA" is a drop in the bucket in comparison. But yeah, precisely how you feel is how Libertarians and other actual free-minded individuals feel about concepts such as taxation. Personally, I don't see DNA as that intrinsic or important as others do. It's just a piece of information about the composition of my body. Sure, if they…
I’m most worried that in the future our DNA could be used by health insurers the way financial institutions use credit scores. Those with genetic predisposition to expensive conditions might never be insureable.
That would be society doing that, not just insurance companies.
Just like before the ACA it was society at large that didn't worry too much about people being dropped from insurance. Sure, people moralize about how awful it is, but then they take the policy with the lower rate instead of the better underwriting.
Re: DNA of every baby born in California is stored. Who has access to it?
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Obviously the number references your name in another register. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to request to have the sample returned. Got to love American state propaganda.
Doesn't sound like propaganda to me. Seems clear. When samples for out to researchers, they only get the sample and no way to look up who it belongs to. However, officials who have access to the registry could obviously look you up. Hopefully there are controls in place to keep those same officials from having samples tested, but 8 doubt it.
Not clear at all. FUD. The existence of this registry is never mentioned in the article which makes it sound like samples are unidentifiable.
Re: DNA of every baby born in California is stored. Who has access to it?
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Realistically, the odds are vanishingly small that various security-themed agencies aren't already ingesting all the DNA data. This is a treasure trove in the eyes of a police state.
After the Golden State Killer episode, it’s now probably seen as cheaper for them to just contact companies like 23andme.
I’m surprised 23andme doesn’t start marketing directly to law enforcement agencies, to cast a wider net then CODIS familial searches would.