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One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Working with the FBI

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Re: One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Working with the FBI

#121

Post by googlryas »

rixrax wrote: post #111
oh_sigh wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I'm okay if my DNA sample helps catch a cousin, brother, or other family member that is a murderer/rapist/etc. Less okay with them using my sample for promotional material, but I've never really seen that done except for people who clearly consent(ie by starring in a commercial or photo shoot for the company).

Until another regime shows up that decides to neuter or eradicate people with a specific trait.

Isn't this an argument against doing anything except living the life of a hermit deep in the woods?

Have a drivers license? Murderous regime will know where you live and come kill you.

Use the internet via an ISP? Murderous regime will know what you look at and come kill you.

Re: One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Working with the FBI

#122

Post by harlanlewis »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #68
ChuckMcM wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who their relatives are. One tool of political assassination is to out the sibling of the { conservative | liberal } party candidate.

I would think that if they had any connection with them, there would be a Facebook link. If there is not even a Facebook connection, I doubt that the fact that a politician has sibling that they don't really keep in touch with is going to be a big deal.

Oh, what a blissful #fakenews-less reality that would be.

Re: One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Working with the FBI

#123

Post by googlryas »

mikeash wrote: post #120
oh_sigh wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a general problem with DNA tests, regardless of how samples are collected or potential perpetrators are identified. And it seems like the solution is known and accepted by the courts now, at least in Taiwan: "don't rely on just 17 markers when performing DNA matching tests"

It’s not, however, a problem that can affect you if your DNA isn’t in any database in the first place.

The man in the linked story did not have his DNA in any database that the police used - they got his name volunteered from the people present at the crime scene. So yes it is a problem that can affect you if your DNA isn't in any database.

Re: One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Working with the FBI

#124

Post by astura »

howard941 wrote: post #105
astura wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US GINA bans health insurance companies from using genetic data for determining premiums or eligibility. If it were legal you wouldn't have to worry about insurance companies mining genetic databases, it wouldn't matter, they'd simply demand a DNA sample in order to be insured.

GINA's effective -- now. But what if it goes the way of the endangered preexisting condition exclusion? Parties are already chopping pieces of that latter protection away under the guise of short term policies.

GINA was voted into law 509-1 (Ron Paul being the sole dissenter), it was hardly controversial.

>what if it goes the way of the endangered preexisting condition exclusion?

Then insurance companies will simply demand DNA to be insured. Same way car insurance companies demand financial information (through credit bureaus) in order to insure you in places where it's legal to do so (which is the vast majority of the US save 1-2 states).

So either way you don't have to worry about insurance companies mining private databases, if GINA exists they can't legally and if GINA doesn't exist they'll just do the data collection themselves.

Re: One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Working with the FBI

#125

Post by erobbins »

wonderwonder wrote: post #107
wukerplank wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would allow them a well targeted ethnic cleansing. To give you some ideas: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_unworthy_of_life - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_eugenics

With respect, if we hit this point, it really doesn't matter if the company wants to share the data or not, the government is taking it.

sure, but if it was anonymized/encrypted/some kind of "only the owner can see this" they couldn't do anything with it.

Re: One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Working with the FBI

#126

Post by bg24 »

kilo_bravo_3 wrote: post #113
apo wrote: post #62

Few people taking theses tests understand or care about the privacy-destroying effect of what they're doing to themselves and their families. For example, this is from the AncestryDNA (different company) terms of service: By submitting User Provided Content to AncestryDNA, you grant AncestryDNA and the Ancestry Group Companies a perpetual, royalty-free, worldwide, sublicensable, transferable license to host, transfer…

>what they're doing to themselves and their families. This only encourages me. My DNA is on record in various places, and if any relative of mine commits a crime I want the honor of being the person who fucked them and sent them to prison. I would tout the event as an esteemed accomplishment. Everyone seems to be worried about a sci-fi movie where clones are made from cheek swabs or corporations use DNA to deny certa…

I applaud your thinking. But in the real world, things can get ugly very very quickly as the original commenter said. Even worse, imagine your DNA results score being used as part of employment qualification checks! When the greed of $$ is involved, ethics take a backseat in almost all corporate decision making, and good willed but naive persons get trampled.

Re: One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Working with the FBI

#127

Post by module0000 »

int_19h wrote: post #50
tomsthumb wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a meaningful difference between the government getting a warrant to look for a specific person’s DNA and searching everyone’s DNA to see if it’s a match. Why should the government get to digitally “stop and frisk” three hundred thousand people because they have a hair sample from a murder scene?

Why is matching DNA analogous to "stop and frisk"? If the govt doesn't actually get access to the raw DNA data, but only the records that matched the sample they submitted, it sounds like a very narrow tool that doesn't infringe anyone's privacy without a valid reason (i.e. if there's a match). I mean, fundamentally, how is it different from the police asking a hotel administrator whether John Doe stayed there?

>> I mean, fundamentally, how is it different from the police asking a hotel administrator whether John Doe stayed there?

I don't think it's different. Hopefully the hotel operator has the good sense to tell any law enforcement without a warrant precisely where they can shove it. It sounds like this DNA company does not have that good sense, however.

Re: One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Working with the FBI

#128

Post by jhayward »

usaphp wrote: post #91
AllegedAlec wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because perfect information makes insurances useless. Insurances work because we know that most people have roughly the same chance, plus or minus a bit, to get royally fucked in life by disease, acts of God, human maliciousness and all that. That means that when someone gets the rough end of the stick, the entire group helps to pay to keep them on their feet. If we have perfect (or near-perfect) knowledge, what woul…

> That means that when someone gets the rough end of the stick, the entire group helps to pay to keep them on their feet. That's exactly what I meant, government should be that entity that helps those on the rough end of the stick. Riding on the misinformation of life insurance company is not a solution either

What you suggest is that insurance, as practiced for the past thousand years, not exist at all then.

Re: One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Working with the FBI

#129

Post by daemonk »

I remember attending a bioinformatics conference years ago when Nanopore presented one of their first devices. For those who are not in the field, Nanopore offers a palm sized device that can sequence DNA in real-time as the strand moves through a small pore. They are still far from offering a device that is accurate enough to identify people.

During the presentation, images of public places vacuuming up biological material and sequencing whatever DNA material found came to my mind. The privacy implications of this is potentially very scary.

Re: One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Working with the FBI

#130

Post by kilo_bravo_3 »

mikeash wrote: post #118
kilo_bravo_3 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>what they're doing to themselves and their families. This only encourages me. My DNA is on record in various places, and if any relative of mine commits a crime I want the honor of being the person who fucked them and sent them to prison. I would tout the event as an esteemed accomplishment. Everyone seems to be worried about a sci-fi movie where clones are made from cheek swabs or corporations use DNA to deny certa…

What about accidental harm because your DNA or a relative’s DNA managed to end up at a crime scene, or bad lab procedures produce a false match?

>Most notoriously, Brandon Mayfield, an American lawyer, was wrongly linked by four fingerprint experts to the 2004 Madrid train bombing. He was arrested and detained for two weeks, before investigators realised that an Algerian man, Ouhnane Daoud, was the real source of the print.

https://theconversation.com/fingerprinting-to-solve-crimes-n...

Should law enforcement be prohibited from fingerprinting objects found at crime scenes?

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