These issues usually have a benign beginning.
“We only do this for violent crimes” seems reasonable but it will never stay benign. Cops are lazy. Give them a tool and they will eventually use it to catch shoplifters and graffiti artists or to inquire about the heredity of their girlfriends.
One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Working with the FBI
181–190 of 331 posts
Re: One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Working with the FBI
#182If this bothers you, consider fighting back. Submit as many DNA samples to as many firms as you can find. Send each sample from a different [consenting] donor, and ask that they do the same and include you among their donors. This action at scale dirties the data sets of all the companies involved.
I don't think that plan follows awfully well, why on earth would you pay money for services for the sole intent to game their database into inefficiency? A spotted chance of that even working, at best you've given them money for nothing back. No, it's best to just spread the word amongst your friends, and avoid all this muck.
noise in the system?
Re: One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Working with the FBI
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
Total surveillance or global DNA law enforcement database would solve many murders and prevent wrongful convictions. However, it would also give many opportunities for framing convenient suspects and "encouraging" confessions. I am sure your case was above board but, being born in a totalitarian state, I do not trust law enforcement too much and prefer to err on the side of not solving some crimes. My 2c.
How would it let you frame convenient suspects? Surely you would need to place that suspects DNA at the scene, in which case you already have it...? Where does the database come into this?
> Where does the database come into this?
"The scientists fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva. They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person." [0]
Re: One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Working with the FBI
#184Anyone know if there is a way to remove yourself from being shared with 3rd parties?
fbi seems a third party that's hard to remove
Re: One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Working with the FBI
#185Few 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…
> and their families That's how a local cold murder case was solved last year. DNA from a 25-year-old crime scene was run against the samples in one of these genealogy databases, and they found a familial match. Police set up a sting to covertly collect DNA from that person's immediate family. They got their DNA match with a brother's water bottle police took from a trash can after he worked a DJ gig at a school. htt…
That's wonderful if the crime is something clear-cut like murder. We can generally all agree that it is unethical and worthy of punishment.
What if it's something we can't quite agree on, or tyranny of the majority? Joe McCarthy happened once, and he didn't give a shit about ex post facto. Presuming someone like him will never come along again is a road to pain and suffering.
Spend ten minutes reading about what Crypto-Judaism is and why it is even a thing. Then look at abuse of power (I've known 2 people who have had LEOs as stalkers). A big part of warrant law is the premise that you don't give people information they don't need 'just because'. Very similar to the computing concept of Principle of Least Power. They prove they need it, you give it to them, but not a moment before, because who knows what they'll get up to.
Re: One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Working with the FBI
#186Earlier 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…
You’re assuming that every crime anybody could possibly be accused of in the future is legitimate. What if the crime is ‘handed out pamphlets opposing the leader?’
>What if the crime is ‘handed out pamphlets opposing the leader?’
That has been a crime in many places at various times in the past. The non-existence of a DNA database did nothing to prevent the existence of totalitarian governments, and would likely do nothing to promote them.
That's the thing about totalitarians. They don't care about the facts, if they want to get you they'll get you regardless of what the DNA says, in its absence they'll just come up with something else like the bumps found on your skull or distance between your eyes or the volume at which your voice has been measured praising the leader.
Why would a totalitarian system rely on DNA evidence when they can just go "our local comrade commissar has decreed that you are guilty and thus you are" and in regimes where there has to at least be a semblance of a show trial, they would just make up or cover up DNA-related findings to suit their whims.
Saying that DNA is dangerous because it may be used against someone in the future in some hypothetical situation is like saying "a list of person's names MUST NEVER be compiled because in the future a totalitarian leader may decide he doesn't like anyone whose name ends in a -ez or -stein."
Re: One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Working with the FBI
#187I would gladly donate my DNA to be tested to find criminals. I signed up to 23andMe years ago just for fun, but if that data can be used to help someone who was hurt by someone genetically related to me, I am all for it.
Reading the reactions here makes me feel crazy, as if their intention is to make me feel manipulated or otherwise bad. It is really interesting to me how many people are fearful of dystopian futures that could play out instead of excited to actually potentially help identify a serial killer.
Re: One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Working with the FBI
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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…
Fingerprinting is a notoriously inaccurate pseudoscience along with polygraph testing. As was seen on HN[1], consumer DNA tests are also inaccurate. In fact, up to 40% of gene variants on consumer DNA tests are false positives[2]. False positives happen with criminal investigations and DNA testing[3]. And now, consumer DNA databases are generating false positives[4] that upend and potentially ruin innocent people's l…
Fingerprinting is inaccurate.
DNA tests are inaccurate.
Witness statements are inaccurate.
Confessions are inaccurate.
Thanks to deepfakes, video is inaccurate.
Someone steals your car, eyewitnesses claim they saw them in possession of it, their fingerprints are in it, their hair is in it, a gas station security camera recorded them in it, cops found them in it, and they confessed.
"Your honor that evidence is, in order, a stress-induced misrecognition, a flawed analysis, pseudoscience, tampered with, a setup, and coerced."
What remains?
Re: One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Working with the FBI
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
In the US, it is already illegal for genetic information to be used as a qualification for employment. (a) Discrimination Based on Genetic Information.--It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer-- (1) to fail or refuse to hire, or to discharge, any employee, or otherwise to discriminate against any employee with respect to the compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment of the emplo…
> In the US, it is already illegal for genetic information to be used as a qualification for employment.
No.
In the US, it is currently illegal for genetic information to be used as a qualification for employment.
Your DNA never changes. Once it's on record it's on record. This isn't like prohibition where as long as you quit before the law comes into effect you are safe.
If there is ever a future time you can be punished for your DNA, the only people who can possibly be 'grandfathered' in are the ones who've avoided submitting their DNA in the first place. Everyone else can be punished after the fact.
Re: One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Working with the FBI
#190I would gladly donate my DNA to be tested to find criminals. I signed up to 23andMe years ago just for fun, but if that data can be used to help someone who was hurt by someone genetically related to me, I am all for it. Reading the reactions here makes me feel crazy, as if their intention is to make me feel manipulated or otherwise bad. It is really interesting to me how many people are fearful of dystopian futures…
The intent is to encourage you to consider the relative incidence rates of various misfortunes. Police ineptitude and the prosecutor's fallacy are vastly more common in this world than serial killers are. You seem eager to screw over your cousin, but it could just as well be you who is screwed over.