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We can ID people from DNA that shows up in environmental studies

arstechnica.com

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Re: We can ID people from DNA that shows up in environmental studies

#21

Post by krunck »

Simulacra wrote: post #2

Wow, it had never occurred to me that the government might establish mass, passive DNA collection. Sort of reminds me of the East Germans and their little scent jars... Would the government have to tell us if they had collected our DNA through passive means in public?

No, you'd need something like a nasty pandemic where people willingly give bodily fluid samples. Like that'll ever happen...

Just kidding.

That would require a conspiracy on a scale never seen before that is just not possible considering how poorly coordinated governments are and would be stupid to do because if it were to be found out by the public would end in mass revolt.

Re: We can ID people from DNA that shows up in environmental studies

#22

Post by some_random »

pfdietz wrote: post #8
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then they'd know that that person had a relative there. We're still a lot of dots away from going "Well, we found this DNA by accident, it was clearly and obvious Bob was there."

I'm expecting the Republicans (if they haven't already) to insist that immigrants get their DNA put into databases. The argument would be that US citizens of long standing are already likely to have relatives in such databases (along with the genealogical information to exploit it) while criminal immigrants would be cloaked from such scrutiny, at least at first.

Both parties are ecstatic to turn this nation into a surveillance panopticon, make no mistake

Re: We can ID people from DNA that shows up in environmental studies

#24

Post by freedude »

krunck wrote: post #21
Simulacra wrote: post #2

Wow, it had never occurred to me that the government might establish mass, passive DNA collection. Sort of reminds me of the East Germans and their little scent jars... Would the government have to tell us if they had collected our DNA through passive means in public?

No, you'd need something like a nasty pandemic where people willingly give bodily fluid samples. Like that'll ever happen... Just kidding. That would require a conspiracy on a scale never seen before that is just not possible considering how poorly coordinated governments are and would be stupid to do because if it were to be found out by the public would end in mass revolt.

Perhaps you underestimate the desire for power over others that some among us possess. Or, perhaps you don't

Re: We can ID people from DNA that shows up in environmental studies

#25

Post by AnimalMuppet »

Simulacra wrote: post #2

Wow, it had never occurred to me that the government might establish mass, passive DNA collection. Sort of reminds me of the East Germans and their little scent jars... Would the government have to tell us if they had collected our DNA through passive means in public?

> Sort of reminds me of the East Germans and their little scent jars

Can you explain that to me? I don't understand the reference.

Re: We can ID people from DNA that shows up in environmental studies

#27

Post by jefftk »

Here's the paper this is summarizing: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-023-02056-2

In cases where a lot of people are contributing DNA to a sample, which I'd expect for most environmental sampling, it seems like you would need impractically large amounts of sequencing before you could identify anyone specific in sequencing conducted for other purposes: you'd need to get a sequencing read which could have come from only one person, or enough reads each matching a small number of people that you could make an inference about an individual.

The paper does have "The long eDNA reads sequenced here suggest that with targeted enrichment of informative genomic locations, one could achieve individual-level identification even from pooled samples" but this is just saying that environmental sampling with the specific goal of identifying individuals could be possible. This is very different from this being something that normal researchers might do by accident in the process of environmental sequencing for a different purpose.

Re: We can ID people from DNA that shows up in environmental studies

#28

Post by throwawayForMe2 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #25
Simulacra wrote: post #2

Wow, it had never occurred to me that the government might establish mass, passive DNA collection. Sort of reminds me of the East Germans and their little scent jars... Would the government have to tell us if they had collected our DNA through passive means in public?

> Sort of reminds me of the East Germans and their little scent jars Can you explain that to me? I don't understand the reference.

https://www.spymuseum.org/exhibition-experiences/about-the-c...

Re: We can ID people from DNA that shows up in environmental studies

#29

Post by EMCymatics »

giantg2 wrote: post #3

Gattaca air filtration tracking here we come.

Yeah but notice air is likely the least effective means. They also used a very loud vacuum pump so the active air sampling will be more noticible than most. You just have to run away from noises man (joke)

I question their use of the y chromosome as unfair (joke)

Re: We can ID people from DNA that shows up in environmental studies

#30

Post by 1827163 »

krunck wrote: post #21
Simulacra wrote: post #2

Wow, it had never occurred to me that the government might establish mass, passive DNA collection. Sort of reminds me of the East Germans and their little scent jars... Would the government have to tell us if they had collected our DNA through passive means in public?

No, you'd need something like a nasty pandemic where people willingly give bodily fluid samples. Like that'll ever happen... Just kidding. That would require a conspiracy on a scale never seen before that is just not possible considering how poorly coordinated governments are and would be stupid to do because if it were to be found out by the public would end in mass revolt.

Especially with social media, the anger would spread throughout society like wildfire.
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