Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DNA of every baby born in California is stored. Who has access to it?

cbsnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 136 posts

Re: DNA of every baby born in California is stored. Who has access to it?

#121

Post by stmfreak »

mijowi wrote: post #87

I 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…

Even more Orwellian, you received a letter "claiming" your samples had been destroyed. You have no proof this was done unless the samples were returned to you.

Re: DNA of every baby born in California is stored. Who has access to it?

#122

Post by stmfreak »

The day will come when DNA sequencing is so fast and affordable, that the storage fees for all these samples will be less (over some period of time) than the cost of sequencing each sample and storing a digital copy. Indexed, identified, searchable.

Then we're really going to have some interesting privacy concerns.

Re: DNA of every baby born in California is stored. Who has access to it?

#123

Post by yetanother1980 »

raarts wrote: post #115
yetanother1980 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Denmark and Norway. I think that it's the law in both of those not just gym policy/terms and conditions.

Re: DNA of every baby born in California is stored. Who has access to it?

#124

Post by gcb0 »

jjeaff wrote: post #109
gcb0 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

opting out of proven good health measures sound like anti-vaxer, but ensuring the state have apropriate privacy safeguards is paramont

There's nothing antivax about requiring opt in before the state can store your samples indefinitely.

please, it was a one line comment, how could you have misread it?

the antivaxer comment is about opting out for something that is immediately beneficial (disease screening) and long term (research) in lieu of paranoia (in case of a working government) or privacy (in case of a broken government as it is now, according to the article).

the right course of action is not to deny your children of the proven benefits, but to force the government to respect the individual and its own processes/institutions.

Re: DNA of every baby born in California is stored. Who has access to it?

#125

Post by jjeaff »

shanghaiaway wrote: post #119
jjeaff wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ya, not clear if you didn't read it. The article clearly talks about the registry. It says that the registry is stored in a separate building from the samples.

Re: DNA of every baby born in California is stored. Who has access to it?

#126

Post by Spare_account »

vixen99 wrote: post #98
Spare_account wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They collect DNA of anyone arrested by the police. Then they aim to destroy samples taken from people not subsequently convicted. As I understand it the process is quite opaque and there have been cases where some police forces have revealed that they are unable to (or simply refuse to) comply with the requirement to delete samples so they keep everything. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/786353.…

So they make their own laws or break existing law? Either is unacceptable. How is one 'unable' to destroy a tissue sample?

I'm lucky to be able to say that I haven't experienced it directly to be able to answer in more detail but the article I linked suggests that it is a bit of both.

Some senior police officers interpret the rules in a way that suits them, some people say the law as written is ambiguous.

I mostly interpret "Unable" in this context to mean it would require too many man-hours to clean up the database because it has been allowed to grow too large and disorganised. I can't back that up with evidence, it's just something I recall hearing. There are no doubt other reasons and this applies to the overall picture rather than individual requests for removal.

In the case of an individual request I could still imagine that the system is so badly designed that it isn't actually possible to locate all parts of a sample, all references to an individual in the (various) database(s). I've seen environments like that in the corporate world, I assume the government is capable of creating them as well.

Re: DNA of every baby born in California is stored. Who has access to it?

#127

Post by shanghaiaway »

jjeaff wrote: post #125
shanghaiaway wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not clear at all. FUD. The existence of this registry is never mentioned in the article which makes it sound like samples are unidentifiable.

Ya, not clear if you didn't read it. The article clearly talks about the registry. It says that the registry is stored in a separate building from the samples.

Makes no difference whatsoever.

Re: DNA of every baby born in California is stored. Who has access to it?

#128

Post by apexalpha »

so this article got me thinking: how is this in my country? Some perspectives perhaps:

- Every sample is kept in the screening lab and destroyed after 5 years.

- year 1 is used to (double checking) of the test results

- following years the sample is used for anonymized research

- explicit approval is needed from parents for non-anonomized research with the blood samples.

- every parent has the option to opt out of 4 years research; the sample will be destroyed after the first year if opted for.

Idk why, was just curious.

Re: DNA of every baby born in California is stored. Who has access to it?

#129

Post by apexalpha »

raarts wrote: post #84
burntrelish1273 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> In the Netherlands, gym membership require drug tests Ehh, that's bull. It doesn't. (source: Dutch, with gym membership)

Another Dutchman here: never heard of drug tests. Not work, not for gym memberships. Obviously.

The only drug tests i've ever heard about are for pro sports leagues.

Re: DNA of every baby born in California is stored. Who has access to it?

#130

Post by raarts »

burntrelish1273 wrote: post #75
thankthunk wrote: post #67

Earlier 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.

[flagged]

> and many rental properties require, either formally or informally, occupants to be of Dutch nationality.

I asked around my expat friends here in The Netherlands, and they could not confirm this.

Post reply on HN