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Uncle Sam wants to scan your iris and collect your DNA, citizen or not

theregister.com

201–210 of 283 posts

Re: Uncle Sam wants to scan your iris and collect your DNA, citizen or not

#201
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly am I looking at?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_(blockchain) A Sam Altman project which seemingly popped up out of nowhere, and offered people free money in exchange for biometric registration on the network, in a lot of countries all over the world. It seemed to be an attempt to set up some sort of global electronic ID system and currency all in one. That silver sphere is an iris scanner, IIRC. Got shut down pretty hard in a bu…

Just another step closer to the creepy desires of building an AI "replica" human. Gotta get the look right (with Sora), the fingerprints and iris (with Worldcoin), the personality (ChatGPT erotic mode)...

Re: Uncle Sam wants to scan your iris and collect your DNA, citizen or not

#202
post #42

Hilariously, this is the second Sam that wants to collect everyones iris's for nefarious purposes

In this case, I suspect it's more Uncle Donald (or Aunt Kristi, but she usually doesn't do anything without Uncle Donald's approval).

Re: Uncle Sam wants to scan your iris and collect your DNA, citizen or not

#203
post #62

The problem with these types of technologies is that you will be at the mercy of whoever uses them. It's like chat control, censorship, gun laws, etc. You can't control how they will be leveraged. I lived in California for some time a few years ago, and it was a mess, so I understand people being okay with this type of stuff if it will make them more secure, but it's a very risky slippery slope. The other thing is th…

> gun laws ... arent as vital as other freedoms like travel, anonymity, speech and contract. I dont like this conflation because i see it as a nasty and harmful bias.

All those other rights are backed up by credible capacity for violence. You need to distribute some of that credible capacity for violence among the populace in order to check the long tail of potential abuses the system (not necessarily the government, though there is much overlap) may engage in.

There's a discussion to be had about what the right amount is though.

Re: Uncle Sam wants to scan your iris and collect your DNA, citizen or not

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll be treated just as stupidly as Social Security numbers, and soon we'll have biometric data breaches. >sigh Aside: Social Security numbers should be public now, too. That ship sailed a long time ago and it should be recognized.

What if people just publicized their own social security number, and then whenever they had to deal with "identity theft", they just pointed out that their SSN is public information and so it was negligent for the company to believe it was them just because of a SSN.

Classic take on "identity theft":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E

Re: Uncle Sam wants to scan your iris and collect your DNA, citizen or not

#205
post #138
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most doctor's offices just use my name and birthday to assume authorization to transfer sensitive medical information. I kinda feel like privacy is massive "emperor has no clothes" aspect of society.

This behaviour is just because their IT system doesn’t allow regular users to search for names, just for birth dates. Then they pick you by name from a list of people with that birthday.

Names are not unique

Re: Uncle Sam wants to scan your iris and collect your DNA, citizen or not

#206
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visit a bus stop, pick up a stubbed out cigarette, leave it at the scene of your next crime.

You're gonna want somewhere where people are much more likely to have a record and be in the system than a bus stop.

A bus stop in a rough part of town then.

Re: Uncle Sam wants to scan your iris and collect your DNA, citizen or not

#207
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way to prevent authoritarians from abusing power is to not elect them, and to throw them in jail when they violate the law. They're not hard to spot; people warned about the current guy for a decade before he took over. What's happening right now is not because the government had a database lying around and an unspecified authoritarian picked it up. What's happening is that after a specific authoritarian staged a…

The problem is that people really want authoritarianism, to use against their enemies.

>The problem is that people really want authoritarianism, to use against their enemies.

Look no further than a typical HN comment thread on a niche public policy issue.

They are rife with people scheming up all sorts of ways to thread the needle of public policy so that government enforcement action far in excess of what the public would support can be brought to bear on whoever is on the wrong side of whatever the issue being discussed is.

Re: Uncle Sam wants to scan your iris and collect your DNA, citizen or not

#208

Hospitals in california steal the DNA of every single baby born there and collect it in a database. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-newborn-dna-privacy-... https://www.cbsnews.com/news/baby-dna-parental-consent-genet...

Take it easy. The federal budget for the backup of that database was cancelled. We just have to wait for the next HD failure. And then we are anonymous again !

Re: Uncle Sam wants to scan your iris and collect your DNA, citizen or not

#209
post #169

Don't most people in the US get fingerprinted at some point? Let's see. I've been fingerprinted, all 10 fingers, for, at least, 1) the US Army, 2) security clearance for a DoD job, multiple times, 3) a permit to ride a horse on SF Water Department property, and 4) Customs and Border Protection Global Entry, which also took an iris scan. California DMV takes a thumbprint, but not all 10 fingers. They've been recording…

Surely there's a difference between collecting a thumbprint for a driver's license or even collecting full fingerprints for a specific job type, and collecting your DNA and an iris scan just for being a citizen? I'm German. My government literally issues ID cards and requires fingerprints for those nowadays as well (because terrorism or the children or whatever works as the excuse at the moment) but the idea of a gov…

In the EU, national ID cards are required to contain fingerprints in an electronically readable section. (a private key is required to read them via NFC) As a result, Ireland started issuing passport cards, since compliant passports can be used in place of a national ID card. The only biometric data on my passport is a black and white image of my face. (that can be read with a key derived from data on the passport itself)

Re: Uncle Sam wants to scan your iris and collect your DNA, citizen or not

#210

Don't most people in the US get fingerprinted at some point? Let's see. I've been fingerprinted, all 10 fingers, for, at least, 1) the US Army, 2) security clearance for a DoD job, multiple times, 3) a permit to ride a horse on SF Water Department property, and 4) Customs and Border Protection Global Entry, which also took an iris scan. California DMV takes a thumbprint, but not all 10 fingers. They've been recording…

I live in the apparent dystopia that is the UK and I've never had my fingerprint or DNA taken. Seems a bit of an overreach.

> I've never had my fingerprint or DNA taken.

Automated passport-and-fingerprint (sometimes also iris) scanning is now often the default route at many airports.

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