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ICE Collected Nearly 1M People's DNA Last Year–Including Young Children

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Re: ICE Collected Nearly 1M People's DNA Last Year–Including Young Children

#71

IF there was a secure and trustable way that a trusted government could retain DNA information, then I feel like people having a DNA test at birth or on becoming a citizen could be useful, both medically ("your sample indicates you may have a higher risk of dementia") and from a policing standpoint ("we found DNA on this woman's clothes and immediately matched it to this man who hasn't committed a crime before" or "w…

A historical reminder: the Nazis were highly effective at persecuting Jews in the Netherlands precisely because of the country's meticulous population registry.

You never know who will be in power tomorrow. The convenience of a centralized system today does not outweigh the catastrophic danger of that system in the wrong hands in the future. Specially nowadays.

Re: ICE Collected Nearly 1M People's DNA Last Year–Including Young Children

#72

IF there was a secure and trustable way that a trusted government could retain DNA information, then I feel like people having a DNA test at birth or on becoming a citizen could be useful, both medically ("your sample indicates you may have a higher risk of dementia") and from a policing standpoint ("we found DNA on this woman's clothes and immediately matched it to this man who hasn't committed a crime before" or "w…

The movie Gattaca deals with this theme and it has a good plot too!

Re: ICE Collected Nearly 1M People's DNA Last Year–Including Young Children

#73
post #44

IF there was a secure and trustable way that a trusted government could retain DNA information, then I feel like people having a DNA test at birth or on becoming a citizen could be useful, both medically ("your sample indicates you may have a higher risk of dementia") and from a policing standpoint ("we found DNA on this woman's clothes and immediately matched it to this man who hasn't committed a crime before" or "w…

When I was a kid, I recall police coming to our classrooms to fingerprint us. The whole school got fingerprinted. The idea was to help police if kids went missing. Whether or not you believe that justification ("Stranger Danger" was a scare at the time), I can promise you those fingerprints were used to put people in jail later.

I think that's a bit safer, because you could deduce very private information from a DNA sample, but you can't really tell anything about a person from their fingerprints, except maybe the size of their fingers. It's a one way match

Re: ICE Collected Nearly 1M People's DNA Last Year–Including Young Children

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't mention this, but one major reason for apartheid's Bantustan policy was to recognize distinct homelands and preserve cultural communities. This is, I suspect, a good thing. The article never states any downsides, other than nebulous claims. Yes, assigning people to ethnic homelands is like any other government record-keeping, which is routinely done, but has the benefit of assisting in claims of separate n…

Apartheid was bad. Immigration enforcement isn't bad... it's what alot of people want. These people feel as if they are (in part, collective) owners of the country, and owning it they want to exclude people who do not own it. The same way, I might add, that you or I want to exclude squatters from our homes, and the same way (I assume) most of us don't invite hobos in to sleep in our beds. If you say that's bad too an…

> These people feel as if they are (in part, collective) owners of the country

But they don't in absolutely any sense (legal, moral, philosophical) own the country. And especially they do not "own" the culture (because that's actually impossible). So all you have is jingoism propping up this entire notion.

Re: ICE Collected Nearly 1M People's DNA Last Year–Including Young Children

#75
post #34

IF there was a secure and trustable way that a trusted government could retain DNA information, then I feel like people having a DNA test at birth or on becoming a citizen could be useful, both medically ("your sample indicates you may have a higher risk of dementia") and from a policing standpoint ("we found DNA on this woman's clothes and immediately matched it to this man who hasn't committed a crime before" or "w…

Your argument boils down to "if people were 100% just, fair, and good, we could do this", so I'm not sure what the point of it is. (Entertainingly, if people were 100% just, fair, and good, we wouldn't need this database... or police or militaries for that matter.) At any rate, even if I could ensure, in perpetuity, that my DNA would not be used inappropriately (where I get to decide what that means), I would still n…

People don't have to be 100% for it to work, the system would have to be so that if a human was to be evil, then they couldn't compromise it single handed-ly. I'll admit, I've not figured out implementation details, I just like thinking about nice things

Re: ICE Collected Nearly 1M People's DNA Last Year–Including Young Children

#76

IF there was a secure and trustable way that a trusted government could retain DNA information, then I feel like people having a DNA test at birth or on becoming a citizen could be useful, both medically ("your sample indicates you may have a higher risk of dementia") and from a policing standpoint ("we found DNA on this woman's clothes and immediately matched it to this man who hasn't committed a crime before" or "w…

There are several European countries that do this from what I understand

"several" tends to be mean [5-8] or the like. Outside blood type (which is common), name at least 3 countries that DO record (and retain) DNA samples at birth.

Re: ICE Collected Nearly 1M People's DNA Last Year–Including Young Children

#77
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How close does a DNA "match" have to be to get somebody tossed in jail? Do they actually require 100%, or is a "match" something less? What's the false-positive rate? Would a non-twin sibling's DNA "match"? Yes, I'm aware that, in theory, DNA is unique. As is the theory for finger-prints. But, I'm also aware that theory is rarely reality.

I think this video can answer your question: https://www.veritasium.com/videos/2021/9/30/your-dna-is-alre... I don’t remember the exact details, because I have watched it long time ago, but they don’t need an exact match. Actually it’s more scary - if your distant cousin has DNA “in the system” - you are in it too. This 1M DNAs may “help” match an order of magnitude more people.

I think you're thinking of genetic genealogy, where some of those DNA testing providers (like 23andme) submit their records to law enforcement, and they can see something like "this DNA sample is likely to be a brother of this existing sample", and can narrow down investigations based on that

Re: ICE Collected Nearly 1M People's DNA Last Year–Including Young Children

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't mention this, but one major reason for apartheid's Bantustan policy was to recognize distinct homelands and preserve cultural communities. This is, I suspect, a good thing. The article never states any downsides, other than nebulous claims. Yes, assigning people to ethnic homelands is like any other government record-keeping, which is routinely done, but has the benefit of assisting in claims of separate n…

Apartheid was bad. Immigration enforcement isn't bad... it's what alot of people want. These people feel as if they are (in part, collective) owners of the country, and owning it they want to exclude people who do not own it. The same way, I might add, that you or I want to exclude squatters from our homes, and the same way (I assume) most of us don't invite hobos in to sleep in our beds. If you say that's bad too an…

[dead]

Re: ICE Collected Nearly 1M People's DNA Last Year–Including Young Children

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slightly biased because I'm a european, but I think a european country is more likely to be trust-able with a country-wide DNA database. Only slightly more though, I still wouldn't trust them to actually do it right

> Slightly biased because I'm a european, but I think a european country is more likely to be trust-able with a country-wide DNA database. There were multiple governments operating pervasive surveillance states and using them to punish dissidents on the western part of European continent well within a human lifetime from today. What makes you think that won't happen again, this time in a completely iron-clad way?

> "Only slightly more though"

Generally, we've seen that that was bad and I would hope that we wouldn't do it again. I did also say that I don't think it would actually work out because governments, in my original comment

Re: ICE Collected Nearly 1M People's DNA Last Year–Including Young Children

#80

IF there was a secure and trustable way that a trusted government could retain DNA information, then I feel like people having a DNA test at birth or on becoming a citizen could be useful, both medically ("your sample indicates you may have a higher risk of dementia") and from a policing standpoint ("we found DNA on this woman's clothes and immediately matched it to this man who hasn't committed a crime before" or "w…

The movie Gattaca deals with this theme and it has a good plot too!

One of the downsides of the movie is the lack of exploration of entertainment - outside 6 finger person piano concerts...
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