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Cops are asking Ancestry.com and 23andMe for their customers’ DNA
- pmlnr 11y agoWhoever didn't see this coming had not lived in this world in the past few years.
- nly 11y agoOn that note, as someone entering the US in a few days, I wonder how long it'll be before they take DNA at US borders. They already take retina, photos and fingerprints.
- Implicated 11y agoRetina scans through customs? I've never even _had_ a retina scan.
- schoen 11y agoI think in the U.S. it's just fingerprinting and a photograph, not a retina scan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Biometric_Identity_Management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Biometric_Identity_M... (I'm not trying to minimize or legitimize this -- I find it very offensive and have planned my own travel to avoid visiting countries where I would be fingerprinted. I'm just pointing out that US-VISIT doesn't currently include a retina scan, at least not routinely at all ports of entry.)
- task_queue 11y agoOr at any point in history. If something has value, people with interest and power will seek it out.
- dang 11y agoUrl changed from http://fusion.net/story/215204/law-enforcement-agencies-are-asking-ancestry-com-and-23andme-for-their-customers-dna/ http://fusion.net/story/215204/law-enforcement-agencies-are-..., which points to this. Edit: nope.
- biot 11y agoThe Wired story doesn't have any mention of 23andMe in it, so the title is now inaccurate. And now having read the fusion.net story, I think it's a much better article than the Wired one because it covers the angle of each company's privacy policy, their interaction with law enforcement, the introduction of transparency reports, and so on rather than Wired's which only covers the imprecise nature of DNA.
- dang 11y agoOk, we'll reverse the change.
- appleflaxen 11y agowhy did this get changed? the article is sufficiently different that it makes the submission title a non-sequitur
- Jerry2 11y agoWired story is crap.
- dang 11y agoMost stories are, but the best way to point one out is to suggest a better one, in which case we're always happy to switch.
- cryoshon 11y agoYikes. Shouldn't this information be protected under HIPPAA or something?
- schoen 11y ago(Edit: dragonwriter's comment also makes the important practical point that these entities aren't HIPAA-covered in the first place!) Take a look at "Law Enforcement Purposes" within "Permitted Uses and Disclosures" in the Summary of the HIPAA Privacy Rule. http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/summary/index.html http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/summary/i... Law Enforcement Purposes. Covered entities may disclose protected health information to law enforcement officials for law enforcement purposes under the following six circumstances, and subject to specified conditions: (1) as required by law (including court orders, court-ordered warrants, subpoenas) and administrative requests; (2) to identify or locate a suspect, fugitive, material witness, or missing person; (3) in response to a law enforcement official’s request for information about a victim or suspected victim of a crime; (4) to alert law enforcement of a person’s death, if the covered entity suspects that criminal activity caused the death; (5) when a covered entity believes that protected health information is evidence of a crime that occurred on its premises; and (6) by a covered health care provider in a medical emergency not occurring on its premises, when necessary to inform law enforcement about the commission and nature of a crime, the location of the crime or crime victims, and the perpetrator of the crime.
- olewhalehunter 11y agoApplying the same standards of health information protection mechanisms fully to authorized guns would require all sorts of other reforms, like drug law: what's to keep a police officer that arrests a corporate executive on cocaine or prostitution charges from dumping stocks on that company? All human activity could be considered "health information" by the issues HIPPAA claims to address with it.
- dragonwriter 11y agoHIPAA only affects information held by covered entities (mostly health care providers, health plans, and their business associates.) 23andMe, Ancestry.com, etc., are not HIPAA covered entities, and thus HIPAA has no effect on them, even before considering whether the type of disclosure discussed would be allowed if HIPAA applied.
- maresca 11y agoThis is exactly the type of bullshit I'm talking about when I try to stress privacy to people I know and they think I'm a lunatic. Most people don't want to hear what "could" happen, only what has happened in the past.
- rch 11y agoWhat will be really interesting is when they acquire a sample from someone based on a partial match by a family member to one case, then proceed with an unrelated case based on a partial match to that sample!
- SixSigma 11y agoAnd they get all Godwin on you when you tell them that IBM hoarded and then processed census data for the Third Reich in exactly the scenario of: Hand over information to someone you trust (in that case the Govt. of your country who proclaim that they welcome Jews); someone who wants to use it against not you gains control of it via takeover (in that case a bunch of psychotics who will murder you because in 1933 your grandma ticked "Jewish" on the census form). It isn't far fetched nonsense, it is tried and tested. Http://ibmandtheholocaust.com/
- vessenes 11y agoI have pitched to 23andme a few times over the last few years that they should accept Bitcoin, and offer totally PII-free purchases. This is a great use of a cryptocurrency to my mind; a legitimate good which one should in no way attach to one's identity. I would use that service. But, I would never, ever send them my DNA attached to my identity. Sounds like I can't be the first to use Bitcoin with them either, come to think of it..
- schoen 11y agoIf the DNA services become popular enough, your identity might be deduced from your family members' DNA. There have already been a number of real-world stories where people used DNA in unexpected (and legally questionable) ways to identify people or relationships, including using family members' DNA as a starting point. There's also already some research with positive results about deanonymizing DNA: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6117/262.short http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6117/262.short https://petsymposium.org/2015/papers/07_Humbert.pdf https://petsymposium.org/2015/papers/07_Humbert.pdf The former is based on trying to use known data about family relationships to figure out who someone could be, while the latter is based on trying to figure out what someone would look like (or what other observable properties they could have) based on their DNA and then recognize them in a database of anonymous DNA samples. While both of these studies have pretty significant constraints on the ability to do this kind of deanonymization in a general way for large databases, I think the power of DNA deanonymization will only grow as DNA databases and publicly available family tree records get larger, and as people learn to predict more and more phenotypic traits from a DNA sequence.
- jacquesm 11y ago> But, I would never, ever send them my DNA attached to my identity. Your DNA IS your identity, and sending it to them is sending them all the information ever needed to identify you. For an encore you are also helping to identify your parents and your children and other relatives to a lesser degree depending on how far they are removed from you in the family tree. That there is a name and a social security number attached to your DNA right when you send it is a convenience, not having that information is not an obstacle if any of your family members are also 23andme customers. The only way this would work is if everybody sent them anonymous samples and 23andme would destroy each and every sample after receiving and processing it and destroy any and all records created as a result of processing that sample. No way they'll do that, and you could easily argue the only reason they exist is to build up that database. I wrote about this a couple of years ago in some more detail: http://jacquesmattheij.com/your-genetic-information-is-not-just-yours-but-it-is-family-property http://jacquesmattheij.com/your-genetic-information-is-not-j...
- jackreichert 11y ago> This is not only because of privacy concerns—the people who contribute their DNA to such endeavors, whether medical or genealogical, rarely expect to have their genetic code scrutinized by cops—but also because those databases haven’t been vetted for use by law enforcement. It's a real shame that behavior like this will stifle progress. I had been interested in doing 23andMe, and now I'm reconsidering it.
- rgbrenner 11y agoCops are asking Ancestry.com and 23andMe for their customers’ DNA What's with the title here? Not only is that not the title of the article, but 23andMe isn't even in the article at all.
- _delirium 11y agoIt was the title of the originally submitted article that the HN moderators replaced with this one. Previous article: http://fusion.net/story/215204/law-enforcement-agencies-are-asking-ancestry-com-and-23andme-for-their-customers-dna/ http://fusion.net/story/215204/law-enforcement-agencies-are-...
- appleflaxen 11y agoBecause the link submitted by op was changed: http://fusion.net/story/215204/law-enforcement-agencies-are-asking-ancestry-com-and-23andme-for-their-customers-dna/ http://fusion.net/story/215204/law-enforcement-agencies-are-...
- berberous 11y agoThis title is inaccurate and misleading. The cops searched a publicly accessible Ancestry.com DNA database. Ancestry.com did then hand over the individual's name after receiving a court order. It also later shuttered the public database as a result of learning that cops were using it in this manner. There is no allegation in this article that 23andme or Ancestry.com has turned over private DNA information (although it's certainly plausible that this has occurred or one day will occur).
- rch 11y agoThe the originally linked article did reference 23andMe: 23andMe says it’s received a couple of requests from both state law enforcement and the FBI, but that it has “successfully resisted them.”
- ksenzee 11y agoThe article quotes Denver's district attorney as saying that this familial DNA searching is especially good for "cold cases where the victims are women or children". Women or children. We're searching through databases of innocent people's DNA, finding potentially damaging false positives, all because we need to keep women and children safe. Has this guy been binge watching Mad Men?
- uhtred 11y agoShowing the world that you pay constant attention to the safety and well being of women and children is a good way to assert how much of a good, real, honest, straight man you are to society. Along with loudly proclaiming "they should all be shot" whenever the word paedophile is mentioned.
- mjolk 11y agoDid you just go from creating a straw man to a "well, actually paedophiles are kind of redeemable" stance? The gallantry and defense of children is because men that are in charge are predominantly straight and have children. Not everything is a charade.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- aw3c2 11y agoA pedophile is not by definition a child molester/abuser. I wish they would get help and be redeemed from their abnormal urges.
- lotharbot 11y agoto clarify this comment: "pedophile" refers to someone with primary sexual attraction to children, whether or not they act on that attraction. Terms like "predator", "molester", and "abuser" refer to someone who takes sexual actions against children. There is overlap between the groups, but they're not identical. There are celibate pedophiles, and pedophiles who have ordinary adult relationships and keep themselves away from children. And there are predators who aren't specifically attracted to children, but instead are attracted to the power imbalance.
- titzer 11y agoA lot of legal reasoning w.r.t. DNA has been too quick to equate DNA with fingerprints. Obviously, DNA contains far more information than fingerprints, to the point where it literally contains an entire copy of you. I cannot believe how blatant the violations of our rights are these days, and how passive people are in the face of this new dimension of intrusion. http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_27566601/california-dna-collection-law-now-before-state-supreme http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_27566601/californ... This shit really pisses me off. The state supreme court found California's collection of DNA samples for people _arrested_ but never charged or convicted to be unconstitutional. Apparently, that ruling has now been overturned. Please fight law enforcement's new encroaching on our rights. We are now safer than we ever have been and yet the government STILL wants more power.
- dragonwriter 11y ago> Obviously, DNA contains far more information than fingerprints, to the point where it literally contains an entire copy of you. No, it doesn't literally contain an entire copy of you.
- titzer 11y agoI was just being brief. It contains an entire blueprint of your biological morphology to a degree of accuracy that given appropriate measures could be used to construct an identical twin with identical susceptibility and predisposition to disease, ability, intelligence, to the extent that those are determined by genes. That includes a number of very private things, from everything to susceptibility to certain mental diseases to penis size. And no, the government shouldn't get to know any of that about you without a fucking court order.
- pervycreeper 11y agoYour second description of DNA is still incorrect.
- Balgair 11y ago
- flog 11y agoI thought the DNA analysis being done by these companies wasn't full sequencing, but rather genotyping. Isn't the implication of this less alarming?
- anon1mous 11y agoToday it's genotyping. But if they store the sample they can sequence it once the price goes down.
- zmmmmm 11y agoIt only takes about 20 snps to uniquely identify someone. They genotype to the order of hundreds of thousands of them. As far as identification (and the risks of misidentification) go, it's pretty much just as bad as sequencing.
- chrisprobert 11y agoCorrect - their current v4 chip covers ~602K SNPs and they have > 1 M customers, so you couldn't uniquely identify all of them by genotype. But given the frequency of rare variation in humans, you'd expect to be able to reduce a given genotype to a much smaller set of customers.
- joering2 11y agoI had personal, but short encounter with 23andMe. I proceed with my charge and got the spit kit. Then a friend told me "it's pretty much a Google-owned company", so that was enough for me to change my mind. I was still intrigued what they might find about me, so I asked 23, before sending the kit back, if I could actually cancel the order and re-order, but use my friend's credit card, with their permission of course. 23 responded that I can cancel, of course, but they do not allow to use someone else's CC, whether with or without their consent. I asked "why", and was told that "we need to identify the spit with the owner". God knows for what, but latest news that 23 is okay to share your DNA with insurance companies (I can bet bottom dollar they won't share it for free!) makes much more sense now, after all. I cancelled my order and send the kit back, but I wasn't done quite yet. From $99 order, I only got $45 back. I was told that "the kit cannot be reused, so it has to be thrown away". So I said: fine, give me the kit I paid for back, and keep the remaining $. They refused, and continued to refuse to refund the remaining portion of my charge. Eventually, a credit card chargeback dispute that they lost took care of it and after recovering all the costs, I emailed all my friends never to do a mistake and give your business to 23andMe.
- Camillo 11y agoWhy would you expect all of your money back? On top of the wasted kit, there's shipping, handling etc. You are of course allowed to withdraw from your decision, but it's unreasonable to expect the other party to fully cover the cost of you changing your mind.
- joering2 11y agoThanks for the question. Most businesses using credit cards in USA are "in retail business", which means that "client is always right" (even if they're not). Google or 23andMe is not different when it comes to work with Merchant Service Provider. And not many know that in the USA, most MSPs require company they provide CC services to, to respect a refund request despite what their TOS says. Most companies will tell you they don't accept refunds but that's not true according to their MSP statement. Frankly, I couldn't care less what is unreasonable or not, given that 23andMe already accounted % of refunds/chargebacks they encounter into their services' price. ps. The kit wasn't wasted. It came in hard to forge metalic-type bag with some sort of hologram on it. The kit wasn't even unsealed.
- mahyarm 11y agoThis is why I didn't use 23andMe's service. Because it's in their database, forever. I want a genetic sequencing service where they sequence everything, put it on multiple encrypted USB sticks and send it to you. Once you confirm you received your copy, they destroy the backup USB sticks. They never will store it on some centralized server. It will never end up on some tape backup. They will never have a copy after you get yours. Then you need DNA analysis software that runs offline. Most of them won't want to do that although, because it makes them a commodity service.
- striking 11y agoBut then you lose the genealogy search feature, and many people use that feature.
- tacotuesday 11y agoYeah. Big loss. I don't find out my dad isn't my dad. Sometimes, it's better NOT to know these things. );
- striking 11y agoThis article talks about that. I think it was posted on HN before. http://www.vox.com/2014/9/9/5975653/with-genetic-testing-i-gave-my-parents-the-gift-of-divorce-23andme http://www.vox.com/2014/9/9/5975653/with-genetic-testing-i-g... "check this box if you want to see close family members in this search program." It's your choice whether or not you do. If you can't handle the truth, if you're going to use that truth and act on it and ruin your life with it; that's your prerogative. Can't blame them for telling you what you asked for.
- technofiend 11y agoAs a counterpoint I found out who my dad really was after using Family Tree in an effort to find relatives of who I thought my dad was. Anecdotal but for me it was quite useful.
- ams6110 11y ago
- benchtobedside 11y agoFrom the original article [1]: "If the idea of investigators poking through your DNA freaks you out, both Ancestry.com and 23andMe have options to delete your information with the sites. 23andMe says it will delete information within 30 days upon request." One may wonder if they treat this policy much like Ashley Madison treated their removal promise. [1]: http://fusion.net/story/215204/law-enforcement-agencies-are-asking-ancestry-com-and-23andme-for-their-customers-dna/ http://fusion.net/story/215204/law-enforcement-agencies-are-...
- chaostheory 11y agoAccording to a customer rep, the 3rd party company, LabCorp, that actually processes the genotype testing will keep all the data for up to two years regardless of a deletion request. "Account Closure When closing an account, we remove all Genetic Information within your account (or profile) within thirty (30) days of our receipt of your request. As stated in the applicable Consent Document, however, Genetic Information and/or Self-Reported Information that you have previously provided and for which you have given consent to use in 23andWe Research will not be removed from ongoing or completed studies that use the information. Our contracted genotyping laboratory may also retain your Genetic Information as required by local law and we may retain backup copies for a limited period of time pursuant to our data protection policies. In addition, we retain limited Registration Information related to your order history (e.g., name, contact, and transaction data) for accounting and compliance purposes. You are able to read both documents in full at: https://www.23andme.com/about/tos/ https://www.23andme.com/about/tos/ https://www.23andme.com/about/privacy/ https://www.23andme.com/about/privacy/ In our TOS it states, 'Our contracted genotyping laboratory may also retain your Genetic Information as required by local law and we may retain backup copies for a limited period of time pursuant to our data protection policies.' What this means is the data file generated from the processing is stored, though the sample is discarded shortly after the processing of the sample is complete (if biostorage is declined). This data file is stored for up to two years. National Genetics Institute (NGI), our contracted laboratory, is required to keep the results of the analysis for up to two years as required by CLIA. Under HIPAA, LabCorp (this includes NGI) is required by law to maintain the privacy of our customers. You can read LabCorp's privacy statement here https://www.labcorp.com/wps/portal/!ut/p/c0/04_SB8K8xLLM9MSSzPy8xBz9CP0os_hQV5NgQ09LYwP_MGdXAyMvRzNfT9dgY0cLM_2CbEdFAAFB4uk!/"* https://www.labcorp.com/wps/portal/!ut/p/c0/04_SB8K8xLLM9MSS... EDIT: According to someone who currently works at 23andme, they never delete data - ever. On multiple occassions when I bring data deletion up, there's a puzzled look and a quick denial that they ever delete data regardless of customer requests. Which is accurate if you read the above TOS... they only delete data that ties you to your submitted genotype data: "however, Genetic Information and/or Self-Reported Information that you have previously provided and for which you have given consent to use in 23andWe Research will not be removed from ongoing or completed studies that use the information"
- autobahn 11y agoNot that it was a good idea in the first place, but now most should know never to use these services. Too much potential for abuse.
- venomsnake 11y agoWell - if you have big enough database (of anything) - the Feds will come after it, and the Supreme Court chances of reaffirming 3rd party information doctrine are high.
- droopybuns 11y agoMore source material for the "Don't talk to cops" argument. If there is anyone who hasn't seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc
- vitd 11y agoThat was my first thought, as well. However, it did say that the FBI agent had a warrant to collect his DNA through a cheek swab and that he would have been compelled to comply had he refused.
- Cshelton 11y agoData should have attorney/client privileges. That would solve all this privacy stuff. No, just because the data exist, does not mean you can just have it. If both my attorney (23&me) and I agree that you may use it, then yes, otherwise, no. Never ever ever will you get it and no court can rule otherwise. It's red oculus that we have to be afraid to use all these services because what they might do with our data and who they might sell it too.
- facepalm 11y agoI asked 23andMe if they could somehow anonymize my account and they didn't even seem to understand what I want. They said I could change my username but I wanted a more thorough anonymization. That was a while ago (years), maybe they'll understand eventually. (I wasn't worried about law enforcement, but I can think of all sorts of undesirable scenarios should their database ever leak, which it probably will).
- Navarr 11y agoCould we edit the headline to be less sensational? Wired's article is nowhere near as sensational. It doesn't even state what this headline is saying
- Retric 11y agoYet, Women are also more likely to kill there intimate partner. (This flips if you include ex partners.) Which may seem like a surprising statistic, but women often feel the need to use weapons to equalize a physical situation. Which can easily turn deadly. Of children under age 5 killed by a parent, the rate for biological fathers was slightly higher than for biological mothers.[4] However, of children under 5 killed by someone other than their parent, 80% were killed by males.[4] Males were more likely to be murder victims (76.8%).[4] ~ 1 in 4 women and ~1 in 7 men will be victims of severe violence by an intimate partner in their lifetimes. PS: The classic sitcom frying pan may seem funny, but it's a deadly weapon. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FryingPanOfDoom http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FryingPanOfDoom
- michaelkeenan 11y ago> Yet, Women are also more likely to kill there intimate partner. (This flips if you include ex partners.) When describing a statistic on the internet, especially a surprising statistic, please include a source. We don't know you, so the level of trust we'd have of your statistic is "someone said it on Hacker News", which of course is not very much trust. You might be correct, but others on Hacker News make mistakes, so any sensible person reading that will shrug and think "eh, maybe".
- reasons9 11y agoThere's a reason he didn't provide a source: because it's not true. In 2007, 1,640 women were killed by male partners, and 700 men were killed by female partners. [1] and the stats are far, far worse when one looks at non-lethal violence. The notion that women are more dangerous is a commonly spread mysoginist lie. It's designed to get upvoted by other anti-feminist, anti-woman "men". 1: http://opdv.ny.gov/statistics/nationaldvdata/intparthom.html http://opdv.ny.gov/statistics/nationaldvdata/intparthom.html
- Retric 11y agoFor your source The victim has recently separated from the offender. That's the second half. Note, the stat I quoted included women killing women not just women killing men. Men are also far more likely to kill an ex partner than woman. As to the sourse, I was on a project dealing with violent crimes in the US army at the time. I remember being somewhat shocked but not the original material. Edit: I can't seem to find the details, so I am willing to accept I am not recalling this correctly.
- afarrell 11y agoIt is commonly said that there is a 1-in-a-million chance of falsely matching someone else. I don't know where that is from, but if you're 1 in a million, there are 318 Americans just like you.
- trengrj 11y agoI bought a kit from 23andMe a few years back and was quite keen to get information on my genetics and health factors. However, I realised by submitting my DNA to them, it would probably go into global dataset for law enforcement. I was ok to do this for myself, but putting you DNA into a dataset like this can also potentially affect your family which is something I didn't want to do.
- copperx 11y agoI can't wait for these services to be free so I can be the product.
- rodgerd 11y agoIt's a sad comment on HN that the interesting discussion of this is buried under the braying of people of people who would appear to be more at home in /r/mensrights or some similar commune of sex offender apologists and woman-haters.
- fche 11y agothe salt is strong
- gojomo 11y ago(Relevant lightly-edited repost from my prior comment almost 2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6797054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6797054) Were you born in the US after 1963? If so, your state of birth probably already took a sample of your blood for genetic disease testing at birth: http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jul/19/opinion/la-oe-timmermans-infant-genetic-screening-20130719 http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jul/19/opinion/la-oe-timmer... Parental consent is not required – though with enough advance effort and written request, opting-out is possible. Further, many states retain the "residual dried blood spots" for more than 6 months and in some cases, indefinitely: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16737872 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16737872 So a sample of your genetic material may already exist in a state government filing cabinet, somewhere. (Your state capital? Each county?) In California, the retained information and sample can be used "for medical intervention, counseling or specific research projects which the California Board of Health approves" and "anonymous research studies". See the section "Storage and Use of Dried Blood Spots" at: http://www.babysfirsttest.org/newborn-screening/states/california#second-section http://www.babysfirsttest.org/newborn-screening/states/calif... For newborns, the California program currently tests for 79 different disorders: http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/nbs/Documents/NBS-DisordersDetectable011312.pdf http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/nbs/Documents/NBS-DisordersD... And the per-disease records are apparently kept for lookup-by-individual without retesting, because there's a routine by-email process for requesting long-ago sickle-cell results (back to 1990) about NCAA student athletes: http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/nbs/Pages/NBSFAQTraitAthletes.aspx http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/nbs/Pages/NBSFAQTraitAthlete... And that's not even considering all the health procedures (blood donations, tests, surgeries) or natural shedding (hairs, skin, saliva, excrement) routine in a normal life. You are a firehose of genetic samples, to any even slightly attentive observer, or even passive observers who take an interest some time later. So: good luck keeping your genes from the state, if it really wants them.
- mkhalil 11y agoSurprising? No, not really. Disappointing? Maybe.
- Johnny555 11y ago"As NYU law professor Erin Murphy told the New Orleans Advocate regarding the Usry case, gathering DNA information is “a series of totally reasonable steps by law enforcement.” If you’re a cop trying to solve a crime, and you have DNA at your disposal, you’re going to want to use it to further your investigation." If the police broke into people's houses to snoop through their private effects, that would help solve crimes too, but it doesn't mean it's "totally reasonable" -- why is snooping through private DNA records "totally reasonable"?
- garrettgrimsley 11y agoIt comes down to the third-party doctrine[0], which is the same reason the text messages or emails you send are not subject to 4th Amendment protections. While in your home you have an expectation of privacy the courts have ruled that once you release something to a third-party this expectation is not valid. [0] https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43586.pdf https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43586.pdf
- task_queue 11y agoBecause it's really easy, indexed and the Constitution doesn't make it clearly illegal.
- cm2187 11y agoThe other database I really mistrust is medical DNA databases. First because of the reasons mentioned in this article. But also because coming from a family of doctors myself, I know they are computer illiterate, which gives me little trust in their ability to not leak the data in the wild.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- bayesianhorse 11y agoThat seems less of an issue about privacy, and more like a case about badly used genetics/statistics. DNA is fallible, at least with the currently used technology, and police have to get that into their heads. It's not the fault of 23andMe or others if police and prosecutors don't understand the implications.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- EugeneOZ 11y agoPlease add [popup] to title of links where annoying popup interrupts your reading.
- junktest 11y agoYaniv Erlich and Arvind Narayanan "Routes for breaching and protecting genetic privacy" http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v15/n6/abs/nrg3723.html http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v15/n6/abs/nrg3723.html
- cmiles74 11y agoEspecially disturbing in light of this recent article about the systemtic mishandling of DNA evidence. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10366761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10366761 Unsurprisingly, it seems that the labs are biased in favor of their primary customers: the proseccution.
- lobo_tuerto 11y agoInteresting read that goes along the OP theme: http://www.npr.org/2015/10/09/447202433/-great-pause-among-forensic-scientists-as-dna-proves-fallible http://www.npr.org/2015/10/09/447202433/-great-pause-among-f...
- godgod 11y agoAnd they say we don't live in a Police state.