3 ms·

> anonymized using tor+crypto I'm sure sure how that would work? How do you send a bio sample over the internet?

merralea 9y ago
It would have to be something to the effect of getting the kit in a store and sending it in with a public key and no return address. They check that the associated account has paid, run whatever analysis and add the encrypted results to the account. The major bottleneck is probably getting the kits to the user; workarounds I can think of that don’t involve having your own kit available in stores would be either having a list of generic kits that would work or piggybacking off of 23andme’s distribution and accepting their kits (though I’m sure they wouldn’t be happy about that, to say the least).
- Ultimatt 9y ago
  I mean this is already how almost all sequencing labs around the world work...
lozaning 9y ago
Im imagining some kind of system where: The Alice company would either put DNA collection kits for sale on Amazon or tell people where they can buy a kit that meets the required criteria for collection. Then people pay the company in bitcoin (how to separate your bitcoins from your identity is left as a exercise for the user) and once they've paid they're provided an input field to enter a public key they've generated. The website would then generate a barcode you'd use to label your sample before mailing it in, or it could be a QR code of your public key. When a sample arrives at the lab they scan the barcode, and check to ensure that there is a public key tied to that bar code and that they've paid. They then run the sample and publish the results online, accessible to all, but also encrypted with that users public key. The user then checks the website every day for week after they've sent their sample in. Once they find their results by searching all results for the one labeled with their public key they download the results and then use their private key to unencrypt them.

It would have to be something to the effect of getting the kit in a store and sending it in with a public key and no return address. They check that the associated account has paid, run whatever analysis and add the encrypted results to the account. The major bottleneck is probably getting the kits to the user; workarounds I can think of that don’t involve having your own kit available in stores would be either having a list of generic kits that would work or piggybacking off of 23andme’s distribution and accepting their kits (though I’m sure they wouldn’t be happy about that, to say the least).

Ultimatt 9y ago
I mean this is already how almost all sequencing labs around the world work...

lozaning 9y ago

Im imagining some kind of system where: The Alice company would either put DNA collection kits for sale on Amazon or tell people where they can buy a kit that meets the required criteria for collection. Then people pay the company in bitcoin (how to separate your bitcoins from your identity is left as a exercise for the user) and once they've paid they're provided an input field to enter a public key they've generated. The website would then generate a barcode you'd use to label your sample before mailing it in, or it could be a QR code of your public key. When a sample arrives at the lab they scan the barcode, and check to ensure that there is a public key tied to that bar code and that they've paid. They then run the sample and publish the results online, accessible to all, but also encrypted with that users public key. The user then checks the website every day for week after they've sent their sample in. Once they find their results by searching all results for the one labeled with their public key they download the results and then use their private key to unencrypt them.