14 ms·
One thing that always makes me curious about this kind of thing is how people that enact these programs justify them to themselves and the people around themsel
by anm89 5y ago
One thing that always makes me curious about this kind of thing is how people that enact these programs justify them to themselves and the people around themselves. This is evil villain level stuff to strong-arm people into submitting genetic samples for your private database by abusing your position of power to invent felonies for them and I don't think these people are dumb, they know that what they are doing is awful.
Just weird to me how I feel like everyone is infuriated all the time by everything, things order if magnitude less messed up than this, but then these people exist in this magic bubble where no one is bothered by this. Doesn't make sense to me.
- AtlasBarfed 5y agoMaybe because the underlying assumption is that the dark/little/poor people are the only ones this will be used on? The ivory towers care about virtue signalling and property values. But if you notice, there is a big crime wave in SF... which threatens property values. Genetics database? Double plus good!
- pjc50 5y agoNo, they think they're saving the world, or at least their part of it, from crime. People use that as justification for all sorts of abuse. After all, who would prosecute a prosecutor?
- NoImmatureAdHom 5y agoThe Maryland (?) Supreme Court case made me think that some involve just misunderstand DNA...they think of it as something like a very long random string that makes for a good, unique identifier. That is, of course, completely wrong. I can know all sorts of things about you that are, or should be, private...like who your real parents / kids are, whether you're likely to get cancer or not, whether you are intersex, etc.
- akudha 5y agoFew years ago, the Kuwaiti govt started collecting DNA from every person in the country. There was also a news article about British schools collecting DNA of their students and passing it to the cops (don’t know if this is fake news or not). We are not far from the scenario where some every human’s DNA is in some massive database, Wikipedia style.
- landemva 5y agoThey already have full body scans from the people who consent to that at the airports. Totally voluntary and people believe that submitting keeps them safe.