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What is the impact of this? I have the same aversion to government power built into my bones but I can’t think of a concrete way the government would be able t

What is the impact of this? I have the same aversion to government power built into my bones but I can’t think of a concrete way the government would be able to abuse this capability to assert power over me.

RandallBrown 3y ago
It will be harder to get away with crimes if everyone's DNA is on file. Of course if you recently visited the place where a crime took place you might also be falsely accused. I suppose they could also use it to track your movements if there was some way to massively collect DNA samples from the environment.
- rolph 3y ago
  There is some way to massively collect DNA samples from the environment. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2375624-air-pollution-monitors-have-been-accidentally-harvesting-wildlife-dna/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2375624-air-pollution-m... https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230606-how-air-pollution-sensors-can-find-wildlife https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230606-how-air-pollutio... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982221016900 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098222... these can be deployed at great density in an array providing granularity made to order.
  - jart 3y ago
    Wow this sounds like a slam dunk for my next YC application.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  Or they could bust a place where religious services were held in secret, or an apartment where gay people gather to socialize, or an underground abortion clinic, suck up the DNA and get warrants for everybody. That isn't being falsely accused, it's worse.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  > It will be harder to get away with crimes if everyone's DNA is on file. A core problem with any surveillance is that it is disproportional and only available to the powerful. If access to surveillance were as universal as possible, powerful interests would suddenly find the will to wind it back.
noman-land 3y ago
You can conjure many insane possibilities in a future unknown. DNA could be tested for traits that are "more likely to cause criminality". People with those traits can be more heavily scrutinized and surveiled. Or have their employment opportunities limited. DNA could be multiplied and planted as evidence. DNA could be cloned, or used in scientific testing without consent. DNA could be used for targeted biological warfare. People leave traces of DNA everywhere they go. Who knows what type of detection mechanisms will exist in the future? There's also the very likely scenario that a central database like this becomes a prime target and leaks. It's borderline guaranteed.
- miguelmota 3y ago
  Social stratification, genetic elitism, genetic profiling, bio-surveillance, etc. are all very real concerns. Brave New World will become non-fiction.
  - drdaeman 3y ago
    Really? What are the signs of this coming? While racism is definitely a thing today, it seem to be dying. Slowly, but the trend is certain: modern society is way less racist than it was, say, a century ago (or worse, a few centuries ago). People stop caring about ethnic origins. The care about cultures and nationalities those days (notice how even the meaning of "racism" had shifted to account for this), and those are rapidly becoming less and less correlated with genetics. While people won't stop being xenophobic (unless, idk, some miracle or catastrophe happens), in the modern world, when it comes to identity, genes are rapidly losing battle to memes.
- m463 3y ago
  They could clone you, force the clone to perform a crime, then arrest you for the crime based on dna evidence.
  - drdaeman 3y ago
    Most sci-fi stories involving human cloning that cover legal aspects seem to predict that laws will be updated to account for a possibility that crime was performed by a clone. Laws tend to lag behind technologies, but not too drastically. It's also much cheaper to just fabricate evidence (cf. XKCD #538 aka $5 wrench vs security). Worked well since time immemorial, and doesn't leave a clone.
gunapologist99 3y ago
Check out a great sci-fi movie named Gattaca. Remember that you shed cells everywhere you go, so soon the tech will be advanced enough where we can do nearly real-time DNA matching. If you sneeze, a sniffer could pick that up and figure out who you are. Imagine a camera that films not things that are visible, but people who were there, at that protest, in that store, in that hospital, boarding that plane. It's practically irrefutable (or currently legally is, even though it's inherently flawed.) And you can never change that identifier. Once that data is out, it's out. The last headline in that article, "Solving Crime Before It Happens" could have easily been entitled "Minority Report" (another great sci-fi movie that's not so fictitious anymore.)
- foxyv 3y ago
  The thing that broke my brain about Minority Report is, that after stopping the murder, they could have just let the people go a few days later. The person would know they couldn't get away with the crime and then wander off to take up pottery or whatever. Instead they Haloed them all for no good reason. No victim to seek retribution and no reason to restrain them any more. At the same time, when you look at real life justice systems through the same lens we look at Gattaca and Minority Report it looks even more bizarre. We are pretty much running criminal training camps almost designed to make people more criminal, and then after they get out of the camps we structure our society to almost force them back into crime to survive. It's bonkers.
  - anigbrowl 3y ago
    But it's very very profitable.
  - ROTMetro 3y ago
    If you are called the 'Justice' system you are out of a job when there's no longer a need to implement 'Justice' because you solved the issue higher up the food chain. Why would they put themselves out of work?
  - rolph 3y ago
    thought crimes: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol118/iss5/4/ https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol118/iss5/4/ https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5394&context=mlr https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article... [PDF]
sublinear 3y ago
They can derive health data from your DNA. Say if we finally move to "single payer health care"... but this is america so you get a tax penalty for being more prone to illness. Now imagine they have the wrong DNA on file for you!
code_duck 3y ago
There could be various forms of discrimination by the government or private entities based on genetic characteristics. For instance, you could be denied health insurance or required to undergo a therapy or treatment based on genetic traits. If a government was to become more abusive, they could practice some form of eugenics such as forced sterilization.
- donmcronald 3y ago
  > undergo a therapy or treatment based on genetic traits Person X has a genetic predisposition that results in anger control issues in 87% of people, so they must subscribe to weekly anger management counselling or they'll be denied access to public areas such as malls and schools. The government certified and licensed suppliers are A, B, C. Imagine the profits of legally compelling people to buy your stuff. History shows there would be a long lineup of people eager to exploit something like that.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - zlg_codes 3y ago
    I think in such a system, the people would rightfully target the law as the enemy and ramp things up until enforcing the law becomes too dangerous to attempt.
    - pessimizer 3y ago
      Too late. There's too much surveillance - how would you even discuss it with each other? The first thing they're going to do is target your phone and computers. Expect terrorism charges.
      - zlg_codes 3y ago
        How long until LLMs and friends are capable of producing life-like video evidence suiting any facts for any case? The credibility of a recording is already tenuous. It's only going to get worse. You can have all the footage in the world, but if it's considered compromised or bunk, what then?
donmcronald 3y ago
> What is the impact of this? Maybe guilt by association? Imagine going into a business, having some DNA based system identify you, and being denied entry because the majority of your relatives are criminals. Realistically, I'd say the opposite will happen though. Being related to someone wealthy or influential will automatically get you special treatment and you won't even have to ask "do you know who I am?" > but I can’t think of a concrete way the government would be able to abuse this capability to assert power over me I think the war on drugs in the US is a pretty good example. If I say it was used to marginalized and disenfranchise one specific group of people, everyone knows what group I'm talking about, so, IMO, that's a good indication it was intentionally targeted at that group. Now imagine the same thing, but you're in the targeted group and, instead of having the police roaming your neighbourhood, you're simply locked out of all the "opt-in" systems that are necessary to have a decent life; banking, real-estate, licensing, etc.. Maybe you're even prevented from shopping at stores that have reasonable prices and have to overpay for food because you're a "bad person". Opting in to beneficial systems, with less beneficial defaults, is the new way of discriminating IMO.
Vvector 3y ago
Watch Gattaca.
marcosdumay 3y ago
Right now, the most likely outcome is that you will get convicted of a crime somebody else did because you "won" the lottery of being the false positive on the database.
throw7 3y ago
baby steps... and then you have the movie gattaca.
SoftTalker 3y ago
I hate to go Godwin but within living memory we have an example of what governments do if they have (or think they have) information on your heritage or genetic background. Or go back a few more generations, even here in the USA you might legally have been declared to be 3/5 of a person. You think people have really changed since then? I don't.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Many states in america had laws that would allow for castrating "undesireables" and not that long ago.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  Definitely had, not just think they had: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust Lack of a detailed census in your country was indisputably protective for Jews during the Holocaust. Plenty of people only discovered themselves that they had matrilineal Jewish descent during the Holocaust, because the Nazis had all those punchcards.
- memefrog 3y ago
  >Or go back a few more generations, even here in the USA you might legally have been declared to be 3/5 of a person. Oh my god can we stop this absurd meme. Nobody was ever 'declared to be 3/5 of a person'. The point of the 3/5 compromise was to reduce the power of states with slaves. It was purely about counting the population of the state for the purpose of assigning seats in Congress. To suggest that it was racist to multiply the number of slaves by 0.6 before adding them to the non-slave population is truly insane. If it had been 1.0 then it would have given slave-owners more political power.
junofan 3y ago
If you are born in an area that later hosts a separatist movement, you can be denied freedom of movement using a saliva swab. I believe the mostly likely abuse is to erode support for political factions.
dylan604 3y ago
those very bones with that built in aversion contain the very identifiers used to hunt you down

RandallBrown 3y ago

It will be harder to get away with crimes if everyone's DNA is on file. Of course if you recently visited the place where a crime took place you might also be falsely accused. I suppose they could also use it to track your movements if there was some way to massively collect DNA samples from the environment.

rolph 3y ago
There is some way to massively collect DNA samples from the environment. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2375624-air-pollution-monitors-have-been-accidentally-harvesting-wildlife-dna/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2375624-air-pollution-m... https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230606-how-air-pollution-sensors-can-find-wildlife https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230606-how-air-pollutio... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982221016900 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098222... these can be deployed at great density in an array providing granularity made to order.
- jart 3y ago
  Wow this sounds like a slam dunk for my next YC application.
pessimizer 3y ago
Or they could bust a place where religious services were held in secret, or an apartment where gay people gather to socialize, or an underground abortion clinic, suck up the DNA and get warrants for everybody. That isn't being falsely accused, it's worse.
WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> It will be harder to get away with crimes if everyone's DNA is on file. A core problem with any surveillance is that it is disproportional and only available to the powerful. If access to surveillance were as universal as possible, powerful interests would suddenly find the will to wind it back.

noman-land 3y ago

You can conjure many insane possibilities in a future unknown. DNA could be tested for traits that are "more likely to cause criminality". People with those traits can be more heavily scrutinized and surveiled. Or have their employment opportunities limited. DNA could be multiplied and planted as evidence. DNA could be cloned, or used in scientific testing without consent. DNA could be used for targeted biological warfare. People leave traces of DNA everywhere they go. Who knows what type of detection mechanisms will exist in the future? There's also the very likely scenario that a central database like this becomes a prime target and leaks. It's borderline guaranteed.

miguelmota 3y ago
Social stratification, genetic elitism, genetic profiling, bio-surveillance, etc. are all very real concerns. Brave New World will become non-fiction.
- drdaeman 3y ago
  Really? What are the signs of this coming? While racism is definitely a thing today, it seem to be dying. Slowly, but the trend is certain: modern society is way less racist than it was, say, a century ago (or worse, a few centuries ago). People stop caring about ethnic origins. The care about cultures and nationalities those days (notice how even the meaning of "racism" had shifted to account for this), and those are rapidly becoming less and less correlated with genetics. While people won't stop being xenophobic (unless, idk, some miracle or catastrophe happens), in the modern world, when it comes to identity, genes are rapidly losing battle to memes.
m463 3y ago
They could clone you, force the clone to perform a crime, then arrest you for the crime based on dna evidence.
- drdaeman 3y ago
  Most sci-fi stories involving human cloning that cover legal aspects seem to predict that laws will be updated to account for a possibility that crime was performed by a clone. Laws tend to lag behind technologies, but not too drastically. It's also much cheaper to just fabricate evidence (cf. XKCD #538 aka $5 wrench vs security). Worked well since time immemorial, and doesn't leave a clone.

gunapologist99 3y ago

Check out a great sci-fi movie named Gattaca. Remember that you shed cells everywhere you go, so soon the tech will be advanced enough where we can do nearly real-time DNA matching. If you sneeze, a sniffer could pick that up and figure out who you are. Imagine a camera that films not things that are visible, but people who were there, at that protest, in that store, in that hospital, boarding that plane. It's practically irrefutable (or currently legally is, even though it's inherently flawed.) And you can never change that identifier. Once that data is out, it's out. The last headline in that article, "Solving Crime Before It Happens" could have easily been entitled "Minority Report" (another great sci-fi movie that's not so fictitious anymore.)

foxyv 3y ago
The thing that broke my brain about Minority Report is, that after stopping the murder, they could have just let the people go a few days later. The person would know they couldn't get away with the crime and then wander off to take up pottery or whatever. Instead they Haloed them all for no good reason. No victim to seek retribution and no reason to restrain them any more. At the same time, when you look at real life justice systems through the same lens we look at Gattaca and Minority Report it looks even more bizarre. We are pretty much running criminal training camps almost designed to make people more criminal, and then after they get out of the camps we structure our society to almost force them back into crime to survive. It's bonkers.
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  But it's very very profitable.
- ROTMetro 3y ago
  If you are called the 'Justice' system you are out of a job when there's no longer a need to implement 'Justice' because you solved the issue higher up the food chain. Why would they put themselves out of work?
- rolph 3y ago
  thought crimes: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol118/iss5/4/ https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol118/iss5/4/ https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5394&context=mlr https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article... [PDF]

sublinear 3y ago

They can derive health data from your DNA. Say if we finally move to "single payer health care"... but this is america so you get a tax penalty for being more prone to illness. Now imagine they have the wrong DNA on file for you!

code_duck 3y ago

There could be various forms of discrimination by the government or private entities based on genetic characteristics. For instance, you could be denied health insurance or required to undergo a therapy or treatment based on genetic traits. If a government was to become more abusive, they could practice some form of eugenics such as forced sterilization.

donmcronald 3y ago
> undergo a therapy or treatment based on genetic traits Person X has a genetic predisposition that results in anger control issues in 87% of people, so they must subscribe to weekly anger management counselling or they'll be denied access to public areas such as malls and schools. The government certified and licensed suppliers are A, B, C. Imagine the profits of legally compelling people to buy your stuff. History shows there would be a long lineup of people eager to exploit something like that.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- zlg_codes 3y ago
  I think in such a system, the people would rightfully target the law as the enemy and ramp things up until enforcing the law becomes too dangerous to attempt.
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    Too late. There's too much surveillance - how would you even discuss it with each other? The first thing they're going to do is target your phone and computers. Expect terrorism charges.
    - zlg_codes 3y ago
      How long until LLMs and friends are capable of producing life-like video evidence suiting any facts for any case? The credibility of a recording is already tenuous. It's only going to get worse. You can have all the footage in the world, but if it's considered compromised or bunk, what then?

donmcronald 3y ago

> What is the impact of this? Maybe guilt by association? Imagine going into a business, having some DNA based system identify you, and being denied entry because the majority of your relatives are criminals. Realistically, I'd say the opposite will happen though. Being related to someone wealthy or influential will automatically get you special treatment and you won't even have to ask "do you know who I am?" > but I can’t think of a concrete way the government would be able to abuse this capability to assert power over me I think the war on drugs in the US is a pretty good example. If I say it was used to marginalized and disenfranchise one specific group of people, everyone knows what group I'm talking about, so, IMO, that's a good indication it was intentionally targeted at that group. Now imagine the same thing, but you're in the targeted group and, instead of having the police roaming your neighbourhood, you're simply locked out of all the "opt-in" systems that are necessary to have a decent life; banking, real-estate, licensing, etc.. Maybe you're even prevented from shopping at stores that have reasonable prices and have to overpay for food because you're a "bad person". Opting in to beneficial systems, with less beneficial defaults, is the new way of discriminating IMO.

Vvector 3y ago

Watch Gattaca.

marcosdumay 3y ago

Right now, the most likely outcome is that you will get convicted of a crime somebody else did because you "won" the lottery of being the false positive on the database.

throw7 3y ago

baby steps... and then you have the movie gattaca.

SoftTalker 3y ago

I hate to go Godwin but within living memory we have an example of what governments do if they have (or think they have) information on your heritage or genetic background. Or go back a few more generations, even here in the USA you might legally have been declared to be 3/5 of a person. You think people have really changed since then? I don't.

mrguyorama 3y ago
Many states in america had laws that would allow for castrating "undesireables" and not that long ago.
pessimizer 3y ago
Definitely had, not just think they had: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust Lack of a detailed census in your country was indisputably protective for Jews during the Holocaust. Plenty of people only discovered themselves that they had matrilineal Jewish descent during the Holocaust, because the Nazis had all those punchcards.
memefrog 3y ago
>Or go back a few more generations, even here in the USA you might legally have been declared to be 3/5 of a person. Oh my god can we stop this absurd meme. Nobody was ever 'declared to be 3/5 of a person'. The point of the 3/5 compromise was to reduce the power of states with slaves. It was purely about counting the population of the state for the purpose of assigning seats in Congress. To suggest that it was racist to multiply the number of slaves by 0.6 before adding them to the non-slave population is truly insane. If it had been 1.0 then it would have given slave-owners more political power.

junofan 3y ago

If you are born in an area that later hosts a separatist movement, you can be denied freedom of movement using a saliva swab. I believe the mostly likely abuse is to erode support for political factions.

dylan604 3y ago

those very bones with that built in aversion contain the very identifiers used to hunt you down