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Even as a big privacy advocate, I don't see much reason to be especially concerned. The fact that the DNA can be carried off to locations you've never physical

Even as a big privacy advocate, I don't see much reason to be especially concerned. The fact that the DNA can be carried off to locations you've never physically been to pretty immediately puts a stop to any use in court and usefulness in any sort of tracking. Not to mention it seems easily game-able by bad actors. Simply setting up an air filter at work for a few hours, then shaking out the air filter in a park or whatever, would contaminate anything gathered from the park. I would argue this technology is less worrying in the context of privacy than the standard DNA collection we already do. There are a lot more non-hypothetical attacks on privacy that are succeeding and causing (probably) more damage than this technology theoretically could. It seems mostly useful as was described in the article, like identifying the presence of an endangered animal within X distance and Y time.

rvnx 1y ago
You can clone fingerprint like here: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30623611 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30623611 Fingerprints are still used in forensics, because the odds that it is forged are lower than an actual possibility that it is real. Same for DNA then.
- qualeed 1y ago
  >Fingerprints are still used in forensics, because the odds that it is forged are lower than an actual possibility that it is real. >Same for DNA then. There's a world of difference between cloning a fingerprint/planting DNA (in the traditional sense, like fluids), and this technology. The air might carry the particulates to areas never traveled to. That... doesn't happen with fingerprints. Walking around the city with an air filter than traveling to a different city could imply that thousands of people have gone to a city they never went to before. Not happening with fingerprints or traditional DNA. The noise with this tech is way too high to be useful in privacy-damaging ways. It's useless for tracking, useless for court, and more easily game-able than any other biometric by a lot. To put it in your terms, this wont be used in forensics because the odds that it is a false positive is higher than the possibility that it is real.
  - mc32 1y ago
    It can. “Door knobs” can be removed from place A and installed in location B. Or a weapon can also be placed somewhere else…
    - qualeed 1y ago
      This requires action by someone else (who also risks leaving behind evidence). The airborne stuff just spreads by itself. To far more places, far quicker, all the time.
      - mc32 1y ago
        Granted; but concentration would go down at something like inverse of some exponential of the distance from source.
        qualeed 1y ago
        Sure. My point isn't that this isn't a biometric or something. My point is that it is the weakest biometric, full of noise, constantly contaminated, easily forged with no skill set or technology required, with a very high false-positive rate when used for anything privacy-related. There are so many more things (technology, policy, etc.), literally violating people's right to privacy at this very moment, that trying to spin this as a theoretically privacy-damaging technology strikes me as a bit ridiculous.
        amelius 1y ago
        Still great for tracking people though. Also, if with p=0.99 you were at the strip club yesterday evening, then you have something to explain.
        qualeed 1y ago
        >Still great for tracking people though. No, no it isn't. Cameras, license plate readers, air tags, phones, literally just stalking someone, and that sort of thing is great for tracking people. They are easier, vastly less prone to false positives, etc. Your wife/husband isn't going to use a DNA air sniffer to figure out if you were at the strippers. They'll just follow you from a few car lengths back, or ask one of your friends, etc. And if your concern is government, there are way easier, scalable, way more accurate ways to invade your privacy that are already proven to work and have the infrastructure already setup.
- libraryatnight 1y ago
  There's always that subset of people (Magicians, crooks, hackers, the terminally curious, etc) who will always do the ridiculous thing nobody thinks anybody would bother doing ;)
throw83988494 1y ago
Some countries have very strict rules! For example in France, doing DNA sequencing without consent of all parties, is crimimal offense with up to one year in prison! Similar in Germany. Those laws are designed to prevent paternity tests, but can be appplied very broadly!
amelius 1y ago
Photos can be faked. Yet we still fear face recognition based surveillance.
- qualeed 1y ago
  When the wind blows, a photo doesn't get faked, but these particulates will move to areas you haven't been to. Faking a photo, convincingly enough to pass forensic scrutiny, requires skill, time, and equipment. Faking the results of this DNA vacuuming requires no skill, significantly less time, and the only equipment is an air filter. I can go on, but I have a sneaking suspicion you're just trying to be contrarian rather than actually care about privacy.
  - amelius 1y ago
    I'm sure if this is cheap enough, this will be installed in stores and adtech will collect and sell the data. It reminds me of the systems that were used to collect MAC addresses of phones. Think of DNA as a cookie that you cannot delete or change.
geysersam 1y ago
The danger depends a lot on the details of the technology. You're assuming the results would be noisy enough that they're more or less useless. But what if they're not that noisy? Maybe it's easy to distinguish if a person passed near the filter or >100 meters away based on the intensity of the collected signal? Maybe you can even approximately distinguish the age of the DNA. Suddenly that sounds quite useful for tracking and for use in courts
- qualeed 1y ago
  Noise is not the only thing I mention, it's just one of many reasons. The fact that it is so easily gamed by bad actors is another compelling reason why it wouldn't work in the courts and is a poor tracking technique. Primarily though, there are more accurate ways of tracking people at this very moment, which are less prone to false positives, less prone to faking, cheaper, more easily scalable, and are already widely used and accepted in courts. This offers basically no improvement over any existing tracking technology, with a handful of downsides that the others don't suffer from. While I think it's good to ask these sorts of questions, they need to be asked within the context of what is already happening. If there wasn't cameras everywhere, ubiquitous and accurate phone tracking, internet connected cars, GPS trackers the size of a thumbnail, etc. then yes, this technology would be concerning. But that's not reality. Privacy advocates are already looked at with a sideways glance. The least we can do is be responsible on when we raise the alarm. This is not one of those times.
  - geysersam 1y ago
    The other techniques you mentioned also suffer from some drawbacks. Cameras are relatively easy to avoid if you don't want to be recognized. Phone tracking is not very effective if the target is security minded and you're not a state actor. And I want to reiterate that you don't know how prone this new technology is to false positives, you don't know how cheap it can be made. Just to illustrate, instead of figuring out how to put concealed cameras in the entries of a building, could it be enough to place a small device near the ventilation exhaust fan?
    - 1y ago
ulrikrasmussen 1y ago
I am also not so worried about it being used as evidence in a court conviction, but what if it is just used to continuously monitor public spaces? In that case the amount of data can filter out the noise, especially if you monitor a large area and can correlate samples over time. We should not necessarily worry about this being used as concrete evidence in court, but about it being an automated way of generating suspicion. I could totally see how such technology could be used to identify people who the police could focus on. On the other hand, CCTV is probably just as efficient for that, so perhaps this technology won't make it worse.

rvnx 1y ago

You can clone fingerprint like here: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30623611 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30623611 Fingerprints are still used in forensics, because the odds that it is forged are lower than an actual possibility that it is real. Same for DNA then.

qualeed 1y ago
>Fingerprints are still used in forensics, because the odds that it is forged are lower than an actual possibility that it is real. >Same for DNA then. There's a world of difference between cloning a fingerprint/planting DNA (in the traditional sense, like fluids), and this technology. The air might carry the particulates to areas never traveled to. That... doesn't happen with fingerprints. Walking around the city with an air filter than traveling to a different city could imply that thousands of people have gone to a city they never went to before. Not happening with fingerprints or traditional DNA. The noise with this tech is way too high to be useful in privacy-damaging ways. It's useless for tracking, useless for court, and more easily game-able than any other biometric by a lot. To put it in your terms, this wont be used in forensics because the odds that it is a false positive is higher than the possibility that it is real.
- mc32 1y ago
  It can. “Door knobs” can be removed from place A and installed in location B. Or a weapon can also be placed somewhere else…
  - qualeed 1y ago
    This requires action by someone else (who also risks leaving behind evidence). The airborne stuff just spreads by itself. To far more places, far quicker, all the time.
    - mc32 1y ago
      Granted; but concentration would go down at something like inverse of some exponential of the distance from source.
      - qualeed 1y ago
        Sure. My point isn't that this isn't a biometric or something. My point is that it is the weakest biometric, full of noise, constantly contaminated, easily forged with no skill set or technology required, with a very high false-positive rate when used for anything privacy-related. There are so many more things (technology, policy, etc.), literally violating people's right to privacy at this very moment, that trying to spin this as a theoretically privacy-damaging technology strikes me as a bit ridiculous.
        amelius 1y ago
        Still great for tracking people though. Also, if with p=0.99 you were at the strip club yesterday evening, then you have something to explain.
        qualeed 1y ago
        >Still great for tracking people though. No, no it isn't. Cameras, license plate readers, air tags, phones, literally just stalking someone, and that sort of thing is great for tracking people. They are easier, vastly less prone to false positives, etc. Your wife/husband isn't going to use a DNA air sniffer to figure out if you were at the strippers. They'll just follow you from a few car lengths back, or ask one of your friends, etc. And if your concern is government, there are way easier, scalable, way more accurate ways to invade your privacy that are already proven to work and have the infrastructure already setup.
libraryatnight 1y ago
There's always that subset of people (Magicians, crooks, hackers, the terminally curious, etc) who will always do the ridiculous thing nobody thinks anybody would bother doing ;)

throw83988494 1y ago

Some countries have very strict rules! For example in France, doing DNA sequencing without consent of all parties, is crimimal offense with up to one year in prison! Similar in Germany. Those laws are designed to prevent paternity tests, but can be appplied very broadly!

amelius 1y ago

Photos can be faked. Yet we still fear face recognition based surveillance.

qualeed 1y ago
When the wind blows, a photo doesn't get faked, but these particulates will move to areas you haven't been to. Faking a photo, convincingly enough to pass forensic scrutiny, requires skill, time, and equipment. Faking the results of this DNA vacuuming requires no skill, significantly less time, and the only equipment is an air filter. I can go on, but I have a sneaking suspicion you're just trying to be contrarian rather than actually care about privacy.
- amelius 1y ago
  I'm sure if this is cheap enough, this will be installed in stores and adtech will collect and sell the data. It reminds me of the systems that were used to collect MAC addresses of phones. Think of DNA as a cookie that you cannot delete or change.

geysersam 1y ago

The danger depends a lot on the details of the technology. You're assuming the results would be noisy enough that they're more or less useless. But what if they're not that noisy? Maybe it's easy to distinguish if a person passed near the filter or >100 meters away based on the intensity of the collected signal? Maybe you can even approximately distinguish the age of the DNA. Suddenly that sounds quite useful for tracking and for use in courts

qualeed 1y ago
Noise is not the only thing I mention, it's just one of many reasons. The fact that it is so easily gamed by bad actors is another compelling reason why it wouldn't work in the courts and is a poor tracking technique. Primarily though, there are more accurate ways of tracking people at this very moment, which are less prone to false positives, less prone to faking, cheaper, more easily scalable, and are already widely used and accepted in courts. This offers basically no improvement over any existing tracking technology, with a handful of downsides that the others don't suffer from. While I think it's good to ask these sorts of questions, they need to be asked within the context of what is already happening. If there wasn't cameras everywhere, ubiquitous and accurate phone tracking, internet connected cars, GPS trackers the size of a thumbnail, etc. then yes, this technology would be concerning. But that's not reality. Privacy advocates are already looked at with a sideways glance. The least we can do is be responsible on when we raise the alarm. This is not one of those times.
- geysersam 1y ago
  The other techniques you mentioned also suffer from some drawbacks. Cameras are relatively easy to avoid if you don't want to be recognized. Phone tracking is not very effective if the target is security minded and you're not a state actor. And I want to reiterate that you don't know how prone this new technology is to false positives, you don't know how cheap it can be made. Just to illustrate, instead of figuring out how to put concealed cameras in the entries of a building, could it be enough to place a small device near the ventilation exhaust fan?
  - 1y ago

ulrikrasmussen 1y ago

I am also not so worried about it being used as evidence in a court conviction, but what if it is just used to continuously monitor public spaces? In that case the amount of data can filter out the noise, especially if you monitor a large area and can correlate samples over time. We should not necessarily worry about this being used as concrete evidence in court, but about it being an automated way of generating suspicion. I could totally see how such technology could be used to identify people who the police could focus on. On the other hand, CCTV is probably just as efficient for that, so perhaps this technology won't make it worse.