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Uncle Sam wants to scan your iris and collect your DNA, citizen or not
- analog8374 1y agoIn other news, water is wet.
- slg 1y agoIt's weird how many people's perception of this type of behavior is shaped by the person sitting in the White House. EDIT: It's also weird how my comment is being perceived exclusively as criticizing the critics of this administration rather than criticizing the supporters of this overreach. My comment was intentional phrased very generally, if you think it is specifically about you, that reveals something about you.
- analog8374 1y ago[flagged]
- nozzlegear 1y agoFwiw, I would be unhappy with the Biden and Obama administrations trying to do this as well. For me this has nothing to do with who's in the White House, it's an overreach plain and simple.
- pixelready 1y ago100%. Let’s not let partisanship distract us from the omni-presence of the military industrial complex and the authoritarian bent of everyone who’s been in power in the US over the last several decades. Dems will tinker around the edges to make it more palatable, but there’s still: black sites, torture, drone strikes, unjustified wars, installing of puppet governments in sovereign nations, abuse of the commons for private profit and an absolute hunger for every scrape of your data to monitor and manipulate you no matter who is in the White House. If I have to choose between voting for pro-corporate neoliberalism or fascism 2.0, I’ll vote the former, but that’s basically just asking which speed you’d like quality of life to erode for the average person. I’d really like a couple more options on the ballot please.
- noduerme 1y agoNit: Quality of life for average Germans went up, not down, once they brought back slavery and started pillaging other countries. If that's the metric we're using to decide what form of government we want, then all bets are off; ethics and morality play no part.
- aids_bomb 1y ago[dead]
- ksaun 1y agoTo be fair, pixelready said "average person," not "average American."
- pixelready 1y agoYes, I would not like my own prosperity to come at the cost of others’ suffering (where “others” here means all of humanity). I understand hard choices must sometimes be made but I think our technology has progressed to the point that we can honestly provide a good quality of life for the vast majority of human beings globally if we were able to overcome old modes of thinking and actually set ourselves to that problem. But it seems there are certain types of people or that under certain circumstances have grown to have this twisted need for “all”, instead of “just enough”. I don’t really understand that mindset as I haven’t experienced it myself. If my friends and family had UBI that allowed us all a good quality of life, I would split my time between spending time with them, reading and endlessly tinkering with new technology and adjacent creative fields, and be perfectly satisfied with that life. I crave the occasional toy, but simply don’t understand this constant ache for material accumulation that some people have. It seems to hurt them as much as it does everyone else around them.
- noduerme 1y agoJust from reading your comment, I think I have a very similar view to yours about the meaning of life, what constitutes a life well lived, and what we should spend our time on. Like you, I'm ridiculously uninterested in toys, especially toys that are bought to show status (as opposed to ones you're just interested in). Like you, I'm very satisfied with a life of tinkering and exploring code / art / music / writing that makes me a full person with a sense of accomplishment. As someone who came from the extremely far left (with an anarchist bent), I just want to respond to this, though: >> it seems there are certain types of people or that under certain circumstances have grown to have this twisted need for “all”, instead of “just enough”. My observation has been that the desire for all, or at least more, is inherent to all people. You may be happy with a UBI, but the great complaint is wealth inequality. I look around and find myself pretty well-off, with easy access to goods and services my father struggled for, and which my grandfather could never have imagined. I look around and see people of my own well-off technical elite upper-middle-class touting stuff like Maoism, because America allegedly has worse wealth inequality than China did in the 1970s. And logically I have to ask: Are these people so obsessed with keeping up with the Joneses that they can't see what they have? Greed comes in different forms, right? There's this amazing line in Dostoevsky's "Devils": Why is it that all these desperate socialists and communists are so incredibly miserly, acquisitive, and proprietorial? In fact, the more socialist someone is, the further he's gone in that direction, the stronger his proprietorial instinct. Why is it?" Okay, so imagine you live a life with 100x the material wealth of your grandfather, like me, but you still are in the middle 40-60% of the country in terms of wealth. You'll never own a private jet, you'll never party on a private island. The question is: Are you happy with yourself and your life? Can you see how much prosperity you've achieved and be proud of it? Or do you spend your time worrying that someone else has more than you, that it's unfair, that the system is rigged against you, etc. Maybe this is because I come from an immigrant family mindset, but, prosperity and self-reliance are so much more important to me than trying to compare my life to what anyone else has. Personally, I'd be happy enough in a prison cell or on my death bed, if I had a pen and paper to write on. So I'm okay with other people having luxuries I don't have. I count each day as an amazing blessing if I can wake up, find work, get laid, eat a good meal, watch a good Netflix show, get stoned and go to bed with my lover. Every single one. I never for a moment thought that Elon or Bezos or any of them were happy. Their toys always seem to rot, their possessions don't intrigue me because they're clearly miserable. In large bore: Those "certain types of people" you mention exist on both the Left and the Right - they will find a way to blame anyone who has something they don't have. That's the genesis of all the nasty politics we see. I'm not advocating for having less or having nothing or anything like that. I'm just saying, a small amount of appreciation (historically) for what you have now goes a long way toward letting people be happy and chill instead of angry and aggrieved. And someone will always have more unless you're the King of AI or King of Logistics or King of Twitter. So, we lead more modest lives, but lives are all finite, and we have happiness that they can't possibly achieve.
- doctoboggan 1y agoI see it as a blessing: privacy advocates have previously argued that yes these invasive tools might currently help an honest government do its job to stop bad guys, but the tools could eventually fall into the hands of a not so honest government. Now, you don't really need much of an imagination to see what happens when the tools fall into the wrong hands, and hopefully more of the citizenry can get behind the idea of privacy as a fundamental right, and not just something for those who have something to hide.
- harimau777 1y agoWouldn't it be weird if that didn't shape their perception? It's not surprising that people are less trusting when an authoritarian is in power.
- postingawayonhn 1y agoBut the assumptions should always be that one day someone like that could take power and gain access to that data.
- ModernMech 1y agoThe way to prevent authoritarians from abusing power is to not elect them, and to throw them in jail when they violate the law. They're not hard to spot; people warned about the current guy for a decade before he took over. What's happening right now is not because the government had a database lying around and an unspecified authoritarian picked it up. What's happening is that after a specific authoritarian staged a coup against the government, he was nevertheless allowed to continue his anti-democratic efforts. Trump should have a 27 year sentence like his Brazilian compatriot Bolsonaro, who in monkey-see-monkey-do fashion, similarly affected a coup against his government. Had we actually prosecuted those crimes the way Brazil did, we could still be talking about how to prevent theoretical authoritarian governments from abusing their power. But now we have a specific instance, and in this case, all the anti-authoritarian measures in the world mean jack if the government just allows actual insurrectionists to run for president, which is barred by the Constitution for a good reason. In that case they're just asking for it.
- slg 1y ago>The way to prevent authoritarians from abusing power is to not elect them, and to throw them in jail when they violate the law. This was the true motivation for my comment. It's futile trying to design your laws to withstand the dangers of a future authoritarian regime taking power when that authoritarian regime can just as easily change or ignore those laws once they take control. Our government is experiencing a rubber hose attack, the strength of our encryption doesn't matter.
- comrh 1y agoBiden cancelled this during his administration
- jMyles 1y agoIt's also weird how people gatekeep resistance on the basis of their perception that it's motivated by the person sitting in the White House. If people are ready to resist now, let's welcome them, rather than questioning whether their motives are related to some tangentially related disagreement.
- potato3732842 1y ago>It's also weird how people gatekeep resistance on the basis of their perception that it's motivated by the person sitting in the White House. Because let's be real here, whether such discussion is allowed to stand or is shut down in a politically fairly homogenous community is typically a direct reflection of that fact. You see the same thing on the opposite side of the isle. >If people are ready to resist now, let's welcome them, rather than questioning whether their motives are related to some tangentially related disagreement. You have to draw a line somewhere. This sort of shortsighted expediency based politics is how we got the current political parties.
- epolanski 1y agoI don't think it is. I think it's selective attention plus recency bias. This drift has started 24 years ago with 9/11 and no president has stopped or slowed it. People who dislike who's in charge say the same things as always, people who dislike such measures same the same things as always regardless of who's in the white house, etc.
- hedora 1y agoDo you have any evidence that public concern over privacy changes depending on who is in the white house? A quick search suggests a solid majority has been consistently upset about this issue for decades. The phrasing of the question seems to have more impact than the year, but I cannot find any hard data on consumer privacy concern trends over years. Such trend data would be useful.
- wagwang 1y agoHow is this news, the usgov has been taking my biometrics for the past 5 years
- nozzlegear 1y agoHave they? They haven't taken mine.
- y-curious 1y agoEvery time I fly from SFO, there’s a face-tracking camera that takes your photo after you stand up close to it. There’s definitely some sort of data harvesting there and there’s no opt out that I know about. I also have Clear, which was voluntary but certainly collected my biometric data years ago. I also have Global Entry, which has a similar scanning tech to point 1.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- abeppu 1y agoYeah, I think the crappy side of it at this point is that the biometric data they collect is never leveraged to help you as a citizen. If I lose my passport while abroad, given that the government has my fingerprints etc, why can't I use those biometrics to reenter the country (and have a replacement passport reissued immediately)? Officially, you are supposed to be able to opt out of the face recognition cameras at security but I think whether staff actually respect that is not consistent.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- hedora 1y agoThe camera at SJC says it deletes the scan immediately after querying the database. That makes opt out (which the sign says is allowed) kinda pointless, unless the opt out also deletes the existing database entries. Tl;dr, I don’t bother opting out.
- aerostable_slug 1y agoI think it's an interesting visual to compare the Stasi's rows of scent jars to data centers filled with banks of flash memory storing biometric data.
- djmips 1y agoThe horror of that constrasted with the blithe compliance of modern citizens.
- cynicalsecurity 1y agoEU's recently rejected chat control looks like child's play compared to this. These are some Stasi methods that are going to destroy the US if implemented. Europe already went through creating dossier on citizens in the past, the next immediate step is always fascism. Nothing good comes out of fascism, as the history showed.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- epolanski 1y agoTo be honest, one could argue that places like Singapore turned on amazingly well by most metrics.
- pyuser583 1y agoIsn’t that a quote from The Mandalorian? > It is a shame that your people suffered so. Just as in this situation, it was all avoidable. Why did Mandalore resist our expansion? The Empire improves every system it touches. Judge by any metric. Safety, prosperity, trade, opportunity, peace. Compare Imperial rule to what is happening now. Look outside. Is the world more peaceful since the revolution? I see nothing but death and chaos.
- ghssds 1y ago>the next immediate step is always fascism. Chronologicaly the Stasi was built after fascism ended. It operated in East Germany, a communist state.
- Semmel 1y agoYes, in a rundown communist state. What could have followed , would be a Kim leader steering the country in the North Korean direction — which I’d call fascist. Luckily there was Gorbachev and in the people enough decency and civilisation left, so the system just folded
- deleted 1y ago
- jedberg 1y agoDid you know that the State of California has a DNA sample from every person born in the state since 1983? It's required by law for the hospital to collect it and give it to the state.
- zahlman 1y ago... The concept of DNA sample collection existed in 1983?
- evanjrowley 1y agohttps://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/tag/newborn-blood-spot-privacy-concerns/ https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/tag/newborn-blood-spot-pr...
- jedberg 1y agoThey actually started in 1966 (it's a blood spot collection) but they only started keeping it in 1983.
- zahlman 1y agoAnd what information did they hope to glean back then?
- yannyu 1y agoThis is a particularly incendiary way of putting this information out there. What is collected and stored is a small blood-spot sample from a heel prick on a newborn. This is used to test for various kinds of conditions that affect newborns. This isn't a full DNA genome sequence or even any data at all, just the blood-spot specimen. Law enforcement does not have automatic access to this sample, but individual samples have been given to law enforcement through court orders or warrants. There isn't a clear SOP for how law enforcement typically gets this information or how often it's given to law enforcement, but there's been proposed legislation to make this more transparent.
- 1y ago
- lesona 1y agoYou can submit a public comment on the proposal to DHS at the link below: https://www.regulations.gov/document/USCIS-2025-0205-0002/comment https://www.regulations.gov/document/USCIS-2025-0205-0002/co...
- fnordpiglet 1y agoI suspect this government isn’t receptive to commentary from anyone other than only one person. While I’d never discourage anyone from advocating their beliefs this feels like at best a waste of energy. They are going to do it because they decided to do it - the solicitation of comments is performative and required. The only way to stop it is via the courts and by voting next November.
- saghm 1y agoThere's even precedent for the current president's agencies compiling some pretty sketchy "comments" in the past due to not doing basic sanity checks on pretty obvious fake comments that happened to support their agenda, like when supposedly seeking input from the public about repealing net neutrality[1]. There were so many duplicates that only thirty 30 unique comments made up 57% of the overall total, and the second most common "name" among the authors was literally "The Internet". No one in the current administration cares about what random members of the public think about their policies, and that's by design. Even the government positions that are intended to be permanent across administrations aren't a safe bet at this point with was things have been going [1]: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2017/11/29/public-comments-to-the-federal-communications-commission-about-net-neutrality-contain-many-inaccuracies-and-duplicates/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2017/11/29/public-comme...
- themafia 1y ago> this government isn’t receptive to commentary from anyone Name one government of the past 60 years that was.
- fnordpiglet 1y agoActually the comment collection process has in fact caused changes in policy over many administrations, largely because the policy makers were interested in achieving some goal aligned to their function and believed in our system. When commentary went strongly against their policy there was often a step back and reassessment. This administration appears to have two goals: maximally hurt people who hurt Trumps feelings and create the deep state they lamented but never really existed until now to continue to maximally hurt people similar to those who hurt trumps feels in perpetuity.
- yosame 1y agoHilariously, this is the second Sam that wants to collect everyones iris's for nefarious purposes
- qingcharles 1y agoThis WorldCoin image will forever live rent free in my head: https://www.crikey.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2023/08/New-Project67.jpg https://www.crikey.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2023/08...
- bigyabai 1y ago"How does it work?" "It's magic. All technology is."
- joomla199 1y agoGiven that we don’t know why electromagnetism exists, this is basically true for many technologies.
- hoppp 1y agoWe don't know why the world itself exists so everything is magic
- KumaBear 1y agoThere doesn’t need to be a why the world exists. It does that’s all there is to know. There doesn’t have to be purpose just an explanation of how not why
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- hnbad 1y agoGP probably meant "how" as in "By what mechanisms" not "why" as in "For what purposes". So "why" as in "what makes it do what it does".
- tho423i43344324 1y agoUnsurprising. India, which given its colonial-era ruling-elites who are maniacally obsessed with the Anglosphere, is today considered a "laboratory" for doing social experiments that'd be considered a outrage against human dignity in their own countries. This country was the first in line not only the biometric identification projects (Aadhar), and for demonetization (of 2016 with UPI). All of these were funded and pushed by USAID. Both of these were implemented by running roughshod over constitution and regulation, by "roping-in" key regulatory people by giving them what they desire the most - access to the ruling elites in the US. Eg. Infosys' Nandan Nilekani was thrust to the top with his USAID funded projects. Now the results of this "human corralling" experiments (note: a lot of what Orwell described came out of his experience in British-colonial India), is now coming to the West.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dyauspitr 1y agoThe party of liberty and small government.
- jimbo808 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dyauspitr 1y agoAnd just like that jimbo throws away his right to privacy.
- jimbo808 1y agoDo you also oppose fingerprinting immigrants? What about photographing them? Or asking them for identification? Background screenings? Privacy is important, but so is knowing who people are when you let them into your country. Migrating to the United States is not a right anyone has, it's a privilege. Documents can easily be forged, or official ones created for a bribe. I'd rather live in a country that will put our own citizens' rights to safety and security ahead of the rights to privacy given to a foreign national who is willingly seeking the privilege of immigrating to a country that is not their own.
- clanky 1y agoYes, they're definitely doing this to help you, the hoi polloi whose data is being harvested.
- jimbo808 1y agoDo you not realize how much of a constant, non-trivial challenge identifying foreign nationals is for immigration officials? Forged identities, corrupt/bribed document offices, stolen identites, state-backed agents, etc are all a constant threat. These are not citizens, these are foreigners electing to seek the privilege of entering a country that is not their own. Using technology to mitigate these very real threats should not be controversial. We do it with fingerprints.
- 1y ago
- dwa3592 1y agoEvery grocery store I have been to in the US is recording people at the checkout.
- Frannky 1y agoThe problem with these types of technologies is that you will be at the mercy of whoever uses them. It's like chat control, censorship, gun laws, etc. You can't control how they will be leveraged. I lived in California for some time a few years ago, and it was a mess, so I understand people being okay with this type of stuff if it will make them more secure, but it's a very risky slippery slope. The other thing is that with all the data Google has, they can probably uncover everything they need just by paying for Google Ads data :/
- p0w3n3d 1y agoBig old cable connected to people's heads to control their movements and their thoughts would make some people feel more secure, but this is not what we're going to agree to. That's not enough that some people feel not secure...
- throwawayqqq11 1y ago> gun laws ... arent as vital as other freedoms like travel, anonymity, speech and contract. I dont like this conflation because i see it as a nasty and harmful bias.
- potato3732842 1y agoAll those other rights are backed up by credible capacity for violence. You need to distribute some of that credible capacity for violence among the populace in order to check the long tail of potential abuses the system (not necessarily the government, though there is much overlap) may engage in. There's a discussion to be had about what the right amount is though.
- rzerowan 1y agoOne thing that i would prefer in biometrics would be that the iris/fingerprints get treated as what they are publicly available and easily obtainable data. At worst using it a a secret key is similar to using your name as a hidden variable for authorisation, whent it sshould strictly be a identification token.And once leaked you cant revoke it . Back on topic , a Gattaca type system is unbelievably bleak and when(not if) it is finallly shoved through.It wont take long to foist it on the rest of the planet (see the recent visa requirements viz social media and insane bond requirements demanded of some countries like Mali citizens being asked for $15K per visa application).
- EvanAnderson 1y agoIt'll be treated just as stupidly as Social Security numbers, and soon we'll have biometric data breaches. >sigh< Aside: Social Security numbers should be public now, too. That ship sailed a long time ago and it should be recognized.
- bobmcnamara 1y agoHey now, at least I'm able to change my social security number and passwords. Good luck changing eyes.
- thayne 1y agoChanging your social security number is only slightly easier. Okay, maybe that's hyperbole. But having your SSN exposed isn't a good enough to be able to change it. You have to show it is actively being abused, and you can't address the problems another way.
- lan321 1y agoGotta rotate your access eyelenses every 3 months office policy incoming. /s
- b112 1y agohttps://youtu.be/nAttA7gzhOI?t=41 https://youtu.be/nAttA7gzhOI?t=41
- almaight 1y agoDoes anyone know about PRISM?
- shwaj 1y ago[flagged]
- lowleveldreams 1y agoThis shows how complex the balance is between security and privacy, every new technology seems to push that line a bit further.
- metricshome 1y agoIt’s somewhat important to point out that this is the same thing that was done during the Iraq war to potential “insurgents” so the biometrics tech was “trained” and used experimentally there before it has been brought home. Wouldn’t be surprised if the people that used it in Iraq (as technicians) are now going to be the people operating the tech now in the US.
- Rileyen 1y agoI used to think this kind of thing didn’t concern me. But once family members get pulled in and citizens get scanned by association, it’s hard to stay untouched. Is this really about safety, or are we quietly building something we won’t be able to roll back?
- Sophira 1y agoBe careful - this may be a case where they say they're going to do one thing (collect data from US citizens), but walk that part of it back after people protest - while those very same people overlook the fact that they're still going to be getting every immigrant to submit to the scans.
- black_13 1y ago[dead]
- usrxcghghj 1y agoFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK NNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOO
- wartywhoa23 1y agoThis is the only sane and decent answer to that. I wish more people were honest and had some gut at least to say this.
- Animats 1y agoDon't most people in the US get fingerprinted at some point? Let's see. I've been fingerprinted, all 10 fingers, for, at least, 1) the US Army, 2) security clearance for a DoD job, multiple times, 3) a permit to ride a horse on SF Water Department property, and 4) Customs and Border Protection Global Entry, which also took an iris scan. California DMV takes a thumbprint, but not all 10 fingers. They've been recording me at every transaction for decades. So I'm on file. I think of being IDd as a normal part of life, for any position of trust. Is this unusual?
- psychoslave 1y agoDepend what the "position of trust" is taken. Security clearance for departement of defense is certainly not something the median citizen can be expected to go through.
- hnbad 1y agoSurely there's a difference between collecting a thumbprint for a driver's license or even collecting full fingerprints for a specific job type, and collecting your DNA and an iris scan just for being a citizen? I'm German. My government literally issues ID cards and requires fingerprints for those nowadays as well (because terrorism or the children or whatever works as the excuse at the moment) but the idea of a government agency collecting my DNA seems far more invasive given the kind of things you can do with that information and the kind of things governments (especially in my country but in the US and Canada too) have historically done to groups of people under them. If you think there's nothing concerning about the government wanting to collect extensive biometric data including DNA from not only people applying for immigration but also people associated with them or their application, maybe it would sound more concerning to you if I said that in German.
- thaumasiotes 1y ago> Surely there's a difference between collecting a thumbprint for a driver's license or even collecting full fingerprints for a specific job type, and collecting your DNA and an iris scan just for being a citizen? Not really; every citizen is expected to have a driver's license, and this takes place before anyone has really thought about the issue even if they're likely to object later. It's sort of like the difference between baptizing infants and baptizing adults. You're right that there's more information in the DNA, but what difference do you see in the iris scan?
- lifestyleguru 1y agoYou've been asleep or something? Current policy of every Five Eyes country: "You could be refused entry to [...] if you: [...] - refuse to let an immigration officer take your photo, fingerprints or an iris scan"
- metalman 1y ago[flagged]
- Schlagbohrer 1y agoHospitals in california steal the DNA of every single baby born there and collect it in a database. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-newborn-dna-privacy-push-bills-killed/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-newborn-dna-privacy-... https://www.cbsnews.com/news/baby-dna-parental-consent-genetic-records-california-law-newborns/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/baby-dna-parental-consent-genet...
- Havoc 1y agoDNA seems especially egregious. That’s useful for things other than identification and has commercial value and thus incentive to abuse. Idk I’m just planning to stay clear of the US till we see if they recover from their bout of authoritarianism
- puppycodes 1y agoThere is a massive difference between collecting your DNA and iris or fingerprint. a Gattaca-esq society is terrifying.
- jrochkind1 1y agoI remember nostalgically when this kind of thing would have been so unpopular in the USA, including (especially?) among the "populist right", that it would not have happened. The escalation of the surveillance security state has been quick and vast.
- tempodox 1y ago> surveillance security state The only security is of those in power. For ordinary people it gets more unsafe with every measure.
- im3w1l 1y agoI haven't fully made up my mind here, but I'm thinking that (most forms of) privacy is simply no longer viable due to technological advances. Mass collection of data is getting cheaper and cheaper, so these databases will be built. If not by the state than by corporations. And if laws prevent corporations, then by those operating outside the law like intelligence agencies (including foreign ones) and organized crime. Having the government be the only ones without the data is a weird situation.
- verdverm 1y agoThe government is an adversary that we must constantly keep in check
- autoexec 1y agoWe could absolutely regulate corporations so that they didn't collect, keep, and sell everyone's personal data. When the consequences are high enough and enforcement is consistent your grocery store won't go overseas to hand your data to a mafia boss and Netflix isn't going to sell your data in a dark alley to an illegal black market data broker. Corporations didn't need our current level of surveillance in order to become massively wealthy and they won't risk their wealth just to find out the last time you took a shit or who you're sleeping with and how often. Surveillance capitalism is a choice. It's happening because at the moment it's profitable, but it can be made unprofitable (or even dangerous) to collect and sell and the moment that happens it all stops. Just because the technology exists to abuse something that doesn't make it inevitable that it will happen everywhere all the time. The problem we have now is that abusing technology to exploit and control people through the misuse and sale of their personal data is making a lot of people money hand over fist (including people in government) and they'll fight like hell to keep that easy cash and to convince you that any other kind of life would be impossible. Don't fall for the lie.
- tern 1y agoI'm quite disappointed by the discourse in this thread. We can build privacy-preserving identity. It's a huge opportunity. Go work on it! If you're in the Bay, there's a conference on it every year where the people building the tech and setting the standards are hashing out the ideas! When the government comes knocking, they're not coming up with stuff from scratch—they're picking up the tools we left around ready to use.
- arandr0x 1y agoI think it's worth mentioning that while biometrics for identification have flaws (as mentioned in this thread, they're not 100% collision free, are not necessarily secret, and are non-trivial to collect), DNA has a different risk profile if it leaks than fingerprints and iris scans if you consider technology advances. DNA could let people (moving beyond government, since you should probably assume anything in a government database will be leaked at this point) target your family and not just you, it includes information that could let adversaries find out ways you're uniquely exploitable (for instance allergies, sensitivities, diseases) and in general its potential for harm goes far beyond impersonation or being used in court. (On the plus side, I suppose, I think the story on storing DNA at the scale we're talking about is not fully complete. DNA does denature and it takes a reasonably good sample to get a full genome sequence, and fully sequencing and storing data for every person has other practical issues. The article itself only references using DNA results to "prove or disprove biological sex", which is much more trivial and while it's likely to come with its own problems and edge cases, is also much less information.)
- mensetmanusman 1y agoDNA is already stored after every infant is born and blood drawn.
- Frieren 1y agoThe USA needs a national ID, it will help to avoid fraud, to get socialized health care, etc. To collect data just for police enforcement is horrifying and it will increase the control that goverment has in private affairs without proving anything of value to society. The USA claims freedom to avoid taking care of their own, but it claims security to spy and control its own citizens.
- motbus3 1y agoImagine giving them your DNA data that could be sold to anyone without your knowledge because you don't have legal grounds to allow or disallow that.