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The UK has the world's largest DNA database. The figures Wikipedia cites suggests the UK has 10% of the population's DNA on file, whereas the US only has 0.5%.

by objclxt 13y ago

The UK has the world's largest DNA database. The figures Wikipedia cites suggests the UK has 10% of the population's DNA on file, whereas the US only has 0.5%. In my opinion, British people (like me!) should be far more worried about what's going on in their own backyard with regards to DNA retention and processing by the state. I don't even know why the state would need to go through 23andme. You're shedding your DNA everywhere you go. It's not hard to collect a sample.

thebooktocome 13y ago
For curiosity's sake, the UK also holds more DNA records in absolute numbers; 10% of 62 million is about four times larger than 0.5% of 313 million.
300bps 13y ago
>You're shedding your DNA everywhere you go. It's not hard to collect a sample. Interestingly, 23andme addresses this by requiring a quite large saliva sample. The theory being that with such a large sample required you will not be able to gather enough spit from someone surreptitiously to get their genetic profile. It took me about 10 minutes to generate enough spit to put into the test tube to reach it to the marked fill level. It took longer because you're not allowed to drink anything for a period of time before you collect the sample.
- dfc 13y ago
  You think that some spook is going to follow you around to collect DNA and then send it to 23aM? I think the parent commenter was probably under the impression that if the government was going to surreptitiously acquire your DNA they could probably find some testing facilities of their own.
  - dminor 13y ago
    No, they were merely stating that you can't easily test someone else's DNA using 23aM, despite the fact that we're shedding DNA everywhere.
  - 300bps 13y ago
    >You think that some spook is going to follow you around to collect DNA and then send it to 23aM? Of course not - that's silly. But I'm happy that 23andme has safeguards in place to stop regular people from surreptitiously collecting DNA from someone and using it to check their DNA.
mseebach 13y ago
> I don't even know why the state would need to go through 23andme. Need, maybe not - but it's infinitely easier to send a single letter to a single company than to follow 100,000 individuals around, establish their identity and then pick up their cigarette butts. Same deal with the phone metadata collection. You want to know if Joe Badguy is up to something, keeping poor company or hanging around the bad part of town? Much easier to pull up his cell phone and credit card data than to put a watch on him.

by objclxt 13y ago

thebooktocome 13y ago

For curiosity's sake, the UK also holds more DNA records in absolute numbers; 10% of 62 million is about four times larger than 0.5% of 313 million.

300bps 13y ago

>You're shedding your DNA everywhere you go. It's not hard to collect a sample. Interestingly, 23andme addresses this by requiring a quite large saliva sample. The theory being that with such a large sample required you will not be able to gather enough spit from someone surreptitiously to get their genetic profile. It took me about 10 minutes to generate enough spit to put into the test tube to reach it to the marked fill level. It took longer because you're not allowed to drink anything for a period of time before you collect the sample.

dfc 13y ago
You think that some spook is going to follow you around to collect DNA and then send it to 23aM? I think the parent commenter was probably under the impression that if the government was going to surreptitiously acquire your DNA they could probably find some testing facilities of their own.
- dminor 13y ago
  No, they were merely stating that you can't easily test someone else's DNA using 23aM, despite the fact that we're shedding DNA everywhere.
- 300bps 13y ago
  >You think that some spook is going to follow you around to collect DNA and then send it to 23aM? Of course not - that's silly. But I'm happy that 23andme has safeguards in place to stop regular people from surreptitiously collecting DNA from someone and using it to check their DNA.

mseebach 13y ago

> I don't even know why the state would need to go through 23andme. Need, maybe not - but it's infinitely easier to send a single letter to a single company than to follow 100,000 individuals around, establish their identity and then pick up their cigarette butts. Same deal with the phone metadata collection. You want to know if Joe Badguy is up to something, keeping poor company or hanging around the bad part of town? Much easier to pull up his cell phone and credit card data than to put a watch on him.