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torment-nexus 2 minutes ago [-]
This is an interesting problem. A similar approach that worked for us was to only load the tools the agent actually needs for each task.
voidUpdate 1 hours ago [-]
IF there was a secure and trustable way that a trusted government could retain DNA information, then I feel like people having a DNA test at birth or on becoming a citizen could be useful, both medically ("your sample indicates you may have a higher risk of dementia") and from a policing standpoint ("we found DNA on this woman's clothes and immediately matched it to this man who hasn't committed a crime before" or "we were able to identify this john doe because their DNA was on record"). However, given that companies and governments are awful, I don't think it could ever actually work in practice :/
microtonal 4 minutes ago [-]
I don't think it could ever actually work in practice :/
Exactly. I can think of so many bad outcomes. Just the medical point:
both medically ("your sample indicates you may have a higher risk of dementia")
You know how this will end in the modern tech dystopia. In countries where health care insurance is not mandatory or there is a large gap between collectivized and private insurance, DNA would be used to reject or raise the prices for people with 'unlucky DNA'.
A government that could be trusted now is not necessarily trustable in the future. I am pretty sure the orange guy clan would love to lone their pockets by selling such information.
Also, apart from these issues, a lot of people simply do not want to know these things. Suppose that the outcome is "you have a 30% risk of dementia by 60". For most people such kind of information is hard to act on, while it increases worry significantly. I do think it can help for some treatable illnesses, enabling early monitoring.
tremon 29 minutes ago [-]
> IF there was a secure and trustable way that a trusted government could retain DNA information
How long does that government need to stay trusted and secure? For the lifetime of the born person only, or should that requirement also extend to the offspring of said person? Can you point to any current government that has been consistently trusted and secure for the past 100 years? How much are you willing to risk on the theory that a government (your choice, pick one) will stay trusted and secure for the next 100 years?
jvanderbot 18 minutes ago [-]
Right, and that's why it's preposterous to even imagine this happening. In no time you'd have an administration that was providing that DNA evidence to defense contractors for Top Secret clearance, background checks, etc.
"We're sorry your job application was rejected because we found you were 4% less maximally conscientious than the median applicant"
I've had job applications (albeit in secured projects) rejected for similarly vague bullshit ("Insufficiently candid")
tyingq 6 minutes ago [-]
Health insurance actuaries would be a concern also.
mft_ 1 hours ago [-]
Indeed. It’s essentially the age-old conundrum: I don’t need to worry about my privacy because I’m not breaking the rules… until someone changes the rules.
RajT88 7 minutes ago [-]
When I was a kid, I recall police coming to our classrooms to fingerprint us. The whole school got fingerprinted. The idea was to help police if kids went missing.
Whether or not you believe that justification ("Stranger Danger" was a scare at the time), I can promise you those fingerprints were used to put people in jail later.
alistairSH 42 minutes ago [-]
How close does a DNA "match" have to be to get somebody tossed in jail? Do they actually require 100%, or is a "match" something less? What's the false-positive rate? Would a non-twin sibling's DNA "match"?
Yes, I'm aware that, in theory, DNA is unique. As is the theory for finger-prints. But, I'm also aware that theory is rarely reality.
voidUpdate 33 minutes ago [-]
According to wikipedia, "the theoretical risk of a coincidental match is 1 in 100 billion (100,000,000,000) although the practical risk is actually 1 in 1,000 because monozygotic twins are 0.2% of the human population", so it looks like some twins will cause an issue for DNA-based convictions, but I think a non-twin sibling is probably diverse enough? I have different eye colour, ears, food intolerances to my brothers, so I feel like our DNA is pretty different ("pretty" on a scale of human to human comparisons, since 99.9% of DNA is identical between humans or something like that).
I'd argue that while a DNA match could be a very good starting point for a conviction, other evidence should also be presented, for the reasons you suggest. For example, there is the case of the Phantom of Heillbron (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_of_Heilbronn), where European police found DNA evidence of a woman being at many diverse crime scenes, but it turned out the cotton swabs used for testing were contaminated by at worker at the factory (The swabs weren't certified for police work)
assimpleaspossi 33 minutes ago [-]
Remember that one still needs proof. My DNA on a victim's clothes does not mean I committed the crime.
alistairSH 10 minutes ago [-]
Are you willing to trust 12 random schmoes to make that call correctly? Especially in the face of an overzealous prosecutor?
estearum 20 minutes ago [-]
In principle.
In reality, juries often hold evidence like this (and also-very-unreliable eye witness testimony) in high regard, based on how it's positioned into the narrative.
inigyou 56 minutes ago [-]
Perfect enforcement of crimes is a bad thing. If criminal law was perfectly enforced we'd still be in Prohibition and PGP would also be illegal.
voidUpdate 54 minutes ago [-]
It's generally quite hard to get a DNA sample from someone's PGP signature
netsharc 6 minutes ago [-]
"This software is for verified downloaders only. Please scan your ID card to start downloading.".
kelnos 22 minutes ago [-]
Your argument boils down to "if people were 100% just, fair, and good, we could do this", so I'm not sure what the point of it is.
(Entertainingly, if people were 100% just, fair, and good, we wouldn't need this database... or police or militaries for that matter.)
At any rate, even if I could ensure, in perpetuity, that my DNA would not be used inappropriately (where I get to decide what that means), I would still not want it collected and database'd. People deserve to have privacy in their bodies.
usrnm 1 hours ago [-]
Life in general would be a lot simpler and nicer in a perfect world with perfect (whatever it means) people in it
sidewndr46 1 hours ago [-]
There are several European countries that do this from what I understand
hvb2 1 hours ago [-]
Do what, fingerprinting or collecting DNA? Not sure what you're trying to say, if Europe does it, it's fine?
The gist is that this was always done when people were arrested for criminal offences. They're now doing it for civil offences and, like with all the ICE stuff, it seems to be do first, ask questions later. So you can be a citizen but your data might end up in their systems anyway as it's submitted before they find out you are a citizen...
spwa4 40 minutes ago [-]
A few things we can know for sure. The Dutch immigration enforcement authority, IND, has a blanket exception for to the GPDR collecting any kind of information on anybody "for the purposes of immigration enforcement".
10 years ago we found out, from a budget proposal that was in dispute, that the police had sent every mental health database in the Netherlands to Palantir. Regular health databases too, but if you're Dutch, Peter Thiel knows exactly what you told the "the law guarantees you can trust me" social worker 20 years ago. Or what you told any Dutch police officer at the border, on the street, ... Everything. That's what the Dutch state used their authority for.
voidUpdate 1 hours ago [-]
Slightly biased because I'm a european, but I think a european country is more likely to be trust-able with a country-wide DNA database. Only slightly more though, I still wouldn't trust them to actually do it right
lenerdenator 7 minutes ago [-]
> Slightly biased because I'm a european, but I think a european country is more likely to be trust-able with a country-wide DNA database.
There were multiple governments operating pervasive surveillance states and using them to punish dissidents on the western part of European continent well within a human lifetime from today. What makes you think that won't happen again, this time in a completely iron-clad way?
kelnos 20 minutes ago [-]
Even if the government remains perpetually trustworthy (good luck with that), it's inevitable that the database will be hacked by a bad actor, if the information is valuable.
pjc50 6 minutes ago [-]
Iceland have a _geneological_ database, which is something of a sensible precaution against consanguinity in a small gene pool that was isolated before air travel. I don't think anywhere has population-wide genetic databases and I struggle to see how it would be compatible with GDPR?
(France actually ban paternity testing without a court order!)
ljf 58 minutes ago [-]
Interested in this as I haven't heard of this from an all population point of view, do you know which European countries this is? I know many have a national DNA database but that is limited to those charged with crimes (or suspected of in some cases, in some countries these are removed later).
b3ing 1 hours ago [-]
Maybe they can use it later to match the ICE rapists with the women and kids that are being sexually assaulted, something no one wants to talk about
kardianos 1 hours ago [-]
They don't mention this, but one major reason for this is to validate claims of family units and prevent trafficking.
This is, I suspect, a good thing. The article never states any downsides, other then nebulous claims. Yes, DNA is like finger printing someone, which is routinely done for arrests, but has the benefit of assisting in claims of family relations, which is at the heart of many ICE concerns.
jackb4040 8 minutes ago [-]
They don't mention this, but one major reason for apartheid's Bantustan policy was to recognize distinct homelands and preserve cultural communities. This is, I suspect, a good thing. The article never states any downsides, other than nebulous claims. Yes, assigning people to ethnic homelands is like any other government record-keeping, which is routinely done, but has the benefit of assisting in claims of separate national identities, which was at the heart of many apartheid concerns.
jackmott42 1 hours ago [-]
Look at this guy making excuses for the Nazis
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1 hours ago [-]
lenerdenator 10 minutes ago [-]
This behavior will continue until an actual consequence is introduced.
ck2 49 minutes ago [-]
we're officially in the "just try to stop us" phase of authoritarianism
next up, armed ICE around voting locations despite federal law
because "just try to stop us"
then refusal to seat voted delegates
because "just try to stop us"
the idea is to normalize the obscenity of it all, like the billions in wildly illegal grifting
king's image on buildings, airports, passports, park passes, coins and $250 bill
whitehouse demolished, fights on front lawn, statues covered in gold while people can't get healthcare or even food
people arrested and prosecuted at great expense then quietly dismissed
all normalized somehow without mass outrage
functionmouse 47 minutes ago [-]
I mean, are YOU going to try to stop them?
alistairSH 39 minutes ago [-]
Like Susan Collins, I shall furrow my brow to indicate my unease with the situation.
Kidding, sort of, if brownshirts and other government-sanctioned thugs show up in November, I'm really not sure what I'll do. They're already making noise about doing extra "Watching" of elections in my area (Fairfax County) and as far as I can tell, the only criteria for that is "they vote blue, so it must be fraud!"
effnorwood 56 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
CurbStomper 1 hours ago [-]
[dead]
1 hours ago [-]
throwaway2027 2 hours ago [-]
Just in time to train an AI model on it and discriminate based on heuristics. /s
zombot 1 hours ago [-]
Maybe they'll discover the illegal-immigrant gene or the unwanted-wrongthinker gene.
Exactly. I can think of so many bad outcomes. Just the medical point:
both medically ("your sample indicates you may have a higher risk of dementia")
You know how this will end in the modern tech dystopia. In countries where health care insurance is not mandatory or there is a large gap between collectivized and private insurance, DNA would be used to reject or raise the prices for people with 'unlucky DNA'.
A government that could be trusted now is not necessarily trustable in the future. I am pretty sure the orange guy clan would love to lone their pockets by selling such information.
Also, apart from these issues, a lot of people simply do not want to know these things. Suppose that the outcome is "you have a 30% risk of dementia by 60". For most people such kind of information is hard to act on, while it increases worry significantly. I do think it can help for some treatable illnesses, enabling early monitoring.
How long does that government need to stay trusted and secure? For the lifetime of the born person only, or should that requirement also extend to the offspring of said person? Can you point to any current government that has been consistently trusted and secure for the past 100 years? How much are you willing to risk on the theory that a government (your choice, pick one) will stay trusted and secure for the next 100 years?
"We're sorry your job application was rejected because we found you were 4% less maximally conscientious than the median applicant"
I've had job applications (albeit in secured projects) rejected for similarly vague bullshit ("Insufficiently candid")
Whether or not you believe that justification ("Stranger Danger" was a scare at the time), I can promise you those fingerprints were used to put people in jail later.
Yes, I'm aware that, in theory, DNA is unique. As is the theory for finger-prints. But, I'm also aware that theory is rarely reality.
I'd argue that while a DNA match could be a very good starting point for a conviction, other evidence should also be presented, for the reasons you suggest. For example, there is the case of the Phantom of Heillbron (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_of_Heilbronn), where European police found DNA evidence of a woman being at many diverse crime scenes, but it turned out the cotton swabs used for testing were contaminated by at worker at the factory (The swabs weren't certified for police work)
In reality, juries often hold evidence like this (and also-very-unreliable eye witness testimony) in high regard, based on how it's positioned into the narrative.
(Entertainingly, if people were 100% just, fair, and good, we wouldn't need this database... or police or militaries for that matter.)
At any rate, even if I could ensure, in perpetuity, that my DNA would not be used inappropriately (where I get to decide what that means), I would still not want it collected and database'd. People deserve to have privacy in their bodies.
The gist is that this was always done when people were arrested for criminal offences. They're now doing it for civil offences and, like with all the ICE stuff, it seems to be do first, ask questions later. So you can be a citizen but your data might end up in their systems anyway as it's submitted before they find out you are a citizen...
10 years ago we found out, from a budget proposal that was in dispute, that the police had sent every mental health database in the Netherlands to Palantir. Regular health databases too, but if you're Dutch, Peter Thiel knows exactly what you told the "the law guarantees you can trust me" social worker 20 years ago. Or what you told any Dutch police officer at the border, on the street, ... Everything. That's what the Dutch state used their authority for.
There were multiple governments operating pervasive surveillance states and using them to punish dissidents on the western part of European continent well within a human lifetime from today. What makes you think that won't happen again, this time in a completely iron-clad way?
(France actually ban paternity testing without a court order!)
This is, I suspect, a good thing. The article never states any downsides, other then nebulous claims. Yes, DNA is like finger printing someone, which is routinely done for arrests, but has the benefit of assisting in claims of family relations, which is at the heart of many ICE concerns.
next up, armed ICE around voting locations despite federal law
because "just try to stop us"
then refusal to seat voted delegates
because "just try to stop us"
the idea is to normalize the obscenity of it all, like the billions in wildly illegal grifting
king's image on buildings, airports, passports, park passes, coins and $250 bill
whitehouse demolished, fights on front lawn, statues covered in gold while people can't get healthcare or even food
people arrested and prosecuted at great expense then quietly dismissed
all normalized somehow without mass outrage
Kidding, sort of, if brownshirts and other government-sanctioned thugs show up in November, I'm really not sure what I'll do. They're already making noise about doing extra "Watching" of elections in my area (Fairfax County) and as far as I can tell, the only criteria for that is "they vote blue, so it must be fraud!"