I’m concerned about the privacy implications of DNA testing services like 23andMe or AncestryDNA. What are the potential risks of sharing our genetic data with those companies, and are there any privacy-focused alternatives available?
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The big real-world implication I’m aware of is that law enforcement can match DNA they found somewhere against 23andme’s database. Then if you (or any of your relatives!) are in the database because they’ve ever used 23andme, they’ll find that out, and they can use it to investigate or prosecute you.
Whether you think that’s a good or a bad thing depends a lot on whether you think the cops should be able to succeed if they get a hold of someone’s DNA and are looking for the person to match their sample against… that success is, to me, much more likely to be a good thing than a problem, but that may not be the consensus view here and it’s certainly a massive, massive privacy implication.
Well prosecutors and cops are incentivized to get arrests. Whether to pump numbers up for promotions or to use in campaigning. So it wouldn’t surprise me if cops turn a cold case into a witch hunt because some partial DNA match in a “private” database gave them a few suspects and then they start to build some case to fit the suspects.
Accurate, and it does impact their decisions in ways that are sometimes pretty bad
What do you think the ratio is of unsolved rapes, to felony cases that were falsified by cops and prosecutors that led to a conviction? I know the second one happened one time in the recent past, and it was a big enough deal that they made a Netflix special about it. I don’t know of it happening a second time besides that.
Well overall, using these techniques has probably resolved a ton of investigations where the leads ran out and it being an overall positive. I think it would still be better that DNA from these sources cannot be used in trial. So a DNA match can give you a new angle to find other elements, but the fact DNA was used to find a trail shouldn’t be admissable.
I guess the saying “better 100 guilty people go free rather than an innocent man should suffer” applies though.
My bias though is probably skewed through the media I consume. I do watch a lot of channels like Lackluster YouTube videos (shows corruption and double standards in policing). I do try to balance it out with channels like Code Blue Cam which does highlight good policing too, but I would say I have an inherent distrust with policing nowadays.
Yeah. I don’t want to get into my whole take on ACAB or anything, but what I’ll say quick about it is that when the court system is involved, the opportunity for abuse is way less. Police on their own with no oversight and everyone believes what they say always like back in the day, is way different from police with bodycams and modern hypervigilant cell-phone/news-media oversight like the modern day, is way different from police having to show up in court and the defense lawyer gets to mount a vigorous at-length factual challenge to whatever they’re saying happened. It’s still far far from a perfect system (public defender / plea agreement / wtf) but it’s also not equal to the stereotype where all the cops are just trying to get out and do as much harm to society as they can possibly manage every single day and nothing like working to catch rapists ever happens in real life.
Plus, if the cops wanted to falsify the DNA and put someone away, they can do that without 23andme being involved. If they’re trying to run a match against the DNA they found to look for people to interview / cross match with whatever sample they have, then that’s already a moderate indication that they’re trying to find the actually guilty person.
You should go sit in on court cases before making such claims.
The “experts” often used in court cases are frequently not so expert as the seem. It’s staggering some of the stuff that gets passed off as “evidence”. Like “gun fingerprinting” - “experts”, in court, will claim they can positively connect a case to a gun with extremely high accuracy - if you look into the research, it’s practically useless.
When did you sit in on court cases? What did you observe in terms of the experts and their testimony when you did? Or maybe a better way to ask it is, how many times have you been in court and observed the proceedings?
I have family who are lawyers, I’ve been to court a few times, and I’ve had friends on both sides of the justice system. Not sure why you assume I’m just totally unfamiliar with these things.