I’m worried about getting deported to Saudi Arabia (never been) because I drank alcohol in my home country, but happen to stopover in a country that yields to large cash payments to enforce its extra-territorial laws.

I ask because it would help us gauge how worried you are.

All based on one crude comparison between countries. But you don't see the USA arresting too many people for violating other country's laws.

Anywho, even if I think I know I'm safe, a billionaire CFO with far more legal resources than I could dream of has been wrong.

Or you can't get a job because you're closely related to a felon.

Or a loan because you are closely related to someone who filed for bankruptcy.

I could go on. There's more "ors" here than on a viking raiding ship.

If there's a real link between genetics and bankruptcy, maybe we should figure that shit out (with the idea of doing pleasant, voluntary, educational interventions). If there isn't and banks use the info anyway, someone will make a good business out of ignoring the information.

Which isn't to say I approve of the privacy destroying business model these companies are trying to establish.

And is it true that homosexuality is banned throughout the east?

What’s the word for when you are ignorant of something your whole life and then you get enlightened and then immediately feel entitled to point out how much better you are than everyone else who is still ignorant? I feel like that’s what you’re doing here.

(To be clear, I have no problem with your point about homosexuality laws. I’m just objecting to your notion of what’s eastern and western. Seems like a lot of people think western=quintessential liberalism, eastern=Saudi Arabia, which is just xenophobic nonsense)

There's a fair amount of historical and current laws that have arguably zero moral good; Homophobic, Segregationist, etc.. all around the world.

But alas, There's you cheerily pointing out anyone you can help identify because, it's the law after all.

Just imagine if we had the technology to identify that through DNA samples.

My ancestors came to the USA after the Civil War, so _I_ have no real stake in this, but I married into a family from the midwest/south who has been in the US for many generations and I'm regularly floored when I hear people make claims about how the Civil War was actually about states' rights (to own human beings ...) and such. It seems like these people are still mostly concerned with trying to save face, as opposed to admitting that their forbears _royally_ screwed up and trying to learn and adapt from the episode.

https://theconversation.com/fingerprinting-to-solve-crimes-n...

Should law enforcement be prohibited from fingerprinting objects found at crime scenes?

Fingerprints lack scientific basis for legal certainty More research into validity of fingerprint comparisons needed Date: October 5, 2017 Source: Carnegie Mellon University Summary: A new report on the quality of latent fingerprint analysis says that courtroom testimony and reports stating or even implying that fingerprints collected from a crime scene belong to a single person are indefensible and lack scientific foundation.

http://theconversation.com/fingerprinting-to-solve-crimes-no...

Fingerprinting to solve crimes: not as robust as you think

https://californiainnocenceproject.org/issues-we-face/finger...

The main problem with fingerprint analysis is one consistent with many other areas of forensic science: subjectivity. Instead of relying on tested scientific methods, the process is mostly based on the subjective beliefs of the analyst... Despite this subjectivity, fingerprint analysts also typically testify in terms of absolute certainty.

https://issues.org/mnookin/

Fingerprints: Not a Gold Standard

So to answer your question: Should law enforcement be prohibited from fingerprinting objects found at crime scenes?

You tell me.

Then there is the issue of transference. Person x dna found on housemate y's underwear... rape or shared washing machine?

As was seen on HN[1], consumer DNA tests are also inaccurate. In fact, up to 40% of gene variants on consumer DNA tests are false positives[2]. False positives happen with criminal investigations and DNA testing[3]. And now, consumer DNA databases are generating false positives[4] that upend and potentially ruin innocent people's lives.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18938750

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/gim201838

[3] https://gizmodo.com/when-bad-dna-tests-lead-to-false-convict...

[4] https://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/article_1b3a3f9...

DNA tests are inaccurate.

Witness statements are inaccurate.

Confessions are inaccurate.

Thanks to deepfakes, video is inaccurate.

Someone steals your car, eyewitnesses claim they saw them in possession of it, their fingerprints are in it, their hair is in it, a gas station security camera recorded them in it, cops found them in it, and they confessed.

"Your honor that evidence is, in order, a stress-induced misrecognition, a flawed analysis, pseudoscience, tampered with, a setup, and coerced."

What remains?

(a) Discrimination Based on Genetic Information.--It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer--

(1) to fail or refuse to hire, or to discharge, any employee, or otherwise to discriminate against any employee with respect to the compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment of the employee, because of genetic information with respect to the employee; or

(2) to limit, segregate, or classify the employees of the employer in any way that would deprive or tend to deprive any employee of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect the status of the employee as an employee, because of genetic information with respect to the employee.

https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/gina.cfm

No.

In the US, it is currently illegal for genetic information to be used as a qualification for employment.

Your DNA never changes. Once it's on record it's on record. This isn't like prohibition where as long as you quit before the law comes into effect you are safe.

If there is ever a future time you can be punished for your DNA, the only people who can possibly be 'grandfathered' in are the ones who've avoided submitting their DNA in the first place. Everyone else can be punished after the fact.

I don't support the point of view of the GP but in all fairness, if we come to the society where DNA is used for widespread discrimination, it will probably be semi-voluntarily collected from the majority of the citizens anyway (e.g. want to have a driver's license? submit the DNA)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO_x-po_Nsc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWw4V6GTyKw

Your putting the onus on me to prove that it was explicitly the results of my test that caused me not to be hired.

Best of luck.

This entire post read as if there's not dirty cops all over the US doing asset forfeiture, planting evidence, shooting innocents, raiding the wrong houses...why does anyone believe that giving those agents ANOTHER tool, and one that's seen in the general public as even more legitimate? (It's not the accuracy of the DNA match that's the problem, it's how easy it is to create false circumstances using someone's DNA, which is pretty easy to get.)

And all of this in a time when most of those same people (myself included) are decrying how horrible the federal government has recently become under Trump. Again, you want to give Trump and the people in his administration another tool for muddying the waters around his opponents?

Going even further, any of these genealogy companies could pull a full-on Cambridge Analytics like Facebook and just leak all our DNA to some private company operating on behalf of a foreign government.

Police don't really need to plant evidence when they are believed over defendants to begin with. Go listen to the latest season of the Series podcast. Or the Reply All episodes about the police in NYC.

If a corrupt cop wants to take you down, they don't need any of this.

That has been a crime in many places at various times in the past. The non-existence of a DNA database did nothing to prevent the existence of totalitarian governments, and would likely do nothing to promote them.

That's the thing about totalitarians. They don't care about the facts, if they want to get you they'll get you regardless of what the DNA says, in its absence they'll just come up with something else like the bumps found on your skull or distance between your eyes or the volume at which your voice has been measured praising the leader.

Why would a totalitarian system rely on DNA evidence when they can just go "our local comrade commissar has decreed that you are guilty and thus you are" and in regimes where there has to at least be a semblance of a show trial, they would just make up or cover up DNA-related findings to suit their whims.

Saying that DNA is dangerous because it may be used against someone in the future in some hypothetical situation is like saying "a list of person's names MUST NEVER be compiled because in the future a totalitarian leader may decide he doesn't like anyone whose name ends in a -ez or -stein."