That’s not what the comment was driving at. At all. It’s about how data you think is innocent can be used in a manner you never thought about nor intended for dark purposes.

Fair. On the other hand, I'm a bit surprised that anti-immigrant forces in the US haven't made DNA sampling compulsory for new immigrants. The argument would be these would be harder to track down by these techniques, because the ancestry information is not as available, giving them an "unfair" advantage over white Americans.

The US does do DNA collection for anyone it detains whether they end up being granted legal status or not.

They were processing so much DNA that they had to write a special rule allowing border agents to _not_ collect it if it would cause operational difficulties to do so.

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/03/09/2020-04...

I don’t think that fits with how people on this side of the pond think about immigration.

It fits with how some people think about immigration on either side of the pond. That some is close to 50% on the western side of the pond.

I actually had intended to point out the dangers of "scope creep". Everyone is happy with a lot of pretty invasive stuff - dragnet surveillance, targeted surveillance (i.e. bugs placed in a suspect's home/car/computer/phone), DNA and fingerprint mass tests, no-knock raids - in severe crime cases such as terrorism, murder, rape, child sexual exploitation or abduction. So far, so good, and almost all Western countries have such provisions for decades that were introduced under the premise "it's only going to be used for <prior list of severe crimes>".

But in recent years, the scope of said "severe" crimes list has expanded massively, across the Western world, driven by both powerful industry lobbies (such as the copyright cartels) and "concerned citizens" aka authoritarians in disguise... and now you got a DNA investigation for about 4.000€ in damages of broken glass and a ticketing ATM. No matter what: this scope creep is not justifiable.

On top of that comes the risk of "what if our governments and the tools/data they and society (both in the form of individuals and companies) possess fall into the hands of authoritarians". For a long time this risk has been laughed off, but nowadays both the far-right (in Europe and the US) and the far-left (in Southern America) have seriously raised the probability of such a scenario.

Why is DNA investigation supposed to be limited to "severe" crimes? It's just another investigative tool. The idea that it should be limited implies there's something sordid about it. Why should I accept that implication?

An amusing thing here is that the arguments against DNA were also made against the use of photography, back in the 1800s. At some point people have to realize that personal unease is not an argument.

> At some point people have to realize that personal unease is not an argument.

that's not how it works though. if you find enough other people that have the same uneasiness, then you can form groups that get people elected to make rules that forces everyone else to comply with your uneasiness.

It's not an argument that anyone else is obligated to treat at all seriously.

You're uneasy? Boo frickin hoo.

Well, I'm in a state that passes legislation as fast as they can that tries to one up how ridiculously they can legislate away the rights of their population. So as flippant as you might try to be about it, doing nothing but making flippant comments on the internet is how we turn into a society that looks at each other wondering WTF happened. Because those with personal unease have mobilized, and now they're in charge.

> Everyone is happy with a lot of pretty invasive stuff

I beg to differ. The fact we're even having this discussion means not everyone is happy with the situation. Maybe Stockholm Syndrome has kicked in for you, but I'm still resisting

> Everyone is happy with a lot of pretty invasive stuff

could you stop repeating this simple fallacy? Because millions of people could not organize and opt-out of something being commercialized, that also benefits government, in the USA Does Not Equal "everyone is happy"

in fact, lots of people are deeply unhappy.. so the statement "everyone is happy" is not only not true, but actively provoking.

It is not in the power of an unhappy or protesting individual citizen, let along an elderly, impoverished or medically vulnerable person, to stop the rollout of Big Tech Thing.