What if someone in your family has done a crime, and the result of your DNA being online is (1) you are the first suspect and (2) the criminal might well learn/suspect that they have been compromised through you?

Isn't it better for society as a whole if criminals are apprehended?

Even moreso if they're one that would be a physical threat like you're suggesting?

Mustyosi, your DNA was found on a coffee cup at a Denny’s frequented by terrorists destroying Tesla property. Where were you on Tuesday at 2?

“Zoom and enhance” forensics aren’t real right? Isn’t it mostly NSA listens in and then they have to parallel construct something to hide the illegal pervasive surveillance?

Pretty much all of forensics isn't real. Blood splatter analysis, polygraphs, fingerprinting. That doesn't mean it doesn't put people in jail.

What, specifically, are you claiming is “not real” about fingerprinting?

There's a common belief that fingerprint analysis is objective and reliable, but there's a great deal of subjectivity involved. Additionally, there have been several convictions involving fingerprints as evidence which were eventually overturned.

While they may still be useful, they have an image of infallibility that doesn't line up with reality.

  Their use as evidence has been challenged by academics, judges and the 
  media. There are no uniform standards for point-counting methods, and 
  academics have argued that the error rate in matching fingerprints has 
  not been adequately studied and that fingerprint evidence has no secure 
  statistical foundation. Research has been conducted into whether experts 
  can objectively focus on feature information in fingerprints without 
  being misled by extraneous information, such as context.
  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerprint

Spooky23, the atoms in your heart all quantum tunneled out of your body causing your untimely death. Why didn't you install a backup heart?

There are many instances of people being questioned, harassed, and even framed based on circumstantial evidence. Western judicial systems are specifically engineered to address these problems via the process of discovery and adversarial argument. There has never been any documented instance of a death being caused by quantum tunnelling.

Yes, assuming the label of who is a “criminal” is fair.

There is always the risk of a society or government changing that definition after they have the data and it’s too late to go back.

Depends on the crime. They aren't exactly fungible acts. Furthermore the state isn't exactly obligated to manage society, even if this has occurred in various forms throughout history. Many of our laws weren't exactly written with "society's" best interest at heart. Ultimately, the state will look after itself above all else.

I'm just saying I'd like the state to have to work hard to put people away. The law can just as easily be wielded to harm people. I don't see much sign the american public agrees with me, and politicians certainly don't agree. Even mr "it's a witch hunt" trump is only anti-LEO when it comes to his own crimes. But I'd rather have some low background level of crime than the sinking feeling that we're imprisoning a lot of innocent people, as unpopular a sentiment it might be to some in this country.

Besides, if the government doesn't take care of society, higher crime is inevitable.

I think your example highlights why most people don't view these as plausible concerns:

1. If I had a family member who was a serial murderer or rapist a la the Golden State Killer, I would want him apprehended.

2. "the criminal might well learn/suspect that they have been compromised through you?" That doesn't seem reasonably plausible enough to me to care. What, cousin Billy Bob is going to come hold me hostage because he knows I used 23 and me at some point? Really??

> 1. If I had a family member who was a serial murderer or rapist a la the Golden State Killer, I would want him apprehended.

But you are apprehended instead and are responsible for now coming up with an alibi.

That is not how dna evidence works in my understanding. They would know if you are a partial match or a complete match.

Very unlikely things can happen, sure, but they can just as well be positive:

What if an unknown biological relative of mine happens to be a billionaire and gifts me $10M like he does for all his other relatives?

> The "worst case scenarios", e.g. getting health insurance denied because you have some gene, still seem implausible to me.

We're halfway there, data mining by insurances already is the norm in car insurance. We should have fought back hard back in the day this was proposed.

> I haven't murdered anyone, so I'm not worried about getting caught up in a DNA dragnet. Sure, there can be false positives, but to get on in life you pretty much have to ignore events with low statistical probability

Even if you haven't murdered anyone or intend to to so - your genetic data is useful in the pig dragnet. Your genetic data may be what provides the pigs with a link to your nephew who moonlights as a graffiti sprayer... and yes, the German pigs are doing DNA checks on graffiti sprayers, they have been doing so for over two decades [1].

[1] https://www.welt.de/print-welt/article398332/Graffiti-Erstma...

Just a suggestion: if your goal is to convince the average Joe why DNA privacy is a concern, and you solely refer to the police multiple times as "pigs", you're not going to persuade many people.

Here in the US, everyone hates cops. I legitimately have never personally met someone who likes the police. I'm sure they exist, maybe they have family in the police or something, but I've never met them.

All that is to say, it's not a "hot" take to shit on the police. In fact it's a pretty popular one. Just turn on the radio or the TV.

> Here in the US, everyone hates cops.

If you honestly believe that, you live in an echo chamber on this topic. This Gallup poll from 2024 reported a majority of Americans have either "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in the police: https://news.gallup.com/poll/647303/confidence-institutions-...

51% isn't exactly a glowing review.

51 is a heck of a lot greater than zero though, which 'hn_throwaway_99' asserted.

There is a chart at the bottom of the article I linked that ranks different institutions about which people were all asked the same question "How much confidence you you have in institution X". Note if you include the "some" answer, the "generally positive responses" tally rises to 83%, with only 17% saying "very little" or "none".

But more importantly, the police were the 3rd highest rated institution, behind "small business" and "the military". They ranked above "higher education", "the church or organized religion", "public schools", "organized labor", "banks" and "newspapers".

Having confidence in the polices ability to be police doesn't mean you like cops. I'm confident that police are quite good at their jobs, because we don't measure "good" by how little people get hurt or killed in the act of policing.

> everyone hates cops. I legitimately have never personally met someone who likes the police. ... maybe they have family in the police or something

I know a couple people in different police forces. From what I have been able to tell they are like myself and the other people I tend to be around. Mostly decent people trying their best to be good humans for themselves and society.

People don't hate cops, they hate the things that happen when corrupted people make it into the job and do corrupted things because of the power that job wields. Or when they are or have been caught breaking the law by cops who are doing their job to enforce the law.

I have never heard of anyone hating cops for showing up to help when their assistance was needed.

Agree but even though they feel this way, there are institutional forces at work.

> [...] Mostly decent people trying their best to be good humans for themselves and society.

What do you think would be an honest answer to "how many times have you let another police officer off the hook for something that a civilian would have been arrested/given a ticket for"? Like - how many times per year? How severe are the violations?

Considering the small-ish/mid-size forces they are on, I am not sure they would be in that position. They are uniformed and the two that I know better than the other one are female. Most stories they tell that have any "excitement" are of dead bodies, accidents & natural causes mostly, that they respond to reports of--which tbh was a shock to learn about how often/how many dead people they see.

[added] I don't disagree that there are institutional forces at work and that does happen. At the same time, when it is very obviously illegal that ruins others; if they cover that up, that puts them in the corrupted people category for me. The individuals not the entirety of the force

> I have never heard of anyone hating cops for showing up to help when their assistance was needed.

Oh, the naivety. It's hard to hear someone hating cops who showed up to help after the cops who showed up to help shot them in the face to death. For example.

"If you have a problem, and call the cops, now you have two problems".

That would go under the corrupted people make it into the job and do corrupted things because of the power that job wields.

Also, if you re-read that quote, it states "showing up to help". If they shoot you in the face they didn't show up to help did they?

IAAL. If you’re in the US, you may have noticed the explosion in plaintiff attorney advertising over the last 15 years. Do you want to sue: the other driver, Monsanto, the Boy Scouts, 3M, the Catholic Church, Aesbestos manufacturers, etc. Notice that you never see ads for suing for police misconduct? It’s because it’s such an anomaly that it would be a waste of money.

It’s one of those things that’s upsetting, so our brains exaggerate the actual relevance.

https://www.youtube.com/@thecivilrightslawyer ;

the Institute for Justice ;

etc.

Just because you've never seen it advertised doesn't mean it isn't happening. And there's 3300 counties in the US, and fifty state police entities, plus however many municipalities with police forces. Also, if you AAL, "qualified immunity" makes it difficult to "go after" individual police, so most suits are filed against the city and the department for having "bad policy" - because proving civil rights violations is quite difficult, even if it seems like a cut and dry case.

I get calls everyday about suing everybody: employers, gas stations, doctors, dentists, teachers, banks, landlords, etc. Cop calls are rare.

A couple of times in my first five years or so, someone called and had a story that sounded plausible, and I got the video - either from the car or the venue. After watching them, I basically stopped taking those calls.

I've been to countries where indeed most people hate law enforcement, which is widely known to be corrupt and inefficient.

The US cops are paragons of professionalism and courtesy compared to that, and most people in the US, like, don't mind with cops, compared to those places. (This is with all the known non-ideal performance of the US cops.)

If the pigs don't want to be referred to as pigs any more, they should push their unions to fight for yeeting the bad apples out of the force for good instead of just hiring those who behaved so utterly braindead that IA had no choice but to yeet them in the next town.

At the moment pigs can break the law and abuse their authority any way they please with barely any chance of getting even a slap on the wrist - and even if they kill someone, chances are high they'll either get off entirely on "reasonable fear" or they'll get pardoned.

Sure, but the audience for 'being aware of DNA privacy' is not the police, but normal citizens, particularly a good number of people who, despite the abuse, are a general good in society.

You're free to call the police whatever you want. But that's not what my comment was about.

Again, if your goal is to convince people (or at least have a constructive dialogue) why they should care about genetic privacy, all you have done for your average person is convince them even more that your opinion should be discounted.