7 ms·
No, not really. There's no practical way to protect our genomes in meatspace. We're constantly shedding DNA into the environment. Hair, skin, saliva, etc. For
by mirimir 6y ago
No, not really.
There's no practical way to protect our genomes in meatspace. We're constantly shedding DNA into the environment. Hair, skin, saliva, etc. For example, an adversary can just tail us to a coffee shop or restaurant, and take a utensil or straw or napkin that we've used. And then submit the sample using a fake name, as investigators often do.
Edit: Those are excellent comments about scale. But generally, if you don't want to publicize your genomic data, just don't send in a sample.
- dave5104 6y agoThat's a lot more work, and requires far more dedication and resources, than just picking up the data from a dump on the black market.
- clusterfish 6y agoBut you can't do that to a million people, only to individual targets. Economic scale matters in a lot of evil plots.
- oh_sigh 6y agoWhat could you do to a million or a billion people that would make life a nightmare for them if their biometric data was stolen en masse?
- bkanber 6y agoMy concern is not what can be done today, but rather in 15 years.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- victor9000 6y agoDiscriminate against them based on medical conditions, persecute them based on "impurities" (think Hitler & Jews or China & Uyghurs), make them targets of fishing expeditions for unsolved crimes, etc.
- ComodoHacker 6y agoJust wait until these fancy "smart" coffee cups with built-in nano-labs become ubiquitous.
- mirimir 6y agoBefore that happens, I'm guessing that full DNA sequencing at birth will be a legal requirement. Like footprints are now.
- alcover 6y agoHolly... You're right. This will happen. To an over-arching state this is the ultimate modus. INSERT INTO Citizen(dob,ssn) VALUES 2030-10-28, sha(atgcaatgcatcgc..)
- kzrdude 6y agohashing (sha) is not very appropriate since you're not likely to ever reproduce exactly the same base pair sequence for the same person.
- a_bonobo 6y agoIf we have nano-labs then we can also have nano-obfuscation-labs to protect our privacy - randomly mutate or CRISPR any DNA we shed
- Krasnol 6y agoIt could become very interesting for a fascist state.