Kuwait set to enforce DNA testing law on all | Hacker News Reader

Kuwait set to enforce DNA testing law on all

news.kuwaittimes.net

70 pointsprivong47 comments

> will be mandatory on everyone in Kuwait in order to fight crime and terrorism

Anyone else tired of this excuse? Personally, I'm fine with current crime and terrorism. My motorcycle is more dangerous.

Try saying this to someone that disagrees and see how quickly they refuse to agree or except any facts showing given the risks that the level of fear related to terrorism is at the very least irrational.

Crashes are not a proliferating risk. Crashes don't achieve a societal critical mass at which they become extremely worrisome -- nobody watches people getting into a crash and becomes convinced to try it themself.

> nobody watches people getting into a crash and becomes convinced to try it themself.

The disclaimer at the beginning of every episode of Jackass must have been for drama then.

http://images2.fanpop.com/images/photos/2800000/Jackass-Disc...

Unless you live in one of the world's terrorism hotspots or an area with a high crime rate. I suspect neither is common among HN readers.

It's common enough that every time the topic comes up someone new pops up to "explain" how I'm wrong. (See comment below)

> Try saying this to someone that disagrees and see how quickly they refuse to agree or accept any facts

I'm not saying your arguments are wrong or right, but objectively speaking, you've described yourself.

As stated before, I'm happy to engage in a dialogue on the topic, though please be prepared to be both logical and able to present related facts; which to say, no, I'm not describing myself, nor do I see any reasoning presented to back this up.

The response that fear of terrorism is rational can be analyzed two ways, a priori (with intuition based on "justified true beliefs") or a posteriori (empirically, with risk assessment). The size of the risk and other empirical evidence won't effect the opinion of someone using a priori justifications.

An a priori counter argument to supporting the consolidation of state power would be something like the following:

Terrorism is a specific type of crime designed to generate fear and disrupt society. Systemic responses disrupt society and generate fear and so is aligned with the goals of terrorists. Therefore, the only logical response is a targeted one which does not disrupt society or generate undue fear among non-terrorists.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/apriori/#WhaPriKno

What specifically to you feel in the real world based on real events are rational responses?

As an individual, there is not much you can do. I would say support leaders who use empirical feed back as part of their decision making process, but that requires those leaders making themselves an option first which wouldn't help much in the context of Kuwait.

Totally agree. Of course it's easier to tolerate when it's not happening to you.

Our media is responsible for hyperinflating the perceived danger of crime and terrorism. Fear sells more readily than good journalism and it costs far less to produce.

Realistically though, crime and terrorism have nothing to do with it. It's more about consolidating power and maintaining control over the increasingly rebellious populous.

Children, National Security/Terrorism and tough on crime - a politician's three standard reasons for passing any stupid law.

> My motorcycle is more dangerous.

So are police officers which kill about 10x as many people as terrorism (155 vs 17). In their defense bad potatoe salad kills much more than them (death from contaminated food is 110 times than terrorism). http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-terrorism-statistics-every-...

Yes, that's why we could, conceivably, give up a tiny bit of liberty to avoid potato salad deaths, or ten times less liberty to avoid police officer murders, but pretty much no liberty to avoid terrorism.

Also, notice how the first two don't require you to give up freedoms at all.

Preventing terrorism just isn't worth the price we're paying.

> Senior officials told Kuwait Times that the law, the first of its kind in the world, will only be used for criminal security purposes

Will never be used for just criminal security purposes. And even if the intentions are noble - which they are not - doesn't matter because someone else may breach the database.

You don't need breaches, just venality.

No doubt it will be useful for the NSA and GCHQ. I remember seeing in one of the little publicised parts of the Snowden disclosures that African biometric systems were being targeted...No doubt Kuwait is of significant interest to them.

Well, no problem, as long as the definition of "criminality" is expanded to anything the Kuwaiti government wants it to be.

If everyone has their DNA on file, and they are using it for tracking criminals, they are going to run into the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_positive_paradox.

I really wish people would consider this when advocating for widespread dragnet-style searching for criminals. It is one thing to test the DNA of a suspected criminal and compare it to DNA linked to the crime they are accused of, but it is something else to take a DNA sample found and search THE ENTIRE POPULATION for a match.

If they search the entire population then there should be 1000s of matches.

I think they're smart enough not to incarcerate based on DNA alone.

You would think... but the FBI and US Marshals visit this house repeatedly because it shows up as the location for unknown IP addresses (http://fusion.net/story/287592/internet-mapping-glitch-kansa...).

So, even if 1000s of people aren't being incarcerated, I can see those 1000s of people being severely inconvenienced. They could be questioned and harassed, and even if you are completely innocent, it is easy to mess up and accidentally incriminate yourself (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc)

> If they search the entire population then there should be 1000s of matches.

Is that still true?

I recall that in the early days of DNA fingerprinting there would be many people in the world that matched a given sample (although I think it was maybe dozens, not thousands...), but I thought that they were now testing more loci, narrowing it down much much more.

I guess I can rule out visiting Kuwait at any time, for any purpose, ever.

"Why do you have something to hide?" /sarcasm

No, but I do have my privacy to protect. I don't imagine my not visiting Kuwait will have a noticeable effect on Kuwait's economy. But if enough people do the same, especially entrepreneurs and businesspeople, they just might notice.

(Added the sarcasm tag.)

In all seriousness, 100% sure if this law applied to you that this is exactly what someone would say.

I hope they implement this same law in all middle eastern nations.

This is very, very scary for a country where adultery is severely punished.

Even with a cuckolding rate of <1% (1-2% in Belgium [1]), that's a lot of people in a population of 3.5m.

[1] http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1772/2013...

Tricking a man into spending 18 years and a quarter million dollars raising another man's child is deserving of severe punishment IMO.

Another way of resolving this would be mandatory DNA tests of the parents and the child after birth combined with destruction of the data after notifying the parents of the results.

Traditional Islamic societies like that are so rigid that I'd guess their cuckolding rate would be far lower than in western European nations. Women probably have far less opportunity in such a society to meet sex partners than in western societies where the sexes mix and mingle so much.

  When the law (no. 78/2015) is applied, it will be binding on all citizens, expatriates and visitors too.

Wow.

What could possibly go wrong?

So will there be a required DNA sample as part of visa/border entry for visitors and tourists?

How long until something like this is implemented in other places with Kuwait used as "prior art" of successful implementation?

> will there be a required DNA sample as part of visa/border entry for visitors and tourists?

The linked article said yes.

I can't imagine the tourism industry in Kuwait is too big, but if one exists, this is going to kill it dead.

Just sent a message to my sales team that all Kuwait project bids need to take this into account. I will not force my team to accept projects that they are not comfortable taking. The Middle East has some friction for businesses but I imagine this will only add to the discussions.

Given that the database will eventually leak, how useful will it be for scientific research ?

>Q: MoI has promised not to use the test for lineage or genealogical reasons. What are the guarantees it won’t do so?

>This has been confirmed by the law itself.

How reassuring.

I'm not even sure what it means, as the article says that the DNA will be used for paternity tests.

Well branding your domestic migrant workers whose passport you've taken away is a no-no. But this will help return runaways to their masters.

Universal DNA testing in a country like Kuwait is transparently oppressive.

>> "A Kuwaiti security delegation had earlier visited Washington to study DNA testing systems there."

^^ Wow.

I wonder what prompted this. Did some minister just read some article about DNA fingerprinting in a magazine and decide that it would be really useful to have everyone's DNA on file?

Politicians around the world:

"Hey, now THAT sounds like a great idea. Can we get some draft legislation drawn up? I know it won't go through the senate first time, but we'll just keep trying and in ten years we'll get it."

giving the nature of those societies, one can see how many people who possess their status in the society and government because of long and respected "[al|ibn]+" in their names will have that status threatened by some mid-level agent in some security related service with access to the DNA db ... until of course they would cooperate fully in fight to defend Motherland against internal and external enemies.

How long before they start making clones of people they don't like for easy drop-in replacement?

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