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Comment by saagarjha | Hacker News Reader

Getting your DNA sequenced is a bit like letting an app have access to your contacts: in both, your choice has consequences for hundreds of other people. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like it’s possible to undo the effects of something your friends/family might have done :/

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That's a good analogy.

At what point does what we're giving up become worth it to solve all these crimes?

I don't have an answer, I'm just wondering.

Obviously solving 1 or 2 crimes isn't worth giving up so much private information. But 10,000? 100,000? Is there even a number?

Crime is a declining problem in the U.S. and many other areas. Most of the criminals left have poor impulse control and/or are involved in gangs -- not exactly CSI material. Cops on the beat will do a good job without the fancy lab.

For me it was a choice between privacy and not knowing who my distant relatives might be since my father was adopted and never searched for his biological parents.

And what did you choose?

I chose to find out.

It doesn't undo anything, but the solution is to work towards a just society.

What possible concern could you have unless you are a serial killer?

This is data that can't be taken back once the government has it. I wish people would take the concept of the government as adversary more seriously. For example, technology is used as a tool of oppression against Uighurs in Xinjiang, LGBT people in the middle east, malcontents in any number of regimes around the world.

The US is comparatively not so oppressive, but there are still plenty of unjust laws on the books and plenty of vengeful prosecutors out there. Even for those convicted of what one might rightly consider a crime, in the vast majority of those cases the punishments are designed to be more effective at "retribution" than "correction". I think it matters to be vigilant when governments are probing the boundaries of what techniques are acceptable.

>Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like it’s possible to undo the effects of something your friends/family might have done :/

To further your analogy, one could make a comparative to Cambridge Analytica - where your Facebook data could have been harvested through the seemingly innocuous behaviour of your friend(s).

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