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Comment by bryan0 | Hacker News Reader

What’s the use case here? A state wants to find all members of a certain family, so they get DNA from the population and compare against a genealogy database? Seems like there would be more straightforward ways to achieve this?

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They want to find who committed <some crime they just made up that isn't actually bad>, so they identify DNA and compare it against the known database.

This is pretty standard "how will we respond if there is a future authoritian regime"? (not saying the fear is unjustified - just saying the fear is pretty standard)

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Edit:

People are really misunderstanding my comment. Let me try again.

To be clear, this is hypothetical:

The government makes it illegal to support anyone of opposing political party. Which includes, not buying from their store. They go to the restaurant of the opposing party and run a DNA test on all of the silverware. They arrest anyone whose DNA matches the DNA on the silverware - because those people "supported" the opposing party.

I agree bit at the same time I would imagine authoritarian regimes wouldn’t care about the specifics of DNA when they can just use their absolute authority to imprison people.

In this case can’t they just lie then?

If a regime wants to make up a crime and arrest some targets, what difference does it make if there's a genealogy database?

To have evidence to pacify some of those still on the fence about the regime vs out right in favor? The anti-regime will always be anti, but if you can keep those undecideds pacified with attempts at evidence/fair trial, you can make it look like majority in favor

Of course, it's true an evil regime can just accuse random people of crimes and arrest them.

But it's much worse if they manage to identify actual critics, people who actually defied them in some way.

The regime that strikes out randomly, probably that ferments opposition, right? The revolution that eats its young is a lot less scary than the revolution that consistently eats its enemies.

It's not that people misunderstand you, it's just that your made scenario doesn't make much sense on multiple levels. What sort of party has a restaurant or a store, especially when in opposition to an authoritarian regime? What sort of authoritarian regime wouldn't just surveil/round up opposition as thet the usually do?

>What sort of party has a restaurant or a store, especially when in opposition to an authoritarian regime?

Uighurs in China. Communists in America during the McCarthy Era. Muslims in countries where "terrorism" is illegal.

A bunch of people could be doing political activism at some location and be tracked down. Such scenarios don't seem too far fetched and the way these things will be abused in the future will probably be much more perverse, in ways we can't even imagine today.

Philip K. Dick had some ideas:

The End of Genetic Privacy in the Blade Runner Canon - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9731365/

> Such scenarios don't seem too far fetched

They kind of do though.

> A bunch of people could be doing political activism at some location and be tracked down

Considering political activism is usually in groups out in the open, how practical would be to find the people participating via DNA tests (of what? maybe if they spit on the ground?), compared to the already existing and used phone geolocation and face recognition? Yes those can be protected against by not carrying a phone and wearing a mask/balaclava, but one can also take steps not to leave any DNA residue of use.

So I think it's pretty far fetched, and if you're concerned about your government abusing political activists (within reason of course, coup plotters are also technically political activists but not the type one wants to protect) there are better things to do than to focus on one specific impractical avenue of recognition that could lead to abuse.

The major (mis)uses would be faulty forensics where from human mistake, computer error, equipment failure, hash collision, procedural failure, or manufactured evidence. If the law is sane then there is safeguards that require independent proof of evidence beyond that of DNA, but in cases where they are desperate enough to go to genealogy databases there tend to be a major lack of independent evidence beyond of DNA.

If there's a certain racial group that the government wants to get rid of, this would be a large help. See this article about how records of who is Jewish were important to the Nazis[1].

Although I'm not sure how likely this is to be an actual threat we face.

[1] https://jacquesmattheij.com/if-you-have-nothing-to-hide/

The East German Stasi kept thousands of “scent jars” so they could use dogs to track specific citizens. I’m not sure how effective DNA surveillance would be in this tracking role, but one could imagine future improvements in the technology that make it more feasible. https://www.spymuseum.org/exhibition-experiences/about-the-c...

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