Something like this would be consistent with Brin's 'transparent society'. Though I wouldn't favor the creation of such a database, if it were done I'd sooner have its contents non-anonymized, available to everyone, online and for free, than limit it in the way you describe. Selective access to the information just means more levers for the corrupt.

Wow, this would be symbolic, the ultimate token of trust & faith in authority & government. To be, the gov needs to police big business, not individuals. But according to a BBC report i heard recently, it really works the other way, with white collar crimes by big business taken less seriously than some kid smoking a marijuana blunt in the street. Crook-crony polititians & businessmen(sometimes the same people) obviously have one another's backs. But neither polititians or businessmen have the back of the kid smoking a joint in the street. IIRC, there's even what is called a prison industrial complex here in the U.S., where crime means profit for some. DNA database, in a corporocracy?

Lets see how long before the sheep agree to something like this.

I.]If there is selective access, the currupt will delight in that.

II.] If the database were non-anonymized & access-free to public, what are the possible consequences, unfavorable if any?
I can imagine that any mischief made this way would have to be the work of high-IQ techies.

I’m favor of such a database. I’d lean toward making it available to the public and allow anyone to use it to identify biological traces. Then it could be used for biometric identification.

How long this method would be reliable for identification? Would the database be hacked? How easy would it be to copy someone’s DNA signature? How easy to plant evident to frame the innocent? It is not a 100% solution but it is better than anything in use today.

I’m in favor of apprehending the guilty and freeing the innocent. I’d also support advanced lie detection technology when it becomes reliable. A predator fraction makes the world much worse for the rest of us. I’d like to apprehend them sooner.

How SPECIFICALLY could the government misuse this database? (I not looking for generalities such as the government will target individuals or that crooked politicians will be crooks or big business is bad.) Perhaps public oversight could protect against abuse. (I don't believe in trusting government, politicians, or businessmen. I believe in setting up oversight and auditing systems to catch the people who abuse the system.)

This is already an issue in the UK where the national database is huge - millions of samples - and covers a large proportion of young males, who are the most likely crime suspects. The problem is that the samples are often given for a specific purpose and then retained permanently, even though the donor may not have been convicted of any crime.

* the possibility of two individuals having the same profile can be known empirically

This can be stated much more strongly:

* The number of individuals with the same profile can be known empirically.

The big problem with DNA testing, to my mind, is that people don't understand that the possibility of human error is much greater than the probabilities given for false matches.

David Boxenhorn, yeah, that's what I meant.

All, getting the DNA profile of a known individual is trival -- go through their trash, or touch them with a piece of celophane tape while you pass on the street. There are probably, however, unique concerns to having the ability to reverse match a DNA profile to an unkonwn individual. For example, DNA samples collected at locations that impilcate an individual in a lawful but unseemly activity could be sampled in order to blackmail/persecute/etc people.

destroy the samples after the profile is created.

!!!

but imagine, in 50 years, when sequencing a genome costs a buck fifty...imagine all the information you're throwing away!

I'm certainly sensitive to the civil liberty concerns, but the scientist part of me has no scruples...imagine being able to watch the micoevolution of a population as it happens, or perform genetic epidemiology on a huge scale-- you see certain populations in new jersey have a higher rate of prostate cancer, so you check the database for alleles that are more frequent there; you take a look at the patterns of migration and assortative mating in chicago, etc. etc....

you've seen what decode did with the biobank information in Iceland; there's huge scientific potential there...

of course, I'd be hugely suspicious of this database, and I doubt anything like it ever happens in the us.

Along with its genealogy database covering the entire present day population and stretching back to the founding of the country more than 1000 years ago, deCODE has gathered genotypic and medical data from more than 100,000 volunteer participants in our gene research in Iceland - over half of the adult population.

from
http://www.decode.com/Population...on- Approach.php

so they aren't that far from what you're advocating. though in this case, it's not being used for the purposes you describe.

How SPECIFICALLY could the government misuse this database?

It would make jailing drug users easier, for example (find used crack pipe, get DNA, ID and jail user). Of course not everyone agrees that this is bad, and I could find some more contrived examples that would be more universally objectionable if that were my aim. But the main point I'm trying to make is that you seem to assume that government as such is always going to be acting for the good, absent some inevitable deviations or flaws, while I assume that government is a necessary evil and that increasing its power in any way is dangerous. The drug war is one example of evil government at work. Why should I favor the creation of a database that seems likely to result in more efficient prosecution of it?

More generally, one of the dangers facing humanity is that an invincible totalitarian state will emerge before we can achieve other transhuman advancements that would (hopefully) make such a thing impossible. Inasfar as new surveillance and information technologies make such a thing easier, I don't think promoting government adoption of them is wise. It's not as if law and order is at low levels by historical standards.

Bbartlog: “But the main point I'm trying to make is that you seem to assume that government as such is always going to be acting for the good, absent some inevitable deviations or flaws, while I assume that government is a necessary evil and that increasing its power in any way is dangerous.”

Yes. I also believe that technology that makes it easier to detect crimes and abuse will push government, politicians, and businessmen to clean up their act. I don’t see government as a single, unified dangerous entity. Democrats will go after Republicans and vice versa. The press will go after politicians and businessmen. Bloggers will go after the press. I want better technology to make the process more effective.

I believe that advanced technology will make predators much more dangerous. A neighborhood gang could blackmail an entire city. I trust government with its checks and balances and public oversight far more than I trust terrorists, gangs, and psychopaths.

I don’t want government managing my life, but I do believe that government bears the primary responsibilty for enforcing law.

I trust government with its checks and balances and public oversight far more than I trust terrorists, gangs, and psychopaths.

It doesn't take more than a glance at 20th century history to realize that:

- government is not automatically some separate category from 'terrorists, gangs, and psychopaths', and
- government has killed vastly more people than all of the non-government terrorists, gangs and psychopaths combined

In any case I am not advocating anarchocapitalism, merely pointing out that the current level of law enforcement capability has already reduced crime to a low level.

Out of curiosity, how would a gang blackmail a whole city? I can think of some scenarios but I wonder what you have in mind...

"It doesn't take more than a glance at 20th century history to realize that:

- government is not automatically some separate category from 'terrorists, gangs, and psychopaths', and
- government has killed vastly more people than all of the non-government terrorists, gangs and psychopaths combined"

I agree. I don't equate today's US government with Mao's regime, Stalin's regime, Hitler's regime, etc. Nor with past city governments such as gangster controlled Chicago.

I don't believe the US is presently in danger of becoming a totalitarian state. I don't believe that a DNA database or a universal ID would lead to totalitarianism. (Though I'm willing to listen if someone can demostrate how that is likely to occur.)


"how would a gang blackmail a whole city?"

Some people are ruthless and quite willing to hurt large numbers of other people to achieve their desires. I believe gangs are that ruthless and have the motivation. They only lack the means. (The recent news from Bazil gives me pause.)

Within two decades I believe it will be easy to bio-engineer a pathogen that could devastate a city. Within three decades nanotechnology could allow small groups to manufacture nuclear weapons. Advanced technology empowers small groups and individuals to do great harm.

Society will have to adjust to these new "small group" threats.

I don't believe that a DNA database or a universal ID would lead to totalitarianism.

No, that's true. Other events would have to occur. But they would be part of the toolset that a totalitarian regime could use to strengthen their hold. So I'd like to see some major benefit from adopting them, not just more efficient prosecution of rapists or a 5% drop in violent crime. The argument is sort of Descartian in its outline - I'm weighing a small chance of something almost infinitely bad happening (unrecoverable totalitarian world government) versus what seems to me a relatively pedestrian benefit.
Anyway, you haven't explained how the DNA database would help reduce any of the small group threats you listed. WMD manufacture and blackmail strike me as crimes where a DNA database is likely to be irrelevant. Or are you outlining a more general argument for a transparent society?

"The press will go after politicians and businessmen"

I suspect that the press is run, controlled, or heavily influenced by these same politicians & businessmen.

I doubt that a certain publication would employ some journalist whose views ran contrarian to the general views of the publication. Businessmen with big business motivations stand to lose if they employ journalists whose views run contrary to theirs, & whose exposure of certain things the periodical company doesn't want known about would stand to hurt businessmen & loyal readership interests alike, i think.

I've always wondered: how do you police policemen, police the officials who police policemen, ad infinitum, & so on. Goverment can't be trusted, period. No government, of any sort. Checks & balances my ass. The pres & pentagon do as they want.

"Within three decades nanotechnology could allow small groups to manufacture nuclear weapons"

If that be the case, i think the whole DNA database issue would be the least of our problems.

If this possibility does become a reality, we're all doomed, period. Also nano-bio-weapons. There goes the human race.

the utility of criminal DNA databases makes their continued existence a near certainty. what's up for debate is who should be included and how the data can be accessed. making inclusion universal "solves" the first problem in that it is no longer possible to claim that inclusion is in some way "discriminatory" (evil word right). access would be a remaining problem. this is similar to the NSA phone # database issue. if it were only going to be used by the NSA for national defense, then it wouldn't be an issue. but it doesn't take much to go from the 'war on terror' to the 'war on drugs' as a reasonable target. that's why i endorsed anonymity that can only be unlocked by a judge as a necessary access control. perhaps simple verification that a profile and a name match would be something that could be made publically accessible.

JP, i know, i know...

i had to take my scientist hat off to write that, but if you really want to protect privacy, you've got to destroy the samples. if you don't destroy the samples, someone is definitely going to sequence them at some point in the future.

i've spent some time trying to figure out if the u.s. military retains DNA samples from everyone. combined with AFQT scores, that would be an awesome dataset.

Bbartlog: “WMD manufacture and blackmail strike me as crimes where a DNA database is likely to be irrelevant. Or are you outlining a more general argument for a transparent society?"

Yes. I’m viewing the DNA database as one useful tool that will be needed along with many others in order to continue a relatively safe, free, liberal society in the face of increasing threats by small groups. Having a “transparent society” might prevent a secret organization controlled by powerful individuals from monopolizing the same methods covertly.

Anonymous = Fly.