Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/02/21/china-uses-dna-to-spy-on-peopl.html
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Jeez, I wish China would stop making the USA look bad.
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This Uighur stuff is going to be as bad as/worse than Tibet in the long run. China is trying to slowly and methodically and deliberately remove all traces of Uighur/Muslim culture there. It will not stop, any more than it ever has in Tibet.
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If expecting any Government to commit to “acting within scientific norms” is our safety net, then I reckon we’re all screwed. The minute a Government recognizes a benefit in using these technologies they’ll be onto it like a seagull on to a hot chip (french fry).
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Yep. Defence, Pornography, Organised Crime, Government, Finance - the list and order of industries as early adopters (seagulls on chips) of information technologies.
(ETA “Organised” to Crime. There is, of course much crime in the other four noted.)
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The first step towards a complete ethnic cleansing
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Maybe Thermo Fisher can use some internet-of-shit capacity they’ve probably larded their sequencing machines with to brick them all.
Would be the first decent use of IoS ever.
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I was reading about the abusive practices of US police forces with regard to new DNA scanners*. That’s bad enough - I hadn’t even considered what an authoritarian regime like China would do with them. (And how it might play out in combination with facial recognition, citizen scores, etc.) I can’t even begin to imagine what China’s authoritarian surveillance state will be like in 20, 30, 50 years. Assuming it survives that long. (Though one wonders if the surveillance state becomes self-reinforcing and ultimately indestructible as it goes so far beyond anything that’s ever existed before.)
*So it turns out that giving automated DNA scanners, that require no expertise, to cops, who have no training or knowledge, is a very bad idea. In the US there are two problems. One is that they’re using them correctly, to get DNA profiles from arrestees, but abusively - picking people up in order to get their DNA (i.e. targeting minorities), and then putting the DNA in unregulated, poorly run, highly questionable databases. The second is that they’re grossly misusing the machines by putting in crime scene samples. They aren’t designed for that, they frequently destroy the evidence and their results, especially with mixed-DNA samples, are totally worthless in that context. But that resulting “evidence” is still treated by ignorant cops (and the criminal justice system at large) as if it were meaningful, resulting in bad arrests and convictions.
And all that is unorganized, largely inept, piecemeal abuses. China’s actions are organized, competent (relatively) and widespread. But I can see why companies that found the US market acceptable wouldn’t have a problem selling to China.
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A whole bunch of tweets posted like this is fucking annoying.
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Ditto, seconded. Reading like this feels like my brain is being chopped up and forced to understand 10 different people at once in 3 second blurbs rather than listening to one person for 30 seconds.
It is really really fucking annoying
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On the bright side, Thermo Fisher can kiss their IP goodbye.
USA Vice President Pence at the Munich Security Conference 2019:
The time has come from our European partners to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal and join us as we bring the economic and diplomatic pressure necessary to give the Iranian people, the region, and the world the peace, security, and freedom they deserve.
Nice to see US-American freedom in action here.
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