Cool cool cool. So can jobs (say schools), some of which require fingerprinting now, require a DNA sample too?
Think of the children this might save from vile criminals! And think of the control this would gives employers over the health and genetic make-up of their prospective employees!
You missed my point (which I admittedly didn’t make well). Because DNA is so ubiquitous, policy and regulation is the only way to provide safeguards (and there are already laws regulating the use of DNA for health insurance issuance). Rape victims, without exception, should not be dissuaded from coming forward out of fear of future crimes (speaking specially of this instance), but DNA databases and collection are still a useful tool for crime solving. It should be regulated, but still permitted, while ensuring victims are not disenfranchised or harmed in the process (when dna collection occurs as part of their own crime investigations).
The genie is already out of the bottle wrt DNA, so governance and oversight are all that’s left to ensure it’s not wielded improperly (in a very similar, but not quite the same way, as photographs in public).
(my dna has been genotyped by all major commercial providers, and is also public as part of Harvard’s personal genome project)
I see, thanks for clarifying. I don't agree that the genie is out of the bottle, but regardless, yes strict regulation of and siloing of biometric databases would be welcome.
The problem is it's not a great look to be "against catching the bad guys." If I provide the literal essence of my being for some medical or ancestral purpose, it should be used for that purpose only, full stop—no exceptions, which means some kind of cryptographic enforcement.
If the police need a suspect's DNA, they can collect it by hand, with a warrant. And it should be thrown out when the suspect is cleared of charges (and maybe even post-prison release).
On the employer side, given how they love pseudoscientific personality tests, it's not hard to imagine an HR product correlating DNA with worker traits:
"This employee shares 99.9998% DNA with a cluster of criminals convicted of wire fraud. Upgrade to see evidence-backed pre-crime intervention recommendations."
I think the salient point is that the genie can still come further out of the bottle and be even more difficult to control with regulations if not halted or controlled with
Regulation now.
Some genes will be considered a security risk or a health hazard for one reason or another, and CRISPR will be available as a tool for modification. In 10, 20, 30 years people who don't want to be treated may have to settle for a limited range of jobs.
This point is wrong in relation to the story. They have some unknown DNA, and certainly they can go and stake out peoples houses and see it they throw out a cigarette but or however you get it. This seems reasonable, and if they are grabbing DNA off something a person threw away, they arguably wouldn't even need a warrant.
But if instead they run their unknown DNA though a database of rape victims to see if any of them was the criminal, they're not "just taking a sample", they are invading the privacy of vulnerable women on the off chance one of them is a criminal. And they are obviously deterring people from reporting future crimes in which they have to give their DNA. I don't believe I need to belabor this, the case in the story had nothing to do with how easy it might be to collect DNA from someone you've already identified
Think of the children this might save from vile criminals! And think of the control this would gives employers over the health and genetic make-up of their prospective employees!
There Is No Gene For The Human Spirit.