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Walk-By DNA Testing 153

Posted by Hemos from the scary-stuff dept.
Scott_Marks writes "The New York Times today has an article on a newly-patented device which may make it practical to perform DNA testing (or drug testing, or explosives testing) on anyone walking underneath. This "portal" sucks up some of the millions of skin flakes each of us sheds each day and whips them into your choice of privacy-invading analysis equipment "for detecting the presence of molecules of interest"."
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Walk-by DNA Testing More

Walk-by DNA Testing

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  • A couple of years ago when I chanced to be in London I went to visit the Houses of Parliament. On my way in I went through a metal detector -- standard stuff -- and then I had to stand for several seconds in an enclosed booth (think phone booth) while some electronics were sniffing at me. The point was to check for molecules of explosives (IRA was more pesky in those days).

    Of course, I had to stand still in a small enclosed space... If similar techology is made to work for people just passing through, this is much more scary. I hesitate to call this progress.

    Kaa
  • its the same time as a metal detector. its a couple of seconds (read the article). deodrants/perfumes etc wont have an effect on the system..skin flakes are particles which can be easily seperated from odours. it doesnt distinguish smells - it has an ion detector system which bombards the residue with ions and base don that it can distinguish chemicals such as drugs or alcohol or even analyse DNA.
  • First, of course this the drug war zealot's wet dream. Just install these machines everywhere, catch all who went past a joint-smoking guy, and solve the drug problem by transfering the majority of the population to prison.

    Second, the point about fast DNA sequencing is not really relevant. This device could be used to collect DNA cheaply and invisibly (probably cross-indexed with video images of people passing through). Once you've done the collection, you can do the analysis at your leisure later.

    Kaa
  • Randomly sampling people as they walk by is no better than randomly searching peoples houses.

    It is not the same thing. Everyone who walked by the device would be sampled, not a random sampling. The article states:

    ...it can sample molecules around every passenger in an airport without singling out individuals according to race or other characteristics. The system makes it practical to inspect everyone, he says, instead of selecting only a random number of travelers

    There are already metal detectors that people have to walk through at airports and courthouses. Are those illegal? No. This new device would provide an even better security aid without singling out random people for extended searches. It is a small violation of privacy that is necessary for the safety of everyone.

  • Hey, this should like a great idea. I have no problems at all with corporations scanning people for drug use, as long as they actualy follow up on the usage and have the police arrest the known users (read: they would have to verify their results first.)

    As for the DNA scanner, it couldn't actualy impede free speach, we could still say or do whatever we wanted to (within the bounds of the law of course.) but if somebody decided to rob a bank or such, the police could have the suspects ID, even if it did take a few days for the lab results to get back.

    Imagin they get the ID's of all the people in the bank, and then check up on each person individualy. At the end of their search, they find one person who was not on the security video tapes yet who's DNA they collected.

    Bingo, theres your prime suspect.

    Of course this could be defeated quite easily, just make sure you where in the same bank eariler that day (though in a different disguise) and that you perform some normal transactions, that way your DNA would be OK'd by the computer.

    Still though, it could be usefull.
  • since when was having our picture taken without our knowing not an invasion of our privacy. last time i checked it is still legal in most countries to remain anonymous.

  • Stuff like this is already happening in airports. For example, at the U.S.'s pre-clearance customs posts in Canadian airports, they have been known to scan travellers (especially travellers < 30) for drug residues, and fine anyone found with the smallest trace of illegal drugs. They then bring the "criminal" to a cash machine, and tell him/her to pay the fine, or they won't be allowed to enter the U.S.

    As a student, when I go through security at US airports, I am usually pulled out of the line and brought to a machine. They take my backpack, rub a piece of cloth all over it, and put it into the machine. Nothing's come of it yet, but I assume they're scanning me for drugs, which really pisses me off. After all, what right should security have to scan me for drugs? AFAIK, they aren't actually cops, and their job should be to protect travellers, not to prosecute the U.S.'s stupid "war on drugs". I hate to think what would happen if for some reason I was in the vicinity of someone smoking pot before I went to the airport

  • It would be trivial to walk underneath one of those things and shake a vial of someone else's dandruff over its sensor.

    Even better, grab random samples from public places, and amplify them via kitchen-sink polymerase chain reaction [sciam.com]. Randomly vary the proportions and carry a vial of the stuff with you to paint on your shoes, dooknobs, bus seats, etc.

    That will slow down the bastards!

  • Now, don't you think that it might be a liiitle bit ridiculous to link those two together as cause and effect? Perhaps, in fact, it might be the other way around, if in fact either of those two statements are true? Perhaps, if they are both true, firearms were banned because D.C. has the highest murder rate in the country?. Naahhhhh -- everyone knows that guns stop crime. There's some band whose name I don't know who did a song called "Wouldn't it be great if everyone had a gun", with such great quotes as, "There would be no shooting, because everyone would have a gun!"

    I'm still not sure that I believe either of those little factoids though

  • Folks who want to maintain their genetic privacy could give rise a consumer demand for new products that foil or confuse the sniffers.

    For example, you could have a kind of dust that contains a huge collection of random DNA fragments. The machine could sniff that up along with your own contribution and hopefully the artifical noise would swamp out your signal.

    Then again, this means folks are going to be adding artifical dandruf and somehow I can't see it catching on. Perhaps we'll solve it in the classic capitalist fashion - you can choose to pay to have the machine switched off as you pass by it.

    Seriously, though : What happens when the collected information on, say, 10,000 airline passengers gets sucked off a cracked server and ends up freely avaliable on some website?

  • excuse me while I laugh.

    (-a cynical American, who realizes that this battle was lost, a long long time ago).

    if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
  • duh! What do you think an "interview" is?

    if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
  • This brings to mind a quote from that film: "Next time keep your lashes on your lids where they belong!" Great film. Scary that it's truer every day.

  • I can't wait until this comes out, so I can "accidentally" drop my badly-sealed garbage back full of fertilizer and pulverized poppy seeds underneath it.

    Tee hee.
  • Umm, no they don't.

    They start out identical, but as the immune system differentiates, they will have different combinations at those loci.

    Never mind the fact that their telomeres will likely be different lengths due to different environmental exposure.

  • simply BAN the cross referencing of a DNA database with public info ...

    This is a good idea theoretically, but difficult to implement. If a DNA scanner were available to the general populace (i.e. for sale to anyone who could afford it), how can you ensure that once Fred or XYZCo starts collecting DNA data that they aren't cross-referenced with existing data? Have Fred or XYZCo sign a letter promising they won't? (Companies and people lie all the time, and do things they shouldn't.)

    Have the DNA scanner only available to users registered with the Federal government and have its use monitored? (What government agency would be able to handle the monitoring of a database and its usage which contains as many as 3+ billion fields? How do you monitor everyone's programming process?)

    What happens when someone in Izrebekhistan buys or develops a DNA scanner? (How would US laws apply to its use in that country? What could we do about it?)

    My fear is that be it on the open market, grey market, or black market, once these data start being collected, they will find their way to those individuals, organizations, or governments that want them.

    Yet another example of science and industry doing something that can be done without asking whether it should be done.
  • >>If you notice, the bit about DNA is just a throw-away at the bottom of the article.

    Oh I am pretty sure that is for a purpose. Not that the article wouldn't have liked to mention it earlier, but I guess the good inventor was very much aware of the fact that DNA tracking wouldn't be too popular with the masses.

    The technology CAN do it, and that is all that counts. You might not see it (right away) employed in that way in Airports, but I am pretty sure that companies are going to use that. Hey, no more keys anymore, they can identify you by your DNA when you want into the lab (and at the same time test you if you got drunk last night etc.).

    I guess we are well past 1984 by now (technologywise) the only thing that still seperats us is that so far people are afraid that they might end up in their own scanner network.

    Michael
  • The american people need to vote on what they want more: Freedom or safety.

    Well said. Unfortunately, it would appear that most American people are more concerned about safety than freedom, and they are more than willing to throw common sense to the wind when doing this.

    A feel-good, spur-of-the-moment resolution is always more palatable for the American people than careful examination and analysis of a complex issue: "Ban guns because guns kill people!" Well, so does red meat and talking on cell phones while driving, just not as dramatically. "Use blocking software in public web facilities. Enact decency laws on web-page content. Internet pr0n will destroy our children!" and the backlash will threaten our freedom of speech. "Hard drives are missing from a national laboratory! Enact new security policies now to punish those unpatriotic scientists!" And highly talented scientists leave the labs in droves as the draconian changes to security policies make their work lives unbearable. And this helps national security how? "Unscrupulous cashiers! Electronics stores now require the customer to show his or her receipt upon leaving the store with the purchased item." A fix to the problem, but the item is legally the property of the customer once the purchase is made, so the practice constitutes unlawful search and siezure.

    This new technology is just one in a long string of episodes where Americans will affix a band-aid cure and abridge their civil liberties to prevent something of negligible probability (terrorist bombing that can bypass current safeguards) from occurring.

    You can be perfectly safe, more or less, but you'll be living in a police state.

    Perhaps we already are.
  • hell...this is one of the reasons i left the UK. godamn CCTV cameras are EVERYWHERE...and i do mean EVERYWHERE. then they banned the already limited number of guns in the country for no reason at all. of course there is no such thing as a citizen of the UK..you guys are all subjects of the english empire... why fight it ? just leave the country. there are plenty of other countries around the globe. the only thing good about the UK was the data protection act..wish we had something like that in the US.
  • I was just thinking along similar lines. I know a few people who reload their own shotgun shells and bullets as well as a few muzzle loaders. I'd be surprised if they didn't trigger alarms as a result.
  • > You can be perfectly safe, more or less, but you'll be living in a police state. > Perhaps we already are. "Perhaps we already are" - that's really scary, putting it that way. How true! Now I lay me down to sleep, to be programmed like mutant sheep...
  • 1. - well, what if every time you went through this detector, it registered even a trace amount of THC. That result goes into a database, and is part of your permanent record. The inferred result would be; this guy either smokes dope, or hangs around people who do, but he's too smart or lucky to get caught with any significant amount - data mining, profiling, check against the guy's income, known associations, ideologies, what he checks out from the library, video store, what he buys, how much he makes, how much he legitimately spends - risk analysis: is he worth investigating to see whether he might get caught (or entrapped) with a legally significant quantity?

    With private corps running prisons, and prison labor becoming more in vogue, it's starting to look like a new slave-trade, and a wonderful instrument for creating slaves.

    if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
  • But when I'm off company time - what I do is none of the company's business, period.

    Even when what you're doing is illegal? That's where your AIDS comparison falls short. There are many reasons a company might not want to hire a drug abuser. Having a person show up stoned for work is only one of them.

    What if you're bringing a controlled substance onto company grounds? Oop but hey we can't search you. Or what about other irresponsible actions / landing in jail? Do you think it really helps a company when one of their employees gets in this sort of situation?

    Yada yada yada.

    For what it's worth, many companies DO have help available for employees with drug problems. This is a step in the right direction anyhow... treat your employees as people.

    Most of the time when job hunting, you're asked to report prior felony convictions. I don't see drug testing as any more intrusive.

    Best regards,

    SEAL
  • Man, the jokes one could play. "Hey! You splashed my with cyanide! Now I'll never be able to pass my dru -- AAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!" Oops...
  • I'm not from the UK, but this strikes me as the most absurd argument I've ever seen. Just because a law is on the books doesn't mean that the goverment will enforce it? True, but then why is it on the books? If they DO choose to enforce it, who's to say that they won't make YOU the first test subject?

    "The laws only have a harmful effect on those who chose to break the law."
    Right.. What defines breaking the law? The law. You seem to put far too much trust in the benevolence of the government.

  • Uh oh. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I wonder what would happen if one were to fart while going through one of those?
  • Actually, it's 79%:
    http://www.jatox.com/abstr acts/1996/jul-aug/213-cone.htm [jatox.com]
    Here as well:
    Urba nLegends [urbanlegends.com]
  • He has designed a portal similar to the metal detectors common at airports and courthouses. As people pass through, a sample of the air from each thermal plume would be analyzed to see if the person was carrying a bomb or other contraband.

    Actually, the article does not say that this detector takes a couple of seconds. It says that the sample can be taken as people walk through and pause for a few seconds. The time to analyze said sample is not given. Furthermore, one imagines that such determination might fluctuate depending on what the flakes are being analyzed for - and how many different substances are being checked for at one time.

    Mr. Settles says his invention could also be used to detect smuggled money, narcotics, chemical or biological warfare agents, nuclear substances like uranium, or other hazardous material.

    Smuggled money as opposed to non-smuggled money, eh? How does the money know? Does it alter its chemical makeup if it thinks its being smuggled?

  • For those of you with 'dermatalogical problems'...
  • Actually, the cloth-rub test is for finding explosives, but I agree with the rest of your post.

  • Hmmmm. . . (Score:3)

    by Spasemunki ( 63473 ) on Monday July 10, 2000 @03:38AM (#946458) Homepage
    If you notice, the bit about DNA is just a throw-away at the bottom of the article. The main purpose of this is to scan for explosives residue, something that we already have a way to do very quickly and cheaply (I should know- happens to me every time I got through the airport). It is certainly extensable to taking DNA samples, but until there are some big breakthroughs in fast, cheap DNA sequencing, and the solve the problem of making sure they get the right DNA, this particular device isn't going to be turning you over to the GATTACA police just yet.

    "Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
  • I'll have to ask my lawyer this question.. What happens when some chick decides to collect enough of my skin cells to get a good sample, then smacks them around with PCR, and uses that DNA to get pregnant and has a child without my knowledge? When the law comes to do a DNA test on me, do I have to start paying child support?
  • Sounds like a cunning idea, but with 100's of people an hour pouring through a portal, wouldn't cross contamination be an issue?? surely there is no real way of telling who really triggered the alarm at a reasonable flow rate of people.. I'd have to see this device in action before I became convinced it'd be practical.

    The other problem is prior contaimination, how long do the wrong substances hang sround on clothes/skin. Would you have problems with the fact that someone might have spent the previosu night in a legal amsterdam coffee shop and be covered in THC molecules, or had spent the previous day dynamiting something, somewhere and thus a string of false positives.

    As for the privacy/DNA thing, well how long was it going to be before we get a DNA test code thang in our passports anyway. Let's face it if you want to travel then you have to subject yourself to all sorts of official privitations, to satisfy the beuarocratic paranoia, which is the norm in immegration departmetns world-wide. Being DNA tested seems no worse, then having to declare wether you have had an HIV test or not (and failing to get is visa if you have had the test, regardless of outcome).

    M
    --
    Sic Itur Ad Astra
    www.gatrell.org
  • Right. If you showed up stoned, and got fired for it, you'd be right there arguing that you weren't, or that they have to prove it first (can you say 'drug test'?), or that it should be allowed anyway. The problem with people who try to defend their 'rights' in this manner is that they generally don't care so much about their privacy -- they just want convenience.

    Reality check. Drugs cause problems. Companies don't want to deal with it. There's no reason they should have to do so. As long as you accept money from them, you'll have to play by their rules.

  • For a link that works... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Blatant karma-whoring aside, here's a link that works, seeing as the partners.nytimes server started requiring registration -

    http://www10.nytimes. com/library/financial/071000patents.html [nytimes.com]

  • Gattaca (Score:2)

    by crow ( 16139 )
    Sounds like Gattaca [imdb.com] is getting another step closer as it walks from science fiction to reality.

    I could see this used in airports to detect smugglers. They would market it as an artificial dog, comparing the machine to a trained drug- or explosives-sniffing dog.

  • They should redesign the machine to disallow smelly passengers on airplanes.


    --
  • Looking at the papers I fail to see what these guys have invented. Hot air makes pieces of skin foat upwards... But I had this feature long before they made the patent. Actually my forefathers have had it since they stopped being reptiles. The only thing these guys added was a vacuum cleaner device.

    Now I have a vacuum cleaner device at home. It occasionally sucks up old pieces of skin (and other creepy stuff). If I started analysig the contents of my vacuum cleaner would that be breaking the patent? What kind of a patent is this?

  • The technology CAN do it, and that is all that counts

    Well, my point above was that the technoligy can't do it right now. This gizmo is basically a vaccum cleaner hooked to a chemical residue detector. Both of these are things that we have had the technical know-how to do for years; this guy is simply the first to pair them and get a working framework for them. What we don't have is the ability to 1)Quickly determine who's skin cells belong to who, to reduce false positives, and 2)To quickly (like O(1 sec)) do enough of a DNA sequence to positively identify someone. And frankly, once those two problems are solved, this dandruff-sucker will be irrelevant. Who needs to take a random wiff of you as you pass through a turnstile when they can wipe down your luggage, sweep crumbs off of the seat of the plain- anything. At any rate, I doubt that even if those problems were solved there would be many companies eager to use it. It isn't going to be cheap to do DNA sequences for a while, and for most industries, the information that you get is nothing that they couldn't get somewhere else (security cameras, credit card charges, phone bills and central phone records).

    "Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"

  • hmpt (Score:1)

    by Mr804 ( 12397 )
    Just another example of how the man wants to know everything you do. It'd be a crime if you let some pot head on an air plan.

  • Heh.. cool.. Another Tom Murphy.
    We are EVERYWHERE!

  • well that's it (Score:3)

    by happystink ( 204158 ) on Monday July 10, 2000 @05:05AM (#946469)
    Time to get rid of my skin again!
  • This new attack on privacy -- not to mention all the dangers of contamination you mention -- is outrageous and MUST be FOUGHT!!!

    Ah, no. Fighting for civil liberties is passe--went out of fashion about 225 years ago. What you do is you now is resign yourself to a combination of skin-flake testing and other "scientific, objective" tests, e.g. the polygraph, expert witness testimony, and psychological profiling. So much sci-babble can't all be wrong, can it?

    It is getting progressively less important to preserve peoples ephemeral rights than it is to ensure that the populace is happy, safe, and content (in other words, controlled). Liberties? No way man, give me stock options, a new SUV, and DirectTV. People's perspectives have been skewed by the in-your-face coverage of terrorist bombings and kids going apeshit with firearms in their schools, so folks irrationally fear getting blown up or blown away despite the probability being about as high that the same people will spontaneously combust.

    Give me another hit of soma, will ya partner?
  • Now this stuff will really begin to rock when fertility clinics gets their hand on this machine. Send the contains of your vacuum ceaner device to the clinic. Arrive there a month later when the genes have been multiplicated and have a child with the man whose genes were contained in your vacuum cleaner device.

    Yes i know this is not possible right now, but it seems to me that the tecnical side of it will be rality within 10 - 20 years, and somehow it sounds scary to me.

  • Here's the situation I'm afraid of. Say one of these detection systems is set up in an area that is not *too* highly traveled. Such that someone "detectable" walks through, sets off the alarm, and is caught. But lets say that some of the dna they sucked off of him gets stuck in the system, whether it be just hanging in the pipes or whatever. What happens when I walk through 5 minutes later and some of that suspect DNA gets whipped in along with my own?

    Suddenly I'm being thrown in jail, practically already convicted because suspect DNA was "detected" on me.

    That's a future I'm scared to face.

  • If it's for finding explosives, why do they only test students like me? It would seem to me that as a white middle-class teenage Canadian (although that part might not be obvious) male, I'd be one of the least likely people to be carrying explosives.
  • Hmm...
    1. Companies, by and large, are run by the clueless.
    2. Companies are going to use this ultra-new technology to get me!

    Can't have both, bud. Either they're clueless or not. Not both.

  • Errr... (Score:1)

    by Aos ( 24560 )
    Sticking needle in my flesh to get out blood for test is NOT more intrusive than writing in a field in a form????

    >Or what about other irresponsible actions / >landing in jail? Do you think it really helps a >company when one of their employees gets in this >sort of situation?

    Excuse me??? Who CARES of it helps them or not? Do *THEY* care if you don't get a bonus not because although you did your fair share of work, the company on the whole did not? Or let me put it another way, maybe soon they will be asking if anyone in your *FAMILY* has a history of violence, drug abuse etc. Because, it is really embarrasing if your brother kills someone and gets on the news, oh no, shareholders don't like that.

    Oh, but I forgot that there is no such thing as "private life" in US. You belong to your company. You don't have free time. Oh, and please don't even *LOOK* at that girl at the front desk for more than 1.5 seconds (or whatever the law prescribed).

    Jeez.
  • I don't like it, but this is nothing like searching someones house. It is more like taking something from the garbage, which in most (all?) places is okay with the law.

    What flakes off is what you are leaving behind anyways.

    Maybe this requires new laws to protect privacy?
  • What if a few hundred or so of somebdy else's skin flakes get mixed in with my millions? And those happen to be the ones they get with this device?
    Like say my girl has been running her fingers through my hair, and the thing is overhead so it picks up her cells, and she's been smoking god-knows-what what. But I wouldn't mind taking the rap for her in a case like this because drug laws are insidious and evil. A wierder scenario is they DNA test and figure she's entering the building. What the hell do they think they'll accomplish? They know with the amount of contact between human beings that we all have sizeable traces of each others' cells, not large enough to be visible, but if you're trying to detect the sub-visible you'll get the other ppl.

    Ever get the impression that your life would make a good sitcom?
    Ever follow this to its logical conclusion: that your life is a sitcom?

  • It seems that another source of cross-contamination is the large amount of dead skin cells that's in the air already. I remember being vaguely creeped-out when I learned what a large percentage of the air in a closed building (like an office, school or... airport) was made up of dead human skin.

    It makes me wonder

    • How many other people's skin is in my body's "heat plume"?
    • How can this machine avoid sucking in some general air as well?
  • The other problem is prior contaimination, how long do the wrong substances hang sround on clothes/skin. Would you have problems with the fact that someone might have spent the previosu night in a legal amsterdam coffee shop and be covered in THC molecules, or had spent the previous day dynamiting something, somewhere and thus a string of false positives.

    The problem with this reasoning is that your not thinking on a grand enough scale. I propose a massive DNA indexed database tied into your job informtion, recreational habits, etc. That way, we can tell if your an explosives engineer and legally use dynamite, or whether you compulsively neat and should be expected to smell of ammonia cleansers.

    Heck, let's go farther and rig a personal GPS-transponder system with local cell-blocks. Then, if you come in coated in chemicals, we can backtrack and figure out where you've been, and nail the bastard who was endangering my life and liberty by having a casual toke in the "privacy" of his home.

    What is your "right" to privacy next to my personal safety? Who cares if the crime rate is at an all time low? Index it all! Index it all! How can I be protected if you wild anarchists are running around loose with your crypto software and pellet guns? You can put an eye out with one of those things!!!

  • Yup, you're a rebel without a clue! Hey, I live in the UK, and guess what. Not a single CCTV camera within miles of me.

    And in case you didn't know, the UK is a democracy, and we are citizens of the UK and also Europe. The Queen has a ceremonial role within UK law, because we have a longer history than the US (I almost wrote because we have a history, but that would be disrespectful).

    Guess what else? We DON'T WANT guns in the UK. That's why we have far fewer gun related deaths in the UK.

  • Very good point. Also the fact that at least pot is not illeagal, just the possesion of it. So you can smoke it...just not have it in your possession...I'm still trying to figure that one out.

    I don't think the equipment will be fast enough to clear itself of the previous person before the next comes through. Basicly the security stations at the airport will have to be expanded quite a bit to accomidate more stations. Which would mean more cost, and more people to run them, and a bigger backup in the lines. Would greatly piss the passengers off.

    Of course the govt tends to do first and wait for people to get pissed before they really concider the long term results. I bet they wouldn't want it if the first was to be installed at congress to detect drugs and other illicit activities.

    The US is becoming a sad place, and getting worse. I personally am moving out farther into the country areas to get away from the crime and stupidity that flows out of major cities. I know...lets put one on all the ways in and out of a city....keep the garbage downtown...hehe
  • But most DNA ID tests don't look at the whole thing; they simple test certain areas that we know to have high variability among individuals. Unless the DNA test looked specifically at those areas, than they could appear identical under conventional identification procedures.

    "Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
  • It could probably tell what you ate for breakfast, down the level of how much salt you put on your eggs.

  • Someone will just crack this, it couldn't be to hard.

    (1)ever heard of a full body wet suit?

    (2)ever heard of skin graphics?

    (3)put you dog in a wood chipper, then grin everything up into a fine power in the blender, when you walk though one of these things, let a couple hand fulls of your "powdered dog" upinto the vents. There would be some much dog DNS cloggy the machine that it won't get your own "real" DNA

    1. Just install these machines everywhere, catch all who went past a joint-smoking guy, and solve the drug problem by transfering the majority of the population to prison.
      Won't work. As someone mentioned before, having smoked pot in the past is not illegal as long as you do not have it on your person at the time you get caught. There have to be measurable quantities of drugs on you (think quarters and eigths of ounces, not quarters and eigths of a half mole) for the cops to arrest you. Those limits keep getting stiffer penalties for lower quantities, but they aren't going to be pushing the molcular level anytime soon. It would be a legal nightmare for the police; they would loose as many rel convictions and suffer so many civil rights suits due to false positives and the like that it would be totally impossible.
    2. This device could be used to collect DNA cheaply and invisibly (probably cross-indexed with video images of people passing through). Once you've done the collection, you can do the analysis at your leisure later.
      Yeah, possibly. But if you do that, you have almost no way of correlating what DNA you got from what body passing through the detector. You also increase the cross-polination problem, as you have lots of samples sitting in a collector together for long periods of time. If the sequence is not done fast, you loose what information you might have pulled. You want to go back and sort 5,000 piles of skin cells against the security camera photos of 5,000 identical midwesterners passing through the security check at an airport? Me neither. Also, for security applications (what this thing is geared for right now- it's a bomb detector), there is no value to letting things sit. "Well, plane exploded. Better go sift through our DNA collection and figure out which terrorist group we let through security last thursday". Nobody likes that.


    "Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"

  • Not that these are actually in use yet, but I can see it someday if we keep going down this path. It seems like we in the U.S. keep giving up more and more of our personal liberties to have a sense of "safety." Americans are whipped into frenzy by the focus of local TV news on sensationalistic crime reporting. Americans believe they are under seige from gun-toting, crack-smoking gangbangers.

    There is a real, everyday, easy to do, practical thing you can do: Remind everyone you know that violent crime is at a twenty-year low in this country. Most of you have probably heard this, but you'd be surprised at how often it shocks people you meet. Here's a CNN.com article [cnn.com] to link to. (I'm sure there are better ones, but I can't find 'em right now. Or point 'em to the FBI's Universal Crime Reports [fbi.gov]. Really. Do it.
    ---
  • Strikes me that discrimination is the hard part.

    How to discriminate between all of the mismatched readings you get. Sure, I vacuum up some of your cells, but I also get: your dog's dander and sheddings from seeing you off in the morning, a crazy mess of sking cells you picked up brushing through the subway crush, fibres from your sweater, tiny crumbs of the beef jerky you had in your pocket.

    I conclude you are: a four hundred pound bovine, with a proclivity for chasing cars, decended of asian/native-american/african/european stock with red hair, blue eyes, brown skin and XXXXXYY chromosomes.

    Cripies! What are they supposed to do, analyse 1 million sepearate complete DNA chains and determine which is in the highest frequency, and hope that was you, and not the JOHNDOE(tm) bio-engineered sking flakes you applied to your shirt this morning which claims you are the only child of Mary Queen of Scots and Leonardo DaVinci?

  • Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such forms, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and hapiness. Quote taken verbatim from the American Declaration of Independence - Adopted in congress 7/4/1776 When we, as people are forced to submit to such things as active dna or molecular trace inspection, we not only forfeit certain rights but our freedom to exist as individuals altogether. Every person within a clicks distance of this post should write a letter and MAIL it - not email mind you - MAIL a letter to their elected official to stop this insanity. Tyranny advances when the first man says, "Someone else will fight this one."
  • Take the course of "crowds" (i.e. people moving in crowds are --> impossible to distiguish), and build a simple "duster" unit. Load a large suitcase with very finely ground [pick your offending agent] (say, gunpowder?) and blow it on everyone who walks through the main doors of the airport cassually. The variations here are astronomical. Every body and bag passing within several feet of the "duster" would then be contaminated with a harmless, but 10x dictable level of the agent.

    Whalla! The terrorists just succeeded in shutting down an airport for an afternoon while EVERONE has to be screened.
  • It's one thing for police to stop a car to see if there's a caucasian male age 20-24 with blonde hair and a lakers jersey. It's another to stop people on the street and frisk them for drugs. Or do a cavity search or something.

    -Erik
  • WHy do explosives, or DNA, when walk-through drug testing gets those nasty/crack-head/potsmoker/hippie/commie/dregs of society offthe streets in record numbers.

    "Mr. Watson, you are under arrest...our detector on the corner of 5th and Main smelled cannabis when you walked by."

    "Honest Dad, I wasn't smoking! I just walked near the smoke-pit at lunch hour!"

    These technologies are extremely dangerous in the hands of the stupid, greedy, or criminal.

    TheGeek

  • Apparently British pound notes all have traces of cocaine on them from their use in snorting. Looks like lots of false positives there......
  • why don't you ask the interviewer if your future supervisor would mind defacating in a jar for you? Just say you have a test for being a jerk. I mean, If they have nothing to hide, it should be no problem, right?
    ---
  • So now the technology exists to reliably drug test employees without their consent (put one of these guys in the ventilation above someone's cube, say)... cool. Know what's going to happen?

    Flunky: Sir, the "portal" drug testing system reports that 60% of our staff show traces of marijuana!

    Boss: Get rid of... did you say 60%?

    Flunky: Yes, sir. And 5% show traces of LSD.

    Boss: Get rid of 'em!

    Flunky: Sir, those 5% are estimated to be administering 98% of our network.

    Boss: Umm...

    Flunky: May I remind you that you are required by federal law to suspend these employees until their test results are clear?

    Boss: Give me those. You're fired.

    I could see a similar scenario with DNA spying. "Sir, 60% of our employees show an increased risk of Parkinson's disease!"

    Seriously, I doubt Gattaca will happen any time soon, because companies that judge their employees on DNA content will be serious losers compared to those that don't really care, as long as their people are competent. 99% of what impacts your appropriateness for almost any job happens after the womb, so this system will simply allow people who don't get that to lose more efficiently. Right now, all they can do is look at skin color, sex, and well-groomed-ness, and they have to fall back on competence once in a while.

    I do see potential for abuse, though, in testing employees for HIV without their consent...

  • Re:Easy solution - ban DNA cross referencing (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10, 2000 @05:38AM (#946495)
    (just a lazy man, not a Coward) It's a drip-by-drip process. Americans are, through inattention and carelessness, creating a hellish future, from our current standards. The Drug War is the opening crack for the removal of out civil liberties. And we are doing it to ourselves. Not the Guvmint. Our children submit to testing and searches in schools; and as they become adults they will accept even more restrictions in the name of "safety". The communist menace was the pretext in the last half of the 20th, and drugs and "terrorism" are the excuses of the new century. The interesting thing is, there are no incidents of terrorism in the US to justify the latter. It's all man-on-horseback populism. We are giving up our freedom from search and seizure based on a *perception* of danger, in a time when we are the safest, richest, and best fed people that have ever lived, bar none. It's astounding to me, to realize that the most freakishly fearful people I know are in the safest Burbclaves around Chicago. Oh, and the Drug War... don't seem to recall a country call Drugs. Who is the enemy? Why, it's... US! We've schizophrenically declared war on ourselves, because we ran out of real enemies for all those warriors to fight. South and Central America is turning into a cartelocracy, a war zone, because half of our population likes various narcotics and the other half wants to kill or imprison the other half. Based on non-existent evidence, we have declared the drugs more dangerous than cars, cigarettes, or war. Contrary conclusions are discarded without examination. And because of this insanity, we are going to have cameras everywhere, DNA scanners, uberdatabases, drug testing on demand, and abuse, abuse, abuse. It will happen slowly, too slowly for those not watching to notice. Why am I so negative? Because I've been watching for over 30 years, and it is happening, and I don't see anything stopping it. I can't get a job without chemical testing. You can bet DNA testing will be required someday to weed out insurance risks. Police can stop vehicles at random to find drug offenders. It will only get more intrusive. If you are fighting a war, then you have to fight it all out, no? Why compromise? Especially if you can't possibly win. The Forever War... Even if, optimistically, the cross reffing of DNA db's to other db's is banned, corporate entities will use legal tricks to escape prosecution. They are extranational now, anyway. And the coming admin will be even more disposed to give them what the want, legally (as hard as that may seem) than the current one. Government? Dudes and dudettes, that's not the big problem! Corporations using DNA testing (not to mention morals testing, drug testing, hell, ideology testing) can take away your ability to *work*. Well, not all of them, but enough to make a big problem. That is far away more frightening. Example: a bank could refuse to give you loans based on your projected longevity or susceptiblity to diseases. No house, no car. This ain't a joke. We may not be able to stop it, but we can observe and chronicle it; I'm beginning to think that's all we can do. In the meantime, just live your lives, smile, be happy, and never forget to watch what's happening and comment about it.

  • Re:Guilty before proven innocent? (Score:3)

    by Spasemunki ( 63473 ) on Monday July 10, 2000 @05:43AM (#946496) Homepage
    In most areas in the US, it is perfectly legal for the police to stop and check every driver on the road, as long as they check EVERY driver who comes to the checkpoint. It sucks, but the courts have upheld it.
    They have, because while you might not like passing through a roadblock that stops everyone on New Years Eve, it beats the alternative: Police stopping 1)Only every black person that comes through or 2)Every person that looks suspicious (see above, add "poor people", "people with facial hair", "foreigners", and "people under 30")
    Random stops on everyone that comes through are a pain. But it sure beats being targeted by security forces because of the color of your skin or the bad rap your belief system gets. I would much rather see every single person that goes through an airport get a DNA or chemical scan than have them target "profiles". The volume of data and the scrutiny involved in tagging that many people is in itself a gaurantee of some privacy (ways to protect privacy: 1) be alone 2) be in a whacking big crowd), whereas only targeting "profiled" and marginalized groups risks everyone's rights (the hangman's story phenomena: eventually, your group is next.)



    "Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
  • Considering how many innocent persons have already been convicted and NEARLY executed by sloppy police/"justice" system work, do we really wanna sit back and say, "Oh, well..."
    Funny you should mention that. Guess what is starting to free a lot of wrongly imprisoned and nearly executed people: DNA evidence.


    "Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
  • As someone mentioned before, having smoked pot in the past is not illegal as long as you do not have it on your person at the time you get caught.

    Yeah, I know, but (a) that could be changed and (b) maybe the government would not put you in jail, but you employer can easily fire you. Imagine that every place that does drug tests on hiring now does drug tests every day as you enter the building.

    you have almost no way of correlating what DNA you got from what body passing through the detector.

    That depends, mostly on the rate of flow of people. Obviously, this is not going to work in a subway during the rush our. Obviously, this is going to work in a place where single people occasionally pass through. The middle - ?


    Kaa
  • "ABMC will demonstrate its wipe-and-spray Drug Detector(TM) that tests for the presence or absence of crack/cocaine or marijuana residue on surfaces, such as desk tops, book bags and steering wheels. The patented Drug Detector kit includes an aerosol spray for either crack/cocaine or marijuana, 10 collection papers and instructions. It's easy to use -- just wipe any surface with a collection paper and spray the paper with the aerosol can. If it detects the drug residue, the paper will turn blue for cocaine and reddish brown for marijuana within seconds. "

    http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/000621/ny_america.html

    The best part? It's going to be on retail shelves of drug stores all over the country in a few weeks. And it's dirt cheap, only about a buck a use. Yes, I own stock, and yes, that stock is cheap as heck right now ;)
  • How is it an invasion of your privacy? If you're in a public place, is it any more "invasive" than someone taking your picture (such as a security camera) or smelling your cologne, or getting your fingerprint off a mug? Get real. There's no "invasion of privacy" here, just an oppotunity to get criminals off the streets. I say we seize it.
  • I would think there would be sufficient differences in raw vs. residue traces left in or on the body to tune the device to recognize those distinctions.
  • Hey, no more keys anymore, they can identify you by your DNA when you want into the lab

    Great. We already have parasites that escape their hosts' immune systems by incorporating molecules from host tissue into the surface of the parasite, thereby appearing to be "self" tissue rather than "non-self must-eradicate" tissue. When this tech gets off the ground, how long will it be until we see similar behavior on the macro-macroscopic scale?
  • A few points:
    • In my passport it says 'British Citizen'.
    • I am the legal owner of a 12-bore shotgun, a .22LR rifle and .375 H&H rifle - all kept in the UK
    • You're full of shit
    Nick

  • ..that and refuse drug tests (Score:3)

    by xtal ( 49134 ) on Monday July 10, 2000 @06:08AM (#946519)

    Something else you can do is to absolutely, 100%, without exception, refuse any employment drug testing on moral grounds. Did you know that the Canadian counterparts of many US corporations DO NOT require pre-employment drug testing because people are much less likely to accept it here?

    No job is worth my liberty. Mind you, I'm skilled enough so that finding employment isn't hard, even if I'm picky, and I've told people no before. You'd be suprised how many people haven't even thought about the implications of such testing. Ask WHY! It's like when a cop asks you if he can look in your trunk. Ask him if you can look in his. This usually gets a most suprised look - although, mind you, cops up here don't draw weapons as part of standard operating procedure, either - there's forms to fill out if the RCMP even unholster their weapon.

    The reason to do this is that if you don't refuse HORRIBLY intrusive testing (Would you ask a stranger off the street to piss in a cup for you?) then the wonderful DNA test happens next. The tools to give the state supreme power over a ignorant populace are happening, and when everybody wakes up, you won't have any way to fight back.

    An old history professor of mine used to have a quote in BIG letters above the blackboard: "Power: It's ain't for the givin', it's for the takin'" (unknown). Words to live by.

  • AMEN! I broke my rule on that a few years ago, because I really wanted this job, and I felt so bad... I can't believe most people just take it for granted. When I went on my latest round of interviews, I asked, told 'em I was against it on moral grounds.
    ---
  • Your arguments are unfortunately flawed, and we should work together to fix them, because I share your concerns and aims.

    This device isn't "taking a part of you", for the simple reason that you're actually handing it your "parts" by shedding them into the environment. This is unlikely to be considered an unconstitutional "search" on privacy grounds, for the reason that it's non-invasive. Look at the case law: it's constitutional for the government to fly a plane over your fences and peer down at your greenhouse, and police are allowed to search cars exhaustively without violating privacy as long as they don't open the door. A fifth-mendment defense won't work, since no one has been charged with any crime to face, and far more invasive extractions have been sustained (blood/urinalysis tests). Sure, this sort of thing shocks the concious but it doesn't shock enough people's conciouses. Unfortunately it looks like the only way to prohibit this sort of thing on a constitutional level is either to overrule a lot of precedent (yay!) or pass a constitutional amendment.

    PS, not all abusive governments have been overthrown.

    PPS, civilization isn't advancing. It's just getting more tech-happy.

  • Honestly, scanning your identity this way is about the last thing you should be worried about. The main goal of testers like these is to be able to scan people rapidly, like the metal detectors at airports. They want to be able to tell if someone is trying to smuggle bombs or drugs onto an airplane. That means that you need to know the answer from your test now, not in an hour or two when the guy's already had a chance to pass his stuff to some third party.

    At the present, and for the forseeable future, it's just not possible to make a DNA-based individual ID in anything like real time. Even in the lab with nearly ideal samples doing that kind of thing takes time, and a lot of that is not something that can be easily reduced; certain chemical and physical reactions take time and can't be sped up. That puts a pretty strong damper on using this as a DNA vacum to violate people's rights.

    OTOH, you can bet that the war against drugs and the war against terrorism will be used as excuses. Pretty soon you won't be able to get on a plane without being subjected to a battery of tests to make sure that you're not trying to put anything illegal onto the plane. Oops, you're a mining engineer who uses explosives at work? Prepare to be hassled every time you try to fly. Your pot smoking brother came over to visit? Prepare to be stopped and have your luggage examined. In the long term those kinds of minor erosions of personal protection are a much more dangerous threat to privacy than some hypothetical DNA screening.

  • Once you're scanning someone's molecules, DNA, or whatever, wouldn't this allow for more types of discrimination not less?

    In the world of paranoid Gattacca ranting, maybe. In the real world, no.

    There is no way at this point to take a person's DNA and sequence it for anything but a few major genetic diseases. No relevance outside of insurance. All the talk of knowing if someone is "prone to X" from their DNA is years in the future. Here and now, all the applications lead to less discrimination. Examples -

    Sniffing for drugs. Don't pat down the long haired guy, just run everyone through the same doorway.

    Guns, explosives, etc. eliminate "intuition" (often really means built up prejudice) as a reason to demand a frisk or strip search.

    IDing someone. What we can do with the DNA today is (maybe) search for a specific individual who left tissue at a crime scene. Scan for the actual person, as opposed to police in a new york town who went with a two word description (black male) and stopped and harrassed avery black man (and some black women) they found in public areas. (true story, read about it in the wall street journal.)

    Leave the paranoia behind, and try to think about how the technology can improve or damage security work in the real world. I think it sounds great for increased sercurity in some areas with decreased invasion of real privacy.

    -Kahuna Burger

  • ...without singling out individuals according to race or other characteristics

    Once you're scanning someone's molecules, DNA, or whatever, wouldn't this allow for more types of discrimination not less?



    Being with you, it's just one epiphany after another

  • Aaaaah! (Score:4)

    by deefer ( 82630 ) on Monday July 10, 2000 @03:42AM (#946537) Homepage
    Another scary innovation.
    As with all scientific advances, this throws up a whole load of interesting situations...
    Depending on how sensitive and correct this device is, I can see some being installed in London, UK. Mention "terrorist" in England and you get some pretty draconian legal powers (such as extended questioning periods etc) to use and abuse.
    So these are set up at airports... "To trap the terrorists"
    Then set up at train stations... "To trap the terrorists"
    Then set up at tube stations... "To trap the terrorists"
    Before you know it, the terrorist threat has disappeared. Do they remove these machines? Hell, no lets have them sniff for drugs/homosexuality/Linux!
    Think I'm paranoid? Then on my way to work, how come I drive through 3 manned police CCTV cameras left over from the "anti terrorist" Ring of Steel?

    Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.

  • Guilty before proven innocent? (Score:4)

    by KlomDark ( 6370 ) on Monday July 10, 2000 @03:47AM (#946541) Homepage Journal
    This is the kind of stuff that should be illegal. Randomly sampling people as they walk by is no better than randomly searching peoples houses.

    This is precisely what is described by "Illegal search" (and maybe even seizure, as they are effectively taking pieces of you as you walk by). In a perfect world, I doubt this would stand up in court, as the "due process" required has to be done on an individual basis, not on a broad scope of mostly innocent people.

    What kind of people use their engineering talent to make such things? I would refuse. People do not see the long term cyclical nature of government. Everyone should take an Ancient Western Civilization class. Watch how the ancient civilizations grew, became strong, then became oppresive, then were overthrown for the greater good of humanity. This stuff will only prolong the suffering of humanity when the current civilization's time has come, making it difficult for the cycle to advance to the next level. Instead we end up in a totalitarian, invasive sitiuation.

    Don't forget the children who have to live in this world we create...

  • The trap just grabs everything. The only analysis this invention claims to do is detection of the nitrogen compounds that go bang. It does mention the possibility of detecting other molecules, but even if you could pick out the long chains of DNA, all this invention would do is tell you that there was DNA present, not whose DNA.

    On the other hand, this is a nice approach. No blowing air up your skirt/kilt, no wrecking your hairdo. Just pause for a moment under the box, while natural convection reveals your chemical secrets.

    You could do on-the-fly drug screening for anything that gets stuck in scalp flakes, for example. The device can find THC byproducts as readily as THC, so look for this at a high school near you....

    tc>

  • Jamming The System (Score:4)

    by Steve B ( 42864 ) on Monday July 10, 2000 @06:28AM (#946550)
    They tried a primitive version of this sort of thing in Vietnam, using chemical and vibration sensors on the Ho Chi Minh Trail [vietsandiego.com]. The sensors were defeated by hanging buckets of urine next to chemical ones and driving cattle past the vibration ones. Methods of jamming modern versions are left as an excersize for the student.
    /.

  • Re:..that and refuse drug tests (Score:3)

    by xtal ( 49134 ) on Monday July 10, 2000 @07:50AM (#946553)

    Companies have the right to not allow people using drugs into their workplace. Rightly, they realize that it can be disruptive. If everyone would be honest and upfront about using drugs, they wouldn't have to bother -- but this isn't an ideal world.

    BULLSHIT. Thinking like this is WRONG. If I show up drunk, stoned, or high, you have every right to fire me ON THE SPOT. Why should it matter to you what the hell I do on my own time, in my own house? What's next? Testing to see if I have multiple sex partners? How about a AIDS test? I mean, that's something YOU did, right? If everyone was up front about having AIDS, then there wouldn't be a problem?

    If you really don't like it, you can go somewhere else, of course. But don't go yelling about your 'rights' just because a company wants to keep its workplace safe.

    So, we'll test everyone for AIDS, because what if someone gets cut, right? THIS IS STUPID. If you want to pay me for 24/7 availability, then sure, you can drug test me. But when I'm off company time - what I do is none of the company's business, period.

    If you're concerned enough about soft drugs, then you should test for alcohol too, and fire anyone who does not comply - because we can't have people drinking, either, even if it's off company time. It might affect their preformance! And cigarette smokers. Those things are deadly! The workplace is much safer if there isn't anyone who craves a smoke at an inappropriate time. Never mind all those smoke breaks you can get rid of!

    How about police agencies! They don't have scheduled drug testing - it in fact, is done at the time of hire and RARELY after. Why? Because the police unions are dead-set against it. Let's test all those FBI, DEA and BATF agents _monthly_. I wonder what would happen then.. sure it might cost a little, but they have to do something with all the money they gather from drug dealers! Why not "purify" their ranks?

    This arguement pisses me off. If I'm not preforming, or am presenting a danger to others, FIRE ME FOR THAT. If I'm a happy little worker, it's none of your business what, or who, I do on my own time.

    And yes, I take my skills elsewhere. Drug laws scare me not because I'm a user (I'm not) but because I see my freedom going down the toilet - because I look at what happened south of the border. I just get a kick out of companies that test in their US offices and not in Canadian ones. What, are Canadian offices more dangerous? YEESH.

  • I share the concerns over privacy matters that this technology brings up, but I don't think it could go as far as Gattaca, at least not any time soon. Sequencing DNA takes a long time. It wouldn't be one of those things where you could instantly identify people, though it might be a useful forensic tool, since you could tell which doorways a person had walked through. Of course, checking them all the time would be a pain, but it would be the kind of thing you'd check if something happened. As far as I can tell, the advantages of security are far greater than the privacy incursions, if any, posed by this technology. That could easily change with time, however.
  • simply BAN the cross referencing of a DNA database with public info, like for instance, your social security number.

    It's too late. We in the US (and to an even greater extent, Great Britain) are already taking DNA samples from arrestees. If history is any indication, it will soon be required, much as fingerprints are, from police applicants, military, civil service employees, people registering a gun, etc. The attraction of this technology to a government bent on 'helping' us will make its adoption inevitable.

    What if I sprinkle you with coke in an elevator?
    If this dystopia were to really come about, how are you going to get on that elevator with that coke? Every public building will have a monitor, so you won't be able to enter. Even if you could, how would you avoid getting it on yourself?

    Ok, paranoia aside, there was an interesting program some years back in which paper currency was to be tested for cocaine residue. The theory was that if residue was detected, whoever was passing that currency was likely engaged in the drug trade. The trouble was that, when they actually tested the currency, virtally all of it had cocaine residue. I suspect that any monitoring program would have some of the same vulnerabilities; any 'bad stuff' they're looking for already permeates the environment to such an extent that the alarm bells would go off constantly. How do they know that these are your skin flakes? Since they 're everywhere, other people's are presumably also all over you. It may be a while, if ever, before we get to the point where these monitors are practical. At least, let's hope so.

  • Spam DNA! (Score:3)

    by MostlyHarmless ( 75501 ) <artdent@[ ]eshell.org ['fre' in gap]> on Monday July 10, 2000 @03:48AM (#946560)
    I bet everyone on /. will be going "Yay! New technology!", but we have to worry about one thing: What happens next? An evil corporation buys a 2x2 foot block of ceiling somewhere and gathers DNA. It then correlates the DNA to your e-mail address, home address, and SSN (if it can get it). Corporations now have a perfect way of identifying someone perfectly -- After all, DNA doesn't lie, does it?

    It does. Remember, it can't tell what it's gathering or where it came from. It would be trivial to walk underneath one of those things and shake a vial of someone else's dandruff over its sensor. Voila! You have an effect similar to the cypherpunk/cypherpunk registrations on annoying news sites. Suddenly, this Evil Corporation has one John Smith on 31337 Haxor Lane, New York, NY walking into its store several times per second. It's "Hack life" on a whole new level.
  • Corporations now have a perfect way of identifying someone perfectly -- After all, DNA doesn't lie, does it?

    Identical twins have identical DNA.

  • Considering how many innocent persons have already been convicted and NEARLY executed by sloppy police/"justice" system work, do we really wanna sit back and say, "Oh, well..." This new attack on privacy -- not to mention all the dangers of contamination you mention -- is outrageous and MUST be FOUGHT!!! For U.S. readers: Did you know that if you carry cash in the U.S. it can be confiscated? A man who was heading to Las Vegas was taking about $10,000 with him and was stopped at the airport, searched, and the money taken for "drug tests." Since most new money in the U.S. is in fact contaminated with at least a trace of drugs (having passed through the hands of some dealer -- it's a huge, cash-only business, after all!), he realized he hadn't a hope of fighting it. I read this in a newspaper article several months back. So, if you ever plan to carry any cash around with you, make sure you carry along all the receipts, tax forms, invoices, and other papers to prove it didn't go through the drug trade while it was in your hands. (What do you mean, "innocent 'til proven guilty???")
  • If DNA is considered the source code of an individual's genetic makeup, then sooner of later the government must determine some sort of personal "source code license" for DNA.

    The alternative is a true big-brother police state, wherein you are tracked, measured, and sampled at unknown intervals.

    Frankly, I like a Microsoft-like licensing scheme for my own DNA.

  • In an audit, the Internal Revenue Service can subject you to a high risk of gang-rape by an HIV and Hepatitis C infected ethnic prison gang if you fail to report every last relationship of value to you as well as your thoughts and feelings concerning those relationships.

    Given such an invasion of privacy, I find it sardonically amusing that people would get upset about the idea that various institutions would have access to the logs of their email, ATM/Credit card/bank transactions, millions of security cameras recording their movements in both public and private places and detailed teachers' accounts of their behavior from K-12 in public schools, let alone getting upset about sampling their DNA as they walk by a few scattred detectors.

  • The flakes of skin coming off your body are "waste" being shed into the environment, harvesting them would not require a warrant. The supreme court ruled that cops could view IR spectrum radiation from your house to determine if there are grow lights in your basement. The rationale being that the IR radiation is "waste" heat being released into the environment so collecting it was not considered violating your privacy.

    Sad but true.

    While I feel the threat of terrorism is seriously overblown, it might seem reasonable to use these in airports to search for explosives. However, the potential for this device for searching for drugs underscores the urgent need to completely eliminate the insanity of Prohibition.

    Burris

  • There is a good quote from Ben Franklin on the subject of freedom vs safety.
    [warning]I may not have the EXACT wording but it will get the point across.[/warning]

    "Those who are willing to give up essential liberty in exchange for safety deserve neither the liberty nor the safety."

    I think this hits the nail right on the head. If the population of the US is stupid enough to choose temporary solutions to problems in order for a little safety now by giving up their liberty then they deserve to lose both when the temporary solution fails.

    Now before people go and flame me about this, I am a US citizen and I am very unhappy about the idea that the general population is giving up my freedoms for temporary safty. I am unhappy with it, but in this representative democracy the minority in the general populous loses. The minority that is the representation generally wins, see missle shield program.

    There was another reply with a small exerpt from the Los Almos disk drive incedent that I would like to comment on. It isn't that hard to keep a log of who checks things in and out, if you work with rms then you would know that it isn't that much of a bother, and quite useful if you are looking for the drives. Also, if the information was as important as they say it was, they should have a survalence camara there. Even 7-11 has camara and I know that those Little Debbie Snacks are no where near as important as nuclear secrets. This isn't about freedom vs safety this is about common curtacy, responsability and national security.
  • On top of reminding everyone that violent crime as at a 20 year low, remind them that Washington DC has banned the possesion firearms within the city limits and it has the highest murder rate in the country.

  • Easy solution - ban DNA cross referencing (Score:5)

    by xtal ( 49134 ) on Monday July 10, 2000 @04:02AM (#946574)

    You americans have an opportunity to make a real stand here, and it will solve the problem of people spying on your DNA - simply BAN the cross referencing of a DNA database with public info, like for instance, your social security number. If your DNA cannot be used to identify you, this won't be a problem from the standpoint of raw information collection for marketting purposes (although might be valid statistically, for instance, all the caffiene molecules being secreted through the pores of coders in the development building.. heh heh)

    As for explosives testing.. the american people need to vote on what they want more: Freedom or safety. You can be perfectly safe, more or less, but you'll be living in a police state. But, this is something the country will decide, personally, I'd rather live in a rural setting where the man doesn't have as many rights to get on my land.

    The drug issue is worse though, and it's why I'll never move to the US. What if I toss a couple grams of an illicit substance in your car and then call the cops? What if I sprinkle you with coke in an elevator? The shit will hit the fan, and with the way the US drug laws work currently, your life is over and you very well might lose your car, if I phrase my "anonymous tip" correctly.

    Something to think about..

  • Re:Guilty before proven innocent? (Score:4)

    by JatTDB ( 29747 ) on Monday July 10, 2000 @04:16AM (#946577)
    This is similar to the arguments surrounding traffic stops. In most areas in the US, it is perfectly legal for the police to stop and check every driver on the road, as long as they check EVERY driver who comes to the checkpoint. It sucks, but the courts have upheld it.

    On your point about engineer integrity, this is a really tough question for a lot of people who work on such things. Personal beliefs and convictions are a hard thing to overcome; perhaps these engineers sincerely believe that they are working in the best interests of their fellow man. The too-happy and annoying church people that knock on my door from time to time do something that I could not do within my ethical outlook, but from their perspective the privacy violation is justifiable by the chance to save my soul or something along those lines.

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