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DNA Databases in the U.S. and China Are Tools of Racial Oppression
Two major world powers, the United States and China, have both collected an enormous number of DNA samples from their citizens, the premise being that these samples will help solve crimes that might have otherwise gone unsolved. While DNA evidence can often be crucial when it comes to determining who committed a crime, researchers argue these DNA databases also pose a major threat to human rights.
In the U.S., the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has a DNA database called the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) that currently contains over 14 million DNA profiles. This database has a disproportionately high number of profiles of black men, because black Americans are arrested five times as much as white Americans. You don't even have to be convicted of a crime for law enforcement to take and store your DNA; you simply have to have been arrested as a suspect.
[...] As for China, a report that was published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in mid-June claims that China is operating the "world's largest police-run DNA database" as part of its powerful surveillance state. Chinese authorities have collected DNA samples from possibly as many as 70 million men since 2017, and the total database is believed to contain as many as 140 million profiles. The country hopes to collect DNA from all of its male citizens, as it argues men are most likely to commit crimes.
DNA is reportedly often collected during what are represented as free physicals, and it's also being collected from children at schools. There are reports of Chinese citizens being threatened with punishment by government officials if they refuse to give a DNA sample. Much of the DNA that's been collected has been from Uighur Muslims that have been oppressed by the Chinese government and infamously forced into concentration camps in the Xinjiang province.
Related:
EFF to Supreme Court: The Fourth Amendment Covers DNA Collection
EFF Sues Justice Dept. Over FBI's Rapid DNA Plans
Kuwait Creating Mandatory DNA Database of All Citizens, Residents--and Visitors
San Diego Police Department Accused of Unlawful DNA Collection From Minors
Massive DNA Collection Campaign in Xinjiang, China
Study Predicts Appearance From Genome Sequence Data
GEDmatch: "What If It Was Called Police Genealogy?"
Bavarian Law Broadens Police Surveillance and DNA Profiling Powers
DNA Collected from Golden State Killer Suspect's Car, Leading to Arrest
Another Alleged Murderer Shaken Out of the Family Tree
Indiana Murder Suspect Found by Using Genealogical Website
Public Ancestry Data Can be Used to Narrow Down the Identity Behind an Anonymous DNA Sample
Rapid DNA Analysis Machines Coming to Police Departments
FamilyTreeDNA Deputizes Itself, Starts Pitching DNA Matching Services To Law Enforcement
Genealogy Sites Have Helped Identify Suspects. Now They've Helped Convict One
U.S. to Collect DNA of All Undocumented Migrants
US Court Let Police Search GEDmatch's Entire DNA Database Despite Protections
China Uses DNA to Map Faces, With Help From the West
Cousin Took a DNA Test? Courts Could Use it to Argue You are More Likely to Commit Crimes
Ancestry Says Police Requested Access To Its DNA Database
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2020, @04:25PM (6 children)
Ahh! But you are provably wrong in this case. First off, consider that cats also share about 90% of their genes with the human race, chimps upwards of 96%. Genetic similarity is a rather misguiding metric because the smallest of things can yield huge differences. One of the most interesting genes is MAO-A - 'the warrior gene'. It's responsible for an enzyme that has a rather curious effect. When production of the said enzyme is dysfunctional, the resultant animal will become vastly and measurably more violent.
Literally you can take a healthy mouse, impair the MAO-A gene, and its offspring will be measurably more violent than normal for the species. And the exact same is true in humans. We do not engage on these type of genetic experiments yet when you take a sampling of violent criminals and compare it against society at large, again you see widespread MAO-A malfunction. And guess what race in particular has a rate of MAO-A malfunction generally magnitudes higher than other races? And of course this is just one tiny aspect of genetics. Most groups have filtered out impaired MAO-A genes. Africa has not. Why? Well now you can get into cultural answers. The various personal characteristics that make for success in one region vs another are radically different and thus the people that ended up thriving became radically different.
As for where am I going with this? Very simple:
1) Equality of opportunity, not equality of result. The latter is not possible unless you gave Brave New World where you lobotomize the top the reach the ineptitude of the bottom.
2) Assisting people based on their real needs and not the needs you project on them. If we run this world 1000 times, Mike Tyson is probably dead or in prison right now in about 990 of them. But because his talent for fighting was uncovered quickly - he's instead a legend, even if an infamous one, in our timeline. Trying to turn everybody into e.g. a computer scientist is stupid. If somebody wants to fight, teach them to fight as well as to weld or operate heavy machinery. If somebody wants to be a social media guy - teach them to influence and charm, as well as teaching them to work in public relations. So forth and so on. Same reason when teaching somebody to be a computer scientist, you should also teach them to be a teach support guy.
3) Research and find out what makes certain people of various conditions succeed while others fail. Not everybody with an impaired MAO-A gene is a violent criminal. And similarly not all violent criminals have MAO-A genes. Why? And how can we use this information to create a better society for everybody? Right now this sort of research is as taboo as it possibly could be because it doesn't go for this blank slate nonsense you're talking about.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday July 13 2020, @12:10AM (5 children)
Ah, someone else who knows about the monoamine oxidase type-A gene! I was beginning to think I was alone on here...
You know that every post you're making is actually in agreement with me, right? I know very well what it is to start with genetic disadvantages: I'm horribly deaf, have even worse vision, and am probably predisposed to depressive disorders. What helped? A supportive early home environment (after "early" not so much but eh...), access to glasses and hearing aids (...sometimes...), and recognition of my strengths as well as weaknesses.
All of those are pretty high up Maszlow's pyramid, did you notice? Can't really focus on improving yourself when you can't eat right or sleep soundly, or when the water's full of lead (speaking of things that interact badly with MAO-A mutations).
You're so close, so, so, so, so close, to having the proverbial "come to Jesus" moment. If you really, truly care about these people, if you truly care for "equality of opportunity," *you have to support a widespread social program that has enough capacity for everyone AND can be tailored to individual needs.*
Somehow, though, I can only hear this odd, high-pitched whistling noise. It's making the dogs go nuts, which is bizarre since it sounds like "blacks are inherently violent" and dogs don't speak a human language. Hmmm...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2020, @05:24AM
I don't understand why you think such things would be controversial to me. If you simply asked me whether or not I believe blacks are, as a group (not as individuals), genetically more inclined towards violence than most other groups then of course I would say yes. The over representation of malfunctioning MAO-A genes is, by itself, sufficient to justify that claim. And I don't view it as an inherently bad thing. Most kids get into a fight at some point or another. One kid runs to a teacher crying, one kid instead punches back. I have always been the latter and would be absolutely ashamed if my kid was the former. However, I'd also be ashamed if he threw the first punch. Never throw the first punch, always throw the last one. The capacity for violence is important lest society give way to the first evil with such a penchant, but it requires self discipline and restraint lest you turn into that evil yourself.
What I do view as a bad thing is creating solutions based upon the assumption of a blank slate hypothesis. When that hypothesis is invalid, so too are our solutions. Most don't realize that the US already spends more per capita than most of anywhere on the world in things such as education and even social spending. [oecd.org] Remember to swap from % GDP to $/capita. We spend more per capita than, for instance, both the UK and Canada.
So why do our programs suck? Because they're completely misguided. Inner schools having problems? Throw money at the problem which is generally used to upgrade the computers, buy new textbooks, and just generally wasted. Lo and behold, it achieves nothing. By contrast, start boxing/wrestling classes alongside shop (lumberworking/metalworking/etc) classes and you'd see huge dividends. But it doesn't fit the cultural narrative we're trying to impose that 'everybody needs to be a feminist (if not effeminate) computer scientist and the only reason that's not happening is [insert identity politics].'
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2020, @07:05AM (3 children)
I just realized something I never thought about for some reason. Most of what I've said is actually a testable hypothesis. We do have one program that focuses on physical discipline and training over 'become a computer scientist' in schools. What is it? ROTC and junior ROTC programs and the military itself. To be clear, I'm not especially fond of the US military but I am fond of the sort of physical and mental training that the military entails. Anyhow, I decided to look up economic outcomes for veterans on average. Turns out Pew recently did an extensive survey [pewresearch.org] of the data.
The results were incredibly surprising given the usual narrative about starving veterans:
Those numbers are just huge and I do think offer at least a workable existential argument in favor of the logical position on the emphasis of physical training and discipline in lieu of simply 'everybody must be a computer scientist.'
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday July 14 2020, @12:36AM (2 children)
"Starship Troopers" was still built on a shit premise, Mr. Heinlein.
Again...every time you post, you further support the central thesis I've been pushing, that human behavior is *far* more influenced by culture than genetics. No, I don't believe that tabula rasa stuff (and no one seriously has since the 70s so shove it), but I am capable of observation. If you want to blunt the effects of "bad" genes, *culture is key and education is how.*
Your veterans are getting an education in their own parameters, limits, and thought processes, do you get it? I would rather push for encouraging introspection, critical thought, emotional intelligence, and a thorough grounding in basic predicate logic starting in elementary school than the soldier-sucking compulsory military service you seem to be hinting at. And your disdain for "computer scientists" is a bit odd on a site like this. Even someone like me can program just a tiny bit and has run Gentoo since the mid-noughties :)
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2020, @03:37PM (1 child)
I don't know how you got any of from what I said.
The point of the military example was to show that all of our current ideas about education, solving poverty, and everything amount to *much* less than 2 years in the military *on average*. Why? Because all of our ideas we are *currently* implementing are actively based around pushing people down paths that they're unsuited for. I have no disdain for computer science, I make a living from software and absolutely love it. However it's a horrible path for the vast majority for people. And vice versa for the military. It's going to be a bad fit for some, yet it's somehow clearly *much* more effective at producing better outcomes than what we're *currently* doing.
The idea is simple: you don't push people in any direction. You find out what they're good at and you work from there. Take your emotional intelligence idea. I could not care less about the feelings of others besides my loved ones, and I strive to even nullify my own emotions. And I view these things as values worth pursuing. So any education in "emotional intelligence" is going to be a disaster with me in your class - and I would end up, even if unintentionally, actively antagonizing the rest of the class. The exact same thing is *currently* happening today as we put people in math classes where they simply have 0 interest (or perhaps ability in some cases) of learning. Yes, becoming highly capable at mathematics would give these people a far better chance at a better life, but you ultimately cannot force people to do anything they don't want to. That effort to force people simply results in them disrupting the class for those who would want to learn it and wasting the time of the non-learner. So, again, instead find out what people are good at and pursue that.
Essentially, I believe that general education has been a failure. What can we do to improve it? I'd look in the other direction - specialized education, no longer just for the short bus.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday July 15 2020, @12:57AM
Somehow you managed to gag yourself on Heinlein's rotting dick *and* run straight into his "Specialization is for insects" snark at the same time. Amazing. Where the hell are you *going* with all this?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...