Comment by starfezzy
Comment by starfezzy 3 days ago
Can even one single person here articulate their specific fears of using 23andme, or is it all FUD?
Comment by starfezzy 3 days ago
Can even one single person here articulate their specific fears of using 23andme, or is it all FUD?
I know it's not exactly the point, but the answer is you always have a lawyer if you're being questioned by the police, especially if you're not the one who called them. This is in no way specific to any DNA related situation. If any law enforcement shows up and has questions for you, you say nothing until you have a lawyer with you.
Doesn't matter. If they're talking to you say you need your lawyer present -- that will end the interrogation, and you might never need a lawyer. But if you don't say that you might end up convicted.
I'm not saying it's fair or right. As with most things in life, the cost/benefit makes it likely you'll have to take some risks, but people need to understand that literally any interaction with any law enforcement without a lawyer present is a risk of things going horrifically badly. This is especially true if they show up and you do not know why. That is a massive set of alarm bells that should be going off.
If you can’t afford a lawyer just say nothing. Nothing you say will help you; anything you say can be used against you. If you say nothing you force them to use other evidence which they likely don’t have.
Police (in the U.S. anyways) are allowed to use ruses almost without limits, so you might not even know you're being interrogated, and your answers can be used against you (and only against you -- never to exculpate you!) in a court of law.
IMO the hearsay rule is way too biased in favor of the government.
Worse! Say you know it's police asking you questions, and the questions are all very harmless, so you answer them, but then you start to get an inkling that you are a suspect, that they like you for some crime, so now you shut up and/or lawyer up, but guess what: your disposition's change from cooperative to non-cooperative can and will be used against you in a court of law!! What, you say? Yes, the SCOTUS in the 2010s (see Salinas vs. Texas, from.. 2014 IIRC) greatly reduced the 5th Amendment's protections in this way. If you're talking then clam up, the fact that you clammed up -and at what particular question- can be used against you. And if you never said a word to them, that too can be used against you! The only thing that works is to tell them very early on that you will only talk to them with your lawyer present [and since you don't have a lawyer yet you might never talk to them] then follow through.
If the police are talking to you it's either a) they think your testimony can convict someone else, and/or b) they like you for some crime and want to give you ample opportunity to convict yourself of it even if you didn't commit it (they may not know that, but they may like you so much for it that their bias is too strong to see that you're innocent) and even if you have no idea what the heck they're talking about (because they don't even have to tell you).
See all of professor James Duane's videos on this topic, starting with Don't Talk to Police (this one is pre-Salinas), and then the later post-Salinas reprise(s) of it.
I mean, assume any time you're talking with the police, you're being interrogated. If you called them yourself for something, then you've decided to take that risk, but that's also a situation where you're less likely to be in trouble yourself, though there's still a risk.
> Say they go bankrupt and an ad-tech data broker buys their assets. Now DraftKings can laser focus their ads to folks genetically predisposed to addiction.
Excellent example, but yikes!
Can an insurance company deny claim based on your DNA? They deny claims for pre-existing condition that you hid from the, which would be the wrong thing to do on your part. They cannot deny claim based on pre existing disposition. Practically everyone is predisposed for getting cancer by merely being human, you might even have cancerous cells in your body right now, that you body will destroy in a couple of minutes.
> Can even one single person here articulate their specific fears of using 23andme
Sure. I find out my competitor for the top role has a degenerative disease, e.g. Parkinson’s. It’s not relevant for many years. But I use it, subtly, to shape opinion.
More pointedly: we are in an era of mass disinformation. The simple fact that somebody used 23andMe makes any lie about it somewhat credible.
There's a whole book about said fears.
https://www.amazon.com/Change-Agent-Daniel-Suarez/dp/1101984...
>you are not it [,] get genocided.
Wouldn't the singular be 'un-alived', these fucking days?
Well for one, English is not my first language, so take it with a grain of salt. Also: when I use genocide as as a verb, it means there is a concerted effort to kill of a group of humans, that you happen to be a part of.
I know we live in an individualist society, but when you are murdered as part of a genocide that has nothing to do with you as an individual, which is a significant part of the horror of the whole thing. You are then murdered because someone thought you belonged to a group that should be wiped of the face of the earth. Whether you really belonged to that group, whether you share the ideology of the group or of those doing the genocide, wheter you are a really nice individual has nothing to do with it.
So I chose that word for a reason..
Besides the obvious examples of gathering a nice database to use for genocidal purposes... (sure lot's of idiots like to say that's overblown or not really a worry, while being alive in a world where there are on-going 'ethnic cleansing' campaigns).
There's also things like - the terms of service include the boilerplate "these terms are subject to change at any time", and I don't want those terms to suddenly change to "we will provide your PII to all insurance companies proactively in exchange for a kickback every time they are able to use it to reject a claim".
I already get hassled by the law somewhat frequently because my house used to be the residence of a criminal (2 owners ago it was used as a rental and that owner evicted said criminal). I don't want to add getting hassled by a bunch of people who came in below the max IQ requirements over someone I've never met because they're from "that side" of the family.
Sure. Someone who has their data in 23andme was someplace where something horrible happened. Law enforcement has no leads, so they process the DNA, and find no matches. They subpoena 23andme (or just look at the leaked data, who knows), and that person is now a person of interest. If they don't know they should have a lawyer on their side with them when being questioned, they might talk themselves into prison.
Now imagine that person is innocent.