Is a UK company less likely to give your data away? I thought the UK government was also in on the spying. Really, is there any company or government that you can genuinely trust not to spy on you, or to hand over your data?
It's yet to be confirmed that the UK government (or any other echelon government) can/has compelled corporations to hand over user data en mass and then lie about it.
Monitoring the pipes is also pretty greasy, but people consider those 'public' anyway and encrypt if necessary.
> An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph found that three quarters of local authorities have used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) 2000 over the past year.
The Act gives councils the right to place residents and businesses under surveillance, trace telephone and email accounts and even send staff on undercover missions.
These are all active, ongoing, abuses against real people using real data. It is a problem that GCHQ collects data, and it's a problem even if they don't grep it because eg McCarthyism could happen.
The UKCrypto mailling list possibly has some discussion about the UK laws and the requirement to not let anyone know if you're being investigated. But I have no idea what to search for. (http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/pipermail/ukcrypto/)
Exactly this. I'm not exactly sure what makes people in the UK (and disclosure: I spent 30 years of my 34-year life there) think that their country is somehow going to be more ethical. There are zero positive signals that this is going to be the case, as far as I can see, and particularly not now with the healthcare system being ripped apart. Unfortunately, I think there's a certain amount of patriotism at play here.
The UK has the world's largest DNA database. The figures Wikipedia cites suggests the UK has 10% of the population's DNA on file, whereas the US only has 0.5%. In my opinion, British people (like me!) should be far more worried about what's going on in their own backyard with regards to DNA retention and processing by the state.
I don't even know why the state would need to go through 23andme. You're shedding your DNA everywhere you go. It's not hard to collect a sample.
>You're shedding your DNA everywhere you go. It's not hard to collect a sample.
Interestingly, 23andme addresses this by requiring a quite large saliva sample. The theory being that with such a large sample required you will not be able to gather enough spit from someone surreptitiously to get their genetic profile.
It took me about 10 minutes to generate enough spit to put into the test tube to reach it to the marked fill level. It took longer because you're not allowed to drink anything for a period of time before you collect the sample.
You think that some spook is going to follow you around to collect DNA and then send it to 23aM? I think the parent commenter was probably under the impression that if the government was going to surreptitiously acquire your DNA they could probably find some testing facilities of their own.
>You think that some spook is going to follow you around to collect DNA and then send it to 23aM?
Of course not - that's silly. But I'm happy that 23andme has safeguards in place to stop regular people from surreptitiously collecting DNA from someone and using it to check their DNA.
> I don't even know why the state would need to go through 23andme.
Need, maybe not - but it's infinitely easier to send a single letter to a single company than to follow 100,000 individuals around, establish their identity and then pick up their cigarette butts.
Same deal with the phone metadata collection. You want to know if Joe Badguy is up to something, keeping poor company or hanging around the bad part of town? Much easier to pull up his cell phone and credit card data than to put a watch on him.
I went to school in the UK and there was a rape near my university. They had a program where males can come down and "voluntarily" get a cheek swab to "assist" in the investigation.
This is also the country that has the MI5 which is a stated domestic spy agency. I am completely against the NSA spying but if you are living in the UK you have less privacy and less rights in regards to search and seizure. The police can also stop you at any time and question you.
The UK probably already has everyone's DNA anyways, everytime you go to a public hospital and get bloodwork done, where does that blood go? The government already owns the hospital so it would be easy for them just to get the DNA sample at that time.
Do you believe it is hard to acquire someones DNA? Mammals shed DNA constantly. If you are interesting enough to people who have enough power to access PRISM you've already lost. I'm sure getting some of your DNA would be trivial.
If you're being individually targeted, sure. I think the argument is mostly about having your genetic information swept up in a dragnet and culled for I dunno, some genetic marker that the US intelligence community decides is an early indicator for jihad.
I think that the bigger, and more tangible worry, is that there might be something in the result of the DNA analysis that causes his children to become interesting through no fault of their own.
Hi, OP here. I guess the trick is not submitting DNA in a way which makes collection and sifting scalable. Sending people out to collect DNA would be expensive, so less likely to be used routinely.
Hey! Still pre-coffee so I'm glad my argument made some sense. Does this mean participating in government run healthcare and blood donation breaks your threat model?
Interesting question. Let's say I have a clearly defined threat model. I rate the chances of an existing database being misused as higher than the chances of a screening service which looks for one or two SNPs being secretly misused to collect entire genomes. The number of health workers who'd have to collude to operate the latter would be enormous, and it would leak like a sieve.
We're not dealing with the government from "1984" here, it's more like the one from "Brazil" (the film, not the country!).
Hi, thoughtful post. As you state in your post, the issue is not what's happening now, it's what could happen in N years from now with your genetic information that is being passively collected, stored, and selectively shared by the NSA and (probably) the GHCQ. So while I share your concerns, I don't think going with a UK company is going to afford you much more data protection.
Access to data isn't the same as having enormous databases of it, there are whole categories of abusive use for which moderately costly individual access is harmless but a big database is terrible.
This is the struggle of the internet all over again.
We'll need to have personal genome sequencers, and control and protect the flow of our genetic information, just like we need to control the flow of our speech and sites visited.
Right now a company owns the rights to the genome marker which is responsible for breast cancer.
This means nobody can check their genome for potential breast cancer without paying this company a tax. Again, this is only data.
We will have genome marker piracy soon enough, where people will be exchanging databases of genetic markers, and biopirates who help people bypass the power structures that want to own the genome markers.
There really need to be some kind of novel legal structures to cover this kind of testing. There do need to be incentives (temporary monopolies) for companies to discover, develop and validate tests, because it is expensive and takes a long time. On the other hand, there should be incentives to disseminate useful tests as quickly as possible at a fair price, and there shouldn't be undue restrictions on research. But it can't be a free-for-all either.
I agree that there will be some interesting disruption when personal genome sequencers are available. I'm not convinced that changes the struggle. I think it makes it more likely that everybody's genome will be sequenced and publicly available as it is hard to not inadvertently leave DNA somewhere.
Both USA and UK collect DNA data from the new-born children just after their birth. Yes, the New World Order.
This surveillance and all.. They want everybody to be under total and permanent control. We must stop it, while we can. Yes, adjust your priorities, freedom is much more important than security.
If you can't get them with insider trading like Naccio, radiation poisoning like Litvinenko or cancer like Jobs, this could prove an effective option in the future :P
Two things have been universally true the more we learn about the human genome:
1.) It's startling just how much is determined by genetics
2.) It's startling just how little is determined by genetics
How is it that both are true? We are constantly learning that genetics is a strong determining factor in a number of seemingly complex traits, everything from the way you comb your hair to your food preferences and more. A recent study found a single genetic locus in mice can entirely alter the manner in which they build tunnels!
But these are all seemingly complex behaviors. We are often surprised by the genetic control over such things because we can analyze these behaviors and break them down into discrete steps. To think that all of these steps, in combination, are controlled by DNA is frankly quite disturbing. It makes you wonder just how much can be determined by genetics. It might even make you question who you give access to your, or your offspring's, genetic information.
As humans, our key defining characteristic is our ability for higher cognition. While it is true that genetics provides the pallet from which your brain paints its cognitive abilities, the reality is that your children's brains will continue growing, developing, and changing for years to come. As the parent of identical twins, I expect you will get the chance to experience first hand just how much environmental factors can cause cognitive development to diverge, given the same starting genetic material.
So, yes, if the NSA got a hold of your genetic information, they might be able to determine that they should serve you steak, and not a salad, at dinner when they are attempting to recruit you to become a double agent, but they certainly won't be able to predict how loyal, hard working, diligent, or resourceful you would be in the position.
The fact that the Marshmallow Test predicts life quality doesn't mean that genetics do not. The marshmallow test may (or may not) simply reflect underlying traits that are genetically determined.
I can't find the relevant research articles at the moment, but there is evidence that success on the marshmallow test can be improved with training (also referenced at the end of this article: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/09/the-willpower-circ... )
I can't imagine a future or situation where the NSA would possibly want or need this information. I could imagine US immigration or US health insurance asking for this information if they decided to move to the US, but in both cases, they just ask for the information before allowing you to use their services.
This person is deemed unfit for office based on her genetic profile and our secret genetic standards. Commence leaking of PRISM data exposing her usage of a racial epithet in a chat 5 years ago.
See, for example, the bogus "vaccination campaign" conducted in Pakistan by CIA operatives in an effort to locate family members of bin Laden and his known associates.
For the government, the ends always justify the means. It's part of the fun of being totally unaccountable.
You don't think that PRISM-like mechanisms will eventually turn out to be a wet dream come true for a future incarnation of Joseph McCarthy or J. Edgar Hoover?
You don't have to "imagine." You just have to read. I see a lot of people here who need to read fewer Unix manuals and more history books.
It took a while for me to get the fine submitted article here to load. Submitting to HN must have slashdotted the author's site. Meanwhile, I read all the comments here. Even Google's cache of the article took a long time to load.
The author's concerns are largely about the privacy differences between a company based in the United States and a company based in the UK. As comments here and on the general issue of government surveillance over the past month have pointed out, that is a distinction without much of a difference. If networks don't have technical protocols that are completely proof against third-party hacking, AND protected by data privacy rules respected by all national governments, any data about you gathered by anyone might possibly be read by anyone else. After all, United States diplomatic cables that were classified and sent through supposedly secure channels are now readable by anyone anywhere in the world who visits the Wikileaks website. And so on. Without united effort by all countries and some considerable developments in technical protocols, it is doubtful that any of us have privacy from any would-be viewer--not from Al Qaeda, not from the Russian security agencies, and not from anyone.
On the broader topic of what can be known about an individual from an individual's genome, I'll share some links to some recent publications about behavior genetics. Genomes are less revelatory than some researchers supposed that they would be a few years ago. That doesn't stop individual genomes from being very good identifiers of individuals, but it means that classifying people by their genetically revealed propensity for one kind of behavior or another is probably a fool's errand.
HERITABILITY FAQ
It is well known, on the one hand, that ALL human behavioral characteristics are heritable. (It is an abuse of language to say "heritable" in this context, but the abuse is conventional and standard in the field.) So we can agree with the professional literature that your tendency to vote for one political party rather than another is heritable. Your attribution of causes for human differences (e.g., human differences in IQ) is also heritable. Your opinion about regulation of the Internet is heritable. Everything about human behavior is heritable.
Eric Turkheimer has recently been president of the Behavior Genetics Association, and he has the very kind habit of posting most of his peer-reviewed journal articles on his faculty website.
I have the pleasure of meeting many other researchers in human genetics just about weekly during the school year at the University of Minnesota "journal club" Psychology 8935: Readings in Behavioral Genetics and Individual Differences Psychology. From those sources and other sources, I have learned about current review articles on human behavior genetics that help dispel misconceptions that are even commonplace among medically or scientifically trained persons who aren't keeping up with current research.
An interesting review article,
Turkheimer, E. (2008, Spring). A better way to use twins for developmental research. LIFE Newsletter, 2, 1-5
admits the disappointment of behavior genetics researchers.
"But back to the question: What does heritability mean? Almost everyone who has ever thought about heritability has reached a commonsense intuition about it: On...
> not from Al Qaeda, not from the Russian security agencies, and not from anyone
That's a silly strawman. No one has the capability that the NSA has, lavishly funded as it is by the world's wealthiest superpower. There is absolutely no reason to fear Al-Qaeda getting into your data.
That's not the point. I believe OP is speaking of security by design (as opposed to security by policy), such that no malicious/unauthorized user will _ever_ have the ability to see the data, even if 100 years from now Al Qaeda is the world's wealthiest superpower.
With the NSA saving all your data, it's entirely possible someone could steal it. Unlikely maybe, but your data may very well be there 50 years later. Whatever the government becomes, whoever gets access to that data in that time, how many people will have tried to hack into it in that time.
Heritability is precisely specified. It allows you to make predictions within its realm of validity. It's useful and so it is used.
If you know my genome, and you know the broad social environment I live in, you can make more accurate predictions about my obesity than if you only know my social environment.
> This is no mere statistical fine point: it means that the entire project of assessing how essentially genetic traits are in terms of measured heritability coefficients is a fool’s errand.
The key word in this statement is "essentially," which in this context is being used to mean "fundamentally." But we DO know something about the environment, so it doesn't matter if heritability is a "fundamental" measure, if all you want to do is use it to make predictions about things.
If you live on an Earth that has food on it you can expect that the heritability of "starves to death" is different than if you live on an Earth that does not have food on it, in which case heritability is undefined because everyone dies (no variation, divide by zero). Similarly, if you have performed your heritability studies in a modern Western society then that heritability estimate remains valid for people drawn from that society despite the fact that it is not an "essential" measure of anything.
None of this contradicts the quotes that you have included, but I want to make sure people understand that there is actually a reason we use heritability, it matches intuitions so long as your environment is fixed or similar, and that it does actually provide us with information about the world we live in. It doesn't tell you how controllable a phenotype is through environmental factors, but it does tell you how much it's being controlled right now.
Ben, pat yourself on the back... you potentially thwarted a world renowned, best-of-class spy agency from collecting invasive personal data from your very lifeblood, your children. This may be the difference between your kids being ordinary nerds taking pictures of themselves hiking through a wildlife sanctuary while uploading their location to foursquare and being falsely implicated in a plot to overthrow the government and thrown into Guantanamo Bay.
And thankfully, you didn't stop at merely declining getting your kids' DNA tested, ignoring the peer pressure of all your cool yuppie friends who did so with their kids. Instead, you blogged your decision, and thereby recording your extreme intelligence and wit in a free permanent form for the masses to consume and benefit from.
I salute you, sir. A freedom fighter to which we all should bow to.
I pray to the FSM for this PRISM-induced group psychosis to end.
I agree the NSA overstepped their authority. But the idea that A) they would want this information B) they wouldn't have trivially easy ways of otherwise getting this information (ie a single hair) or C) that this information would somehow be safer with a UK based firm are all _hilarious_.
C is reasonable. Maybe if DNA gathering robots become cheap enough, and the NSA starts scouring the world vacuuming up DNA for the database -- then B might be reasonable, but probably not. We are talking about broad programmatic collection, not anything targeted. A is wrong... Clearly they want whatever they can get their hands on (from washington post: http://bit.ly/11PFiH7).
The real argument is that the likelihood of this decision making a difference in the life of his kids is very small. But from an ideological standpoint he might not care. Maybe if that type of attitude became a wider trend, a difference could be made? Who knows. I respect his decision though.
I back to point A. The NSA doesn't want my stinking DNA. There's no actionable intelligence from it, which is the "all" referred to in that silly WP link. It's completely lunacy. The other two are moot points as a result, I just though they were funny.
Jeez, even if they have it, who the hell cares beyond it beyond the the principle of having my privacy invaded.
This thread is idiotic. HN quality has been just obliterated with the tin-foil hat/NWO crowd. The stupid is just breathtaking.
Hi, OP here. Have to say I'm actually pretty tired of all the PRISM stuff too, but this issue got me interested.
If someone were to get into a position of power, the knowledge that said individual was likely to succumb to a neurodegenerative condition would be pretty actionable intelligence. That sort of thing.
I think you have the makings of a good point. I really don't think the NSA is interested in this data. Now employers, insurance companies, or universities might find it very interesting.
I think you had your heart in the right place, and largely agree with your reasoning. I just blame different principals. And I would be more worried about more mundane stuff, like having it be made parts of routine physicals, than I would be about anything black hat.
EDIT: also, I was not referring to you with the, "This thread is idiotic. HN quality has been just obliterated with the tin-foil hat/NWO crowd. The stupid is just breathtaking." comment. That was directed towards to of the other comments that are not members of what I would consider "reality".
Note that this article is based on two scientists who lost their daughter in a school shooting... implying that angry, emotionally-distraught smart people could be a powerful force in bringing the New World Order down on us.
Very thought provoking and not something I'd considered. My wife is keen on some genetic testing and we had been looking at US based companies. Will think again.
1) the image of DNA in that picture has a huge artificial pyrene base pair in the middle (array of four green hexagons canted about 10 degrees from the horizontal plane). This would not be good for you if you had it in your DNA.
2) If you're thinking about edward snowden, I'm really not sure what you expect to be "keeping safe" from the government. unlike digital information, your DNA cannot be encrypted and you are sloughing it off everywhere you go. If the government really wants to know something about your DNA, it is TRIVIAL for them to do so. Perhaps being put into a database makes it one step easier, but it's not entirely clear to me what they would use that data for, except maybe, to try to poison you or something. Or, possible, pre-crime stuff. If the US is doing that sort of stuff on a large enough scale that you should be worried about them going through the effort of targetting you through your DNA, then you've got more to worry about because in your case the rule of law really means nothing, and there are easier, "more conventional" means for you to be subjected to the long arm of the law than those threatened by your DNA "secrets" being compromised.
You don't have to give the real identity of the person whose sample you're supplying, you're entirely free to give someone else cash to make the purchase on your behalf.
Good point, although I guess at some point they can detect that and correct for it. But yes, potentially I could still use the company I wanted and give bogus info. They do seem very good.
Not sure they'd like me doing it. Or perhaps their real-id policy is just down to legislation and they'd be happy to get the cash whatever.
You don't have to give bogus info, the person who makes the payment needs to enter their real details for the payment to go through, but when you submit a sample I believe that as long as you confirm on the agreement that you have consent from the person whose saliva it is then you don't need to give their actual identity.
67 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 140 ms ] threadMonitoring the pipes is also pretty greasy, but people consider those 'public' anyway and encrypt if necessary.
Also, the UK Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) which is the main law governing spies doing mass collection of content and meta-data has many more abuses - (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2696031/Anti-terroris...)
> An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph found that three quarters of local authorities have used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) 2000 over the past year. The Act gives councils the right to place residents and businesses under surveillance, trace telephone and email accounts and even send staff on undercover missions.
These are all active, ongoing, abuses against real people using real data. It is a problem that GCHQ collects data, and it's a problem even if they don't grep it because eg McCarthyism could happen.
The UKCrypto mailling list possibly has some discussion about the UK laws and the requirement to not let anyone know if you're being investigated. But I have no idea what to search for. (http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/pipermail/ukcrypto/)
I don't even know why the state would need to go through 23andme. You're shedding your DNA everywhere you go. It's not hard to collect a sample.
Interestingly, 23andme addresses this by requiring a quite large saliva sample. The theory being that with such a large sample required you will not be able to gather enough spit from someone surreptitiously to get their genetic profile.
It took me about 10 minutes to generate enough spit to put into the test tube to reach it to the marked fill level. It took longer because you're not allowed to drink anything for a period of time before you collect the sample.
Of course not - that's silly. But I'm happy that 23andme has safeguards in place to stop regular people from surreptitiously collecting DNA from someone and using it to check their DNA.
Need, maybe not - but it's infinitely easier to send a single letter to a single company than to follow 100,000 individuals around, establish their identity and then pick up their cigarette butts.
Same deal with the phone metadata collection. You want to know if Joe Badguy is up to something, keeping poor company or hanging around the bad part of town? Much easier to pull up his cell phone and credit card data than to put a watch on him.
This is also the country that has the MI5 which is a stated domestic spy agency. I am completely against the NSA spying but if you are living in the UK you have less privacy and less rights in regards to search and seizure. The police can also stop you at any time and question you.
We're not dealing with the government from "1984" here, it's more like the one from "Brazil" (the film, not the country!).
We'll need to have personal genome sequencers, and control and protect the flow of our genetic information, just like we need to control the flow of our speech and sites visited.
Right now a company owns the rights to the genome marker which is responsible for breast cancer.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130713/01171423788/myriad...
This means nobody can check their genome for potential breast cancer without paying this company a tax. Again, this is only data.
We will have genome marker piracy soon enough, where people will be exchanging databases of genetic markers, and biopirates who help people bypass the power structures that want to own the genome markers.
[1]http://bcaction.org/2013/06/13/breast-cancer-action-wins-sco...
[2]http://www.aclu.org/womens-rights/supreme-court-invalidates-...
There really need to be some kind of novel legal structures to cover this kind of testing. There do need to be incentives (temporary monopolies) for companies to discover, develop and validate tests, because it is expensive and takes a long time. On the other hand, there should be incentives to disseminate useful tests as quickly as possible at a fair price, and there shouldn't be undue restrictions on research. But it can't be a free-for-all either.
This surveillance and all.. They want everybody to be under total and permanent control. We must stop it, while we can. Yes, adjust your priorities, freedom is much more important than security.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_National_DNA_Da...
EDIT: correct me if I'm wrong, but it isn't mandatory either, which your comment implies.
http://newbornbloodspot.screening.nhs.uk/
Mind you - it looks like a pretty sensible project, but I can see how people might have privacy concerns about it.
http://www.examiner.com/article/csi-fraud-fake-dna-evidence
The premise is that newborns are screened for genetic diseases, but the samples are then kept, sometimes indefinitely.
1.) It's startling just how much is determined by genetics
2.) It's startling just how little is determined by genetics
How is it that both are true? We are constantly learning that genetics is a strong determining factor in a number of seemingly complex traits, everything from the way you comb your hair to your food preferences and more. A recent study found a single genetic locus in mice can entirely alter the manner in which they build tunnels!
But these are all seemingly complex behaviors. We are often surprised by the genetic control over such things because we can analyze these behaviors and break them down into discrete steps. To think that all of these steps, in combination, are controlled by DNA is frankly quite disturbing. It makes you wonder just how much can be determined by genetics. It might even make you question who you give access to your, or your offspring's, genetic information.
You know what is an even stronger determining factor of overall life quality, though? The Marshmallow Test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment).
As humans, our key defining characteristic is our ability for higher cognition. While it is true that genetics provides the pallet from which your brain paints its cognitive abilities, the reality is that your children's brains will continue growing, developing, and changing for years to come. As the parent of identical twins, I expect you will get the chance to experience first hand just how much environmental factors can cause cognitive development to diverge, given the same starting genetic material.
So, yes, if the NSA got a hold of your genetic information, they might be able to determine that they should serve you steak, and not a salad, at dinner when they are attempting to recruit you to become a double agent, but they certainly won't be able to predict how loyal, hard working, diligent, or resourceful you would be in the position.
[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/10/13/t...
[2] http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/ckidd/papers/KiddPalmeri...
This article is almost a parody.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/...
If massive databases containing DNA information could be as easily accessed as facebook user data, why would the NSA not 'collect it all'?
It's not going to tell you who is exchanging information or plans like Facebook messages would.
So why do they want DNA? Ask the State Department. I'm not a geneticist, but if it was completely useless they would not be collecting it.
My point is that the current infeasibility of collecting everyone's DNA could be the only reason they're not doing it.
Edit: And ask the NSA or FBI if they'd like to have the DNA of every possible terrorist (and, incidentally, yours and mine).
For the government, the ends always justify the means. It's part of the fun of being totally unaccountable.
You don't have to "imagine." You just have to read. I see a lot of people here who need to read fewer Unix manuals and more history books.
The author's concerns are largely about the privacy differences between a company based in the United States and a company based in the UK. As comments here and on the general issue of government surveillance over the past month have pointed out, that is a distinction without much of a difference. If networks don't have technical protocols that are completely proof against third-party hacking, AND protected by data privacy rules respected by all national governments, any data about you gathered by anyone might possibly be read by anyone else. After all, United States diplomatic cables that were classified and sent through supposedly secure channels are now readable by anyone anywhere in the world who visits the Wikileaks website. And so on. Without united effort by all countries and some considerable developments in technical protocols, it is doubtful that any of us have privacy from any would-be viewer--not from Al Qaeda, not from the Russian security agencies, and not from anyone.
On the broader topic of what can be known about an individual from an individual's genome, I'll share some links to some recent publications about behavior genetics. Genomes are less revelatory than some researchers supposed that they would be a few years ago. That doesn't stop individual genomes from being very good identifiers of individuals, but it means that classifying people by their genetically revealed propensity for one kind of behavior or another is probably a fool's errand.
HERITABILITY FAQ
It is well known, on the one hand, that ALL human behavioral characteristics are heritable. (It is an abuse of language to say "heritable" in this context, but the abuse is conventional and standard in the field.) So we can agree with the professional literature that your tendency to vote for one political party rather than another is heritable. Your attribution of causes for human differences (e.g., human differences in IQ) is also heritable. Your opinion about regulation of the Internet is heritable. Everything about human behavior is heritable.
Eric Turkheimer has recently been president of the Behavior Genetics Association, and he has the very kind habit of posting most of his peer-reviewed journal articles on his faculty website.
http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/vita1_turkheimer.htm
Lars Penke is another, younger researcher who posts most of his publications on his personal website.
http://www.larspenke.eu/en/publications/publications.html
I have the pleasure of meeting many other researchers in human genetics just about weekly during the school year at the University of Minnesota "journal club" Psychology 8935: Readings in Behavioral Genetics and Individual Differences Psychology. From those sources and other sources, I have learned about current review articles on human behavior genetics that help dispel misconceptions that are even commonplace among medically or scientifically trained persons who aren't keeping up with current research.
An interesting review article,
Turkheimer, E. (2008, Spring). A better way to use twins for developmental research. LIFE Newsletter, 2, 1-5
http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20O...
admits the disappointment of behavior genetics researchers.
"But back to the question: What does heritability mean? Almost everyone who has ever thought about heritability has reached a commonsense intuition about it: On...
That's a silly strawman. No one has the capability that the NSA has, lavishly funded as it is by the world's wealthiest superpower. There is absolutely no reason to fear Al-Qaeda getting into your data.
If you know my genome, and you know the broad social environment I live in, you can make more accurate predictions about my obesity than if you only know my social environment.
> This is no mere statistical fine point: it means that the entire project of assessing how essentially genetic traits are in terms of measured heritability coefficients is a fool’s errand.
The key word in this statement is "essentially," which in this context is being used to mean "fundamentally." But we DO know something about the environment, so it doesn't matter if heritability is a "fundamental" measure, if all you want to do is use it to make predictions about things.
If you live on an Earth that has food on it you can expect that the heritability of "starves to death" is different than if you live on an Earth that does not have food on it, in which case heritability is undefined because everyone dies (no variation, divide by zero). Similarly, if you have performed your heritability studies in a modern Western society then that heritability estimate remains valid for people drawn from that society despite the fact that it is not an "essential" measure of anything.
None of this contradicts the quotes that you have included, but I want to make sure people understand that there is actually a reason we use heritability, it matches intuitions so long as your environment is fixed or similar, and that it does actually provide us with information about the world we live in. It doesn't tell you how controllable a phenotype is through environmental factors, but it does tell you how much it's being controlled right now.
It seems to be working again now, but I've reposted the article on my Neocities page in case there's another tidal wave of visits.
http://bencollier.neocities.org/
And thankfully, you didn't stop at merely declining getting your kids' DNA tested, ignoring the peer pressure of all your cool yuppie friends who did so with their kids. Instead, you blogged your decision, and thereby recording your extreme intelligence and wit in a free permanent form for the masses to consume and benefit from.
I salute you, sir. A freedom fighter to which we all should bow to.
I pray to the FSM for this PRISM-induced group psychosis to end.
I agree the NSA overstepped their authority. But the idea that A) they would want this information B) they wouldn't have trivially easy ways of otherwise getting this information (ie a single hair) or C) that this information would somehow be safer with a UK based firm are all _hilarious_.
The real argument is that the likelihood of this decision making a difference in the life of his kids is very small. But from an ideological standpoint he might not care. Maybe if that type of attitude became a wider trend, a difference could be made? Who knows. I respect his decision though.
Jeez, even if they have it, who the hell cares beyond it beyond the the principle of having my privacy invaded.
This thread is idiotic. HN quality has been just obliterated with the tin-foil hat/NWO crowd. The stupid is just breathtaking.
If someone were to get into a position of power, the knowledge that said individual was likely to succumb to a neurodegenerative condition would be pretty actionable intelligence. That sort of thing.
I think you have the makings of a good point. I really don't think the NSA is interested in this data. Now employers, insurance companies, or universities might find it very interesting.
I think you had your heart in the right place, and largely agree with your reasoning. I just blame different principals. And I would be more worried about more mundane stuff, like having it be made parts of routine physicals, than I would be about anything black hat.
EDIT: also, I was not referring to you with the, "This thread is idiotic. HN quality has been just obliterated with the tin-foil hat/NWO crowd. The stupid is just breathtaking." comment. That was directed towards to of the other comments that are not members of what I would consider "reality".
"Scientists Seek Biomarkers For Violence" http://science.slashdot.org/story/13/07/16/1531241/scientist...
Note that this article is based on two scientists who lost their daughter in a school shooting... implying that angry, emotionally-distraught smart people could be a powerful force in bringing the New World Order down on us.
2) If you're thinking about edward snowden, I'm really not sure what you expect to be "keeping safe" from the government. unlike digital information, your DNA cannot be encrypted and you are sloughing it off everywhere you go. If the government really wants to know something about your DNA, it is TRIVIAL for them to do so. Perhaps being put into a database makes it one step easier, but it's not entirely clear to me what they would use that data for, except maybe, to try to poison you or something. Or, possible, pre-crime stuff. If the US is doing that sort of stuff on a large enough scale that you should be worried about them going through the effort of targetting you through your DNA, then you've got more to worry about because in your case the rule of law really means nothing, and there are easier, "more conventional" means for you to be subjected to the long arm of the law than those threatened by your DNA "secrets" being compromised.
Not sure they'd like me doing it. Or perhaps their real-id policy is just down to legislation and they'd be happy to get the cash whatever.