Sperm donors in our State were guaranteed that their identities would never be revealed & later, that any identifying information had been destroyed.
Last year the present government changed the rules. Bingo!! all the private data was still there so the donors could be located by their offspring.

On one level I feel sympathy for the young people wanting to find their bio father - however this is another example of why you shouldn't ever trust any bureaucrat with any more than minimum data; much less in the case of a for-profit company.

You can always trust the government.

I have not participated in this DNA stuff, but I don't condemn anyone that has nor would I call them foolish.

You want to see foolish, you can always read a PARF thread.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/off-topic-politics-religion/945194-all-big-ancestry-sites-owned-mormons.html

Don't worry, your DNA is all safe, it's in a big cave.

What gets missed in these discussions is that Constitutional privacy has not generally applied to things that were shared with 3rd parties, the exception being conversations that were traditionally private (hence the wiretap laws). If you give something to some random company, there was never any Constitutional protection.

every time I see these commercials I wonder how a person can be so trusting. seems foolish to me.

its funny, people put their entire life on facebook or twitter, let advertisers track what websites they goto and you are worried about DNA?

I think everyones DNA should be on record.
it would help ID criminals and bodies that are found.

you need a drivers license? no need for SSN and birth cert, just go spit in a cup or pop one off, then a quick ID of the DNA and your done.
then they could put a chip in your forehead and then they just scan your head. you could even use that instead of a credit card.
after walmart scans all your groceries with that hand held scanner you just lean over they scan your head.

you could even get an ad on feature of GPS. you go missing? no problem.

People put more incriminating evidence on social media every day. The cops can get your DNA without a warrant by watching you and then grabbing your empty soda can or coffee cup or finished cigarette butt after you discard them. They can get pretty much anything with a warrant. They can haul you in, strap you down and forcibly draw blood if they have a warrant. Not sure I'm too outraged that companies comply with warrants and court orders.

Exactly.
The government was generally hampered to abiding by the 4A restrictions unless special provisions in the Patriot Act which allow the NSA (Total Informational Awareness Programs/Prisim/etc) or other domestic security agency, perhaps even foreign intelligence allies which are privy to this data mining tap, to act without needing any just cause or warrant, and if those agencies feel there is a need to investigate something further they can, using either intensive scrutiny or blanket fishing monitoring upon the general public.
..um..let me rephrase the above..
There are no longer any government restrictions using the 4A.

And if there were any 4A restrictions they would be easily skirted: It's a small step for the myriad of background applications within all wireless or RFID interconnected devices provided by social media companies such as Google/Facebook/etc to initially intercept the data instead, and then give those very same government surveillance programs 'an anonymous tip'. wink wink wink.

The customer signed up to be monitored.
How simple is that?
All it takes is to get people socially addicted to using these platforms all the time.

Third party contracts are just willing engagements anyways.
The relationship is only bound by a complex one-side EULA contract, with nullification of such the only legal recourse for the harmed individual.
"Oh yeah try to prove we torted any of yall little biatches and try to prove you've been damaged by us specifically. We at a higher level than tobacco. We worth billions and it's all proprietary or top secret. We got binders full of legal firms and the means to shadow-ban anything you say or sue you for libel."

A harmonious relationship benefiting both government and private industry.
And of course those big media companies (owned by certain types of people who were totally not involved in 9/11) would then be privy to the limitless wealth of military defense funding available for 3rd party subcontractors.
It's the big military-industrial business of big data.
That's where the real gub'mint gravy is at.
Selling phones is secondary.

I just don't anything that requires them to need my DNA or listen to my phone calls.

its kind of like getting shot by a cop, I just do what they say. don't run, don't be a threat and don't argue.

just a point of clarification here....when you guys say 'people put their lives on social media' not ALL people do that. some of us are not willing to participate in the likes of facebook and twitter and such.

This is social media right here.

and many times anti-social.

The tin foil hat brigade is amusing.

cute but I think most would see facebook and twitter to be considerably more dangerous in terms of exposing ones life to the masses. pretty sure you're smart enough to see the difference.

Ah, the old "if you have nothing to hide" argument.

When I read the article, I remembered your post LINK from last year where you were warning of the pitfalls of DNA testing.

Not sure how I feel about possible privacy violations, but glad they caught him.

If your are referring to the recent capture of the "Golden State Killer", that DNA connection was obtained through a public, open source, DNA site from which anyone can find possible familial connections from its database of voluntarily submitted DNA profiles. People who use the site do it for a reason--to find others who have similar DNA profiles to locate relatives. Everyone who uses it is conducting a fishing expedition in a public "pond" of DNA profiles. In this case, the police went fishing in the pond as well.

It is not like 23AndMe and others where access to other profiles would require a warrant indicating there was already a suspect but confirmation was needed.

Last year I got curious about the whole ancestry thing.

So I traced my ancestors back the early 1460 in England and Scotland.
I found my father's DNA results online, as well as two other individuals who's DNA was very, very close to his. One in tejas, one in Europe.
I found that I belonged in haplogroup 1-lineage with ISOGG long form I1, FTDNA short hand I-M253.
And i did all that in only a couple hours.

There is so much information out there on just about all of us it is boggling.
Our only hope at anonymity is that volume. Hopefully there will never be a reason to single us out of the crowd.

Being adopted, I thought briefly about going for the testing...then thought it might be best to let sleeping dogs lie. I'm pretty sure that not all birth family reunions are happy ones.

Have to admit, didn't think of the 4th amendment implications. Jeff's post makes me doubly glad I passed.

Meant to post my comment on the Golden State Killer thread...

It is quite possible, and even likely that the FBI already has a file on me. OTOH, my driving record is quite clean.

People are following you. They are also following me. I'm just not paranoid. The freedoms I enjoy are not an illusion, but they are limited. The irony of this situation is that the ones most willing to fight for personal freedom are often the most easily manipulated, and seem to have no real insight into the needs of future generations.

Thus we fail.

Being involved in energy production, international travel, along with my "spoon" hobby, I have had several FBI background checks. My fingerprints are all on file. Most recent set was for a TWIC card for working in refineries around the ports. - Full finger prints.

Knowing the issues with third parties holding data, and the lax requirements by the US governement to get third party data, I store my data on local servers. As the DNA industry was getting started, I always thought that information would be easily available with a simple warrant. And since it is held by a third party, there is no pesky need to inform YOU that your data was collected.

Nope, not going to voluntarily give my DNA data to a third party, who will then keep it on file.