
Estonia Wants to Collect the DNA of All Its Citizens - quotha
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/is-a-biobank-system-the-future-of-personalized-medicine/409558/?single_page=true
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geofft
This is the same government who can't remember that RSA keys generally use
_positive numbers_? [https://crbug.com/532048](https://crbug.com/532048)

The idea in theory is interesting, but for something even more high-profile
than national identity cards, please hire some folks who can triple-check your
work....

~~~
steckerbrett
Looks like they screwed up the DER encoding more than the actual cryptography,
incredibly stupid but understandable.

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vonklaus
THe article notes ~$5K to sequence a genome, it sounds like we are pretty
close to ~$1K genome sequence[0] going into production. This is a great thing.

The privacy concerns surrounding this topic are _very_ real and _very_
complicated. It took me a long time to make up my own mind, however, I am
convinved this is a great step forward. Having access to the sourcecode of 8
Billion github repos, if you had the technology to process the data, would
make you quite good at fixing bugs so to speak.

The value of a genome will be quite high in the future, and if we allow the
data sets to be public this will cut out many IP issues. Anonymizing the data
is fundamental, as is an open process and total transparency around
collection, storage and the resulting sequence. All this data needs to be
public and free.

The value of rare genomic anomolies will be evident in the near future, and
having public data is a way to combat unethical testing or information
siloing.

[0][http://www.nature.com/news/is-the-1-000-genome-for-
real-1.14...](http://www.nature.com/news/is-the-1-000-genome-for-real-1.14530)

~~~
pavement
So...

The weird thing about DNA and genes is that the data, should you have access
to it in it's original form, as samples of biological material, is never
anonymous.

The techniques that effectively anonymize genetic information, typically
render it as an unusable data set for practical purposes.

The only thing that makes DNA anonymous is constructing an unrelated set of
hash keys as lookups, and then using these coded tokens as decoupled
representational references to a remote system that mitigates requests. Even
then, even without access to the direct data, the traits expressed _COULD_
still accidentally identify certain members of the set very easily.

How many albinos are in the set? How many male albinos? How many male albinos
with blood type O positive? Oh look, it's Joe and it turns out he's a carrier
for this other embarrassing genotype. Whoops, secret's out and everyone knows,
and there's no going back!

So phenotypes can still identify people inadvertently, and then provide
opportunities for the enumeration of members, through process of elimination,
inherently weakening what might become a theater of anonymity.

But more terrible still, is, let's just say they give the raw genetic data up.
Say you have a juicy tidbit of information you pulled from the collection of
samples, and you think you know who it is. So you surreptitiously snag a hair
follicle from them. It's them all right, and you can prove it conclusively.
Maybe your a nice guy and you won't misuse this sort of advantage, but is that
true for everyone at large, throughout society?

With DNA, genomes and genetic evidence, you kind of just have to keep saying
to yourself " _this is not anonymizable, it will never be anonymous, we cannot
truly de-identify anyone 's DNA_" and the sooner we come to terms with that,
the better we'll get at dealing with this sort of data.

~~~
tedd4u
Re "anonymizing DNA": In a sense, isn't an individual's DNA sequence the
closest thing to a perfect and intrinsic identifier? Only fails to work in the
case of identical twins ...

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draugadrotten
Sweden already does this . Since 1974 all newborns have been DNA tested and
stored in the "PKU" bio register.
[http://vavnad.se/cms/sites/Biobanken/home/in-
english.html](http://vavnad.se/cms/sites/Biobanken/home/in-english.html)

It's also been used to catch at least one murderer of a celebrity, but
generally is not used for crime such as rape cases.

~~~
botten
"a celeberity" = The foreign minister

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logn
About 75 years ago, Nazis occupied Estonia and exterminated Jews. I don't
think it's wise to keep a population's DNA on file.

~~~
mahouse
...what?

~~~
logn
DNA could be used for nefarious purposes. If eugenicists like the Nazis could
have stolen Estonia's DNA records, they could have more efficiently committed
genocide.

I can't find the story now, but there was one country which kept on file the
religion of each citizen. Nazis gained control of the building with those
records. Some rebels were successful in burning those files, saving many
people's lives.

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zxexz
Interesting. I do worry about the security implications, especially after
watching this talk[0] about the security of Estonia's e-voting system. The
government does not seem to have a wonderful sense of how to handle
information securely, and does not take to criticism of its security protocols
kindly. Here[1] is a tweet from the Estonian CIO in response to questioning
about the video.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY_pHvhE4os](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY_pHvhE4os)
[1]
[https://twitter.com/taavikotka/status/612281286011568128](https://twitter.com/taavikotka/status/612281286011568128)

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jevinskie
I didn't see anywhere in the article mention the ability (or lack of) to use
DNA for criminal prosecution. Does anybody have more information about that?

~~~
vonklaus
_" Estonian Human Genes Research Act governs the activities of the biobanking
project: It establishes anonymity in clinical research, enables donors to
decide which studies they want to participate in, and gives donors full
control over who has access to their data. By default, a donor’s doctor is the
only other person who can look at his or her genetic information through the
portal"_

In Estonia, if you meant relative to this article, the DNA is anonymous and it
is implied unusable in court. If you are referring to the recent article about
invalidity of DNA evidence in court cases, IIRC it was procedural but I
couldn't find much more on it, and I too would be interested.

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wildlogic
Does this apply to e-Estonians as well?

