
CIA’s Venture Capital Arm Is Funding Skin Care Products That Collect DNA - etiam
https://theintercept.com/2016/04/08/cia-skincare-startup/
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Roritharr
As someone who likes their database tables correctly named, without
duplication and containing all the data, I can understand the urge to deploy
this as a handsoap to all public restrooms with sinks that can collect water
samples.

It's just too neat and clean of a trap to not use it.

~~~
throwaway2048
This is a small example of what might or might not be done, but its also a
great example of the corrosive effects of lack of trust in institutions of
society, and one of the largest reasons why the NSA et all are so incredibly
dangerous.

Our society works because of trust, take that away and stuff breaks down,
badly.

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maxander
Its not clear to me how this would be useful for nefarious purposes. Surely,
to apply this detergent and collect the resulting biomarkers in a controlled
fashion, they would require fairly complete access to the target individual?
As in, the target would have to be sitting there letting an agent rub their
arm with some swabs. And there have to be easier ways to do the same thing-
file a sharp edge into the back of a door handle could likely get enough skin
cells to extract DNA, without being too obtrusive. Am I missing something?

~~~
Giorgi
Nope, article is garbage

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aaronmck
Ironically they're targeting the wrong end of the person. The sewers would be
a great place to collect DNA and narrow down a manhunt in a large metropolitan
area.

~~~
Kenji
Wow, mind = blown. You could perform binary search on the sewers to find a
criminal. Hah, that would be ridiculous if that was possible.

~~~
mikeyouse
There were some indications that we attempted a focused attempt in Pakistan
during the hunt for Bin Laden.. From an interview with the Bureau Chief of
Time who wrote the full detail story about how it went down:

> _CROWLEY: Right. Unfortunately, Allison 's language had to be a little bit
> cryptic. They couldn't confirm exactly what they had done, but he writes
> that in some of the option they consider were testing. It's not pleasant
> testing the sewage in the town for genetic markers, and then, another was
> this UAV. Actually, it wasn't an eagle size UAV. It's much smaller._

[http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1204/26/sp.02.html](http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1204/26/sp.02.html)

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Aelinsaar
History is going to be so monumentally unkind to this period of American
history. :/

~~~
rhizome
Eh, not necessarily. This could be the last period when things were still
really really good.

~~~
rayiner
Barring disruption of the government, the future will be fairer and more just
than today, just as today is fairer and more just yesterday.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Can you provide any examples of things that are less fair and less just now
than they have been any time in the past 100 years?

~~~
tripzilch
I'm pretty sure there must have been a few times in the past 100 years where
the US's crimes against humanity as broadly detailed in the CIA torture report
wouldn't have been as widely & flat-out ignored ... (as the forces behind your
collectively turning a blind eye aren't very fair or just either)

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daveguy
Can others confirm/deny this:

Google this, no quotes: snopes Skincential Sciences CIA

Then duckduckgo the same, no quotes.

Did anyone else get disturbingly little response from google, but very
detailed and recent results from duckduckgo?

I searched this precisely because I was skeptical, but that search result was
just weird.

EDIT: For me it happens both in regular, tracked search and in an incognito
tab.

EDIT2: Dropping snopes gives a regular result from google and searching just
snopes does too. I think google's ML initiative may not be working out as well
as they hoped.

~~~
ced
The DDG results are about snopes, or Skincential Sciences CIA, but not both.
If you remove snopes, the Google results look fine to me.

~~~
daveguy
Thanks for the confirm. Maybe someone at google listened to people complaining
(or their algos learned) that when people search many specific words they are
looking for a specific thing and not to randomly drop it.

Also, as a side note (not directly to you but so I don't clutter the feed).
The CIA does not have a "venture capital arm". The company in question is a
private company, who's purpose is to develop intel tech and sell it to the
CIA. They are not associated with the CIA in any official capacity, but they
do seem to have a cozy relationship: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-
Tel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel)

Edit: Also, on duckduckgo the first two results I get are specific to both
this story about skincential and the cia.

~~~
lucaspiller
> The CIA does not have a "venture capital arm".

Plot twist... YCombinator is the venture capital arm of the CIA /s

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sehugg
You might want to catch the 1997 scifi flick Gattaca on Amazon Prime before it
becomes anachronistic.

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nieuweyork
I thought one of the reasons why everything had to be done by the free market
was that government is bad at picking winners. But what do you know?

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rubyfan
Why are we letting this go on?

~~~
noobermin
I'll bite, why is this something we shouldn't "let go on?" The CIA invests in
companies doing research that support it's mission. You can disagree with the
mission and work to change it, but what is wrong here? Why is it a crime to
let a company develop this technology?

~~~
technologia
I agree, we can all sit and bitch about this all day but if you want to make a
change in their policy why not go work for them?

\-------------- Just to note, the later part of this isn't directed at you
@noobermin, just my own rant (sorry) \--------------

Also, there are plenty of companies that are in their portfolio that we are
happily using without complaint.

What this company is doing isn't wrong and assuming that the CIA is going to
abuse it is wrong as well. Do people realize the hoops and hurdles these folks
have to go through before they are even allowed to even be in the room with
some of this stuff?

The people working there are everyday folks that feel the same about the abuse
of technology and work very hard for little pay to ensure that they aren't
infringing anyone's rights. Sure it isn't perfect all the time, but for the
most part they do their job well considering we almost never hear about their
successes till several decades later.

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trevmckendrick
Why in God's name does the CIA have a VC fund?

~~~
neotek
If you step back from the conspiracy theory stuff, why _shouldn 't_ the CIA
have a VC fund? They have a vested interested in fostering technology that
could serve their purposes, so why not ensure that technology finds the
funding it needs to mature?

Consider also that research grants from the Department of Defence are
effectively the same thing, the government sponsoring technology that it might
find a military application for, and those grants brought us the internet so
it's not all bad.

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known
Why covertly collect when they summon anybody?

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aburan28
I wouldn't be surprised if they already collecting DNA samples in bulk from
the sewage systems of America

~~~
sitkack
When I was a child there was a government program to take bio samples (blood
and finger prints) from children in case of abduction. This was in the early
80s. So I would wager that this has been going on for a great long while.

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andrewgjohnson
"CIA's Venture Capital Arm"

Stahp

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tn13
I am not too worried. CIA isn't what they show in TV dramas. It is just
another incompetent organization that will go after weak. These are the same
jerks who have not really achieved any strategic objectives of importance. The
are one major public scandal away from serious trouble.

~~~
hellbanner
Hi, you don't seem to be aware of the awful crimes against humanity the CIA
has committed without "serious trouble".

For example, consider the scandal where they stage a coup in a foreign
government, kidnap American citizens to experiment in brainwashing or
assassinate a political leader to protect economic interests.

[http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/CIAtimeline.html](http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/CIAtimeline.html)
/ Google for any of these headlines

