
Residents concerned about DNA-for-cash transactions in Louisville - dontbenebby
http://www.wave3.com/2019/04/01/residents-concerned-about-dna-for-cash-transactions-louisville/
======
seibelj
Parabon Nanolabs and similar groups use genealogy websites to find distant
relatives to crime scene collected DNA. Then they work backwards in to find
potential suspects using family trees. This is how they caught the Golden
State Killer.

Maybe someone had a family member get murdered in a certain area, and now they
are paying a private group to collect as many samples as they can to submit to
the website. This would allow the killer of their family member to potentially
be found. This doesn’t sound completely absurd to me.

~~~
rhizome
Do these companies/groups operate via rewards from law enforcement?

------
shawnz
It might be connected to some kind of Medicare scam:
[https://www.ksnblocal4.com/content/news/Potential-scam-
deali...](https://www.ksnblocal4.com/content/news/Potential-scam-dealing-with-
DNA-cheek-swabs-508103011.html)

~~~
Real_S
More on this here: [https://globalnews.ca/news/5132802/dna-test-cancer-
screening...](https://globalnews.ca/news/5132802/dna-test-cancer-screening-
van-louisville/)

Definitely a scam of some sort, but where does the data go?

~~~
gruez
Holy crap that website is bad. Every few paragraphs (pretty short ones)
there's all caps and bolded links like "READ MORE" or "WATCH BELOW" for
tangential content. It's hard to tell whether something was a heading or
tangential spam.

~~~
everybodyknows
Umatrix + FF Reader Mode works fine on it.

------
mysterypie
Reading through (and paraphrasing) all the great ideas people have posted
here, I'm seeing 3 basic theories: a fraud/scam, a criminal investigation, or
activism.

\- FRAUD/SCAM. Example: a dishonest health care provider does expensive
screening tests on poor Medicaid-eligible people which it then bills to
Medicaid (i.e., to the government).

\- CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION. Somebody is collecting DNA in targeted
neighborhoods hoping to get the DNA of someone related to an unknown
perpetrator whose DNA they have from a crime scene. This is essentially how
the Golden State Killer was caught.

\- ACTIVISM. This might be also called a "social media experiment" or culture
jamming. It could be, for example, a subversive critique on the creation of
DNA databases or an attempt to convince the public that mass collection of DNA
is not a good thing.

~~~
brador
Other possibilities: organ “donations”, budget blood transfusion matching for
life extension, viral genoc precursor, illegal/unethical invasive experiments.

Someone is repeatedly targeting poor/vulnerable people for their DNA and lying
about uses.

Someone has an upstream use for that data that pays or saves big money, is
illegal, or is unethical. They’re hiding for some reason.

------
larkeith
That they falsely claimed multiple difficult-to-disprove origins makes this
very interesting. How difficult would it be to falsify DNA evidence, given a
set of good samples?

I could also see this being used to poison DNA records in databases like
FamilyTreeDNA's, who collaborate with the FBI [1]. What services and databases
allow for sending in samples of this type?

~~~
dontbenebby
Poisoning DNA dbs would be an interesting culture jam. Kind of the biological
equivalent of using a postage paid envelope from a credit card company to mail
them your junk mail.

~~~
hopler
Culture Jam was one of the delights of the 20th centuries that as fallen away.
Of course now we have no need for culture jam in the common case of mass
communications, as it has well jammed itself

~~~
dontbenebby
Culture Jamming is alive and well[1] :)

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/fake-
editions...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/fake-editions-of-
the-washington-post-handed-out-at-multiple-locations-in-
dc/2019/01/16/1d6a0402-19a5-11e9-88fe-f9f77a3bcb6c_story.html)

------
caymanjim
Are there any laws that would prevent the government from doing this to
establish a crime database? They've already used DNA testing company databases
to catch people through their relatives.

I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, and the fact that the sample-takers
claim to be from a private company leans me away from the government, but they
could have contracted it out. And I wouldn't put anything past the current
administration.

The article doesn't say whether or not people are providing their ID along
with the samples, but I'd presume that they are.

~~~
dontbenebby
Voluntary DNA sweeps have been upheld in the past. Especially if they're not
stopping traffic, it's probably legal? (I am not a lawyer)

~~~
pmiller2
Sure, but it’s not voluntary if it’s done fraudulently. Hypothetically, if the
police or their agents were doing this and telling people it was a test for
cancer, that might not hold up.

~~~
dontbenebby
>Sure, but it’s not voluntary if it’s done fraudulently.

The police are allowed to lie to you to get you to consent to a search. (The
most common example is claiming they could search w/o consent but you agreeing
makes it "easier")

~~~
pmiller2
Violating the privacy of multiple non-suspects is a search? None of the people
in the article seem to be under suspicion, yet their DNA is being collected
under the pretense of a “cancer test.” Police can lie to suspects, but they
don’t get to violate the rights of (presumed) innocent people.

------
bhouston
Freaky. Dna samples should sort of be viewed as banking information. Some
point I am sure dna will be correlated with different arguments styles people
are vulnerable to. Or their purchasing style etc. Or even better correlated
with their overall life outcomes.

I wonder if they are looking for genetic correlates with homeless or
marginalization or mental health.

It is surely a study without consent of the participants. Super illegitimate
and shady.

~~~
azinman2
You leave your DNA everywhere. It’s not exactly a giant secret.

~~~
code_duck
Then why don’t they just collect it ‘everywhere’ and not directly from
people’s mouths?

~~~
azinman2
So aside from the other post showing just one of many instances of crime scene
investigation (unofficial in that case), this particular story is obviously
extremely shady and very unclear what their exact goals are. Otherwise if you
really wanted lots of DNA you’d be a “dishwasher” at a restaurant.

~~~
code_duck
Right, I was posing that question rhetorically to make essentially those
points. Obtaining DNA in this manner is different than collecting samples left
publicly. I also wonder if they’re asking these people for their names, IDs,
medical history, classifying or selecting by race, etc information.

------
herohamp
For some reason I find this very concerning yet I have no idea about any of
the possible implications

~~~
tehlike
Given the family trees, government doesnt need the dna of everyone, just
enough.

------
droithomme
Could be a social media experiment that will later be posted on YouTube.

Not much else makes sense.

~~~
dontbenebby
Maybe an agency or organization building a DNA database. Or maybe they're
looking for a specific criminal using familial DNA, similar to how the alleged
Golden State Killer was located:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/27/us/golden-state-killer-
ca...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/27/us/golden-state-killer-case-joseph-
deangelo.html)

~~~
rjf72
Another contemporary example was the CIA staging a "vaccination campaign" in
Pakistan. They were pushing vaccinations, and then harvesting the DNA to try
to track individuals related to Bin Laden.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_in_Pakistan#Connection_t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_in_Pakistan#Connection_to_the_Assassination_of_Osama_Bin_Laden)

~~~
pessimizer
Which created a horrible atmosphere for people actually giving vaccinations,
and caused and causes a lot of people to go unvaccinated.

A real blowback is going to be when we realize that Western and middle-class
anti-vax sentiment caused by Wakefield and various crackpot websites is going
to collide through relatives and immigration with South Asian anti-vax
sentiment caused by CIA and military operations masquerading as NGO
vaccination programs, and result in a vicious circle of vaccination fears.

------
AlexCoventry
Offer only available to Passport Health customers. Maybe Passport is looking
into improving their actuarial estimates with DNA data.

~~~
jonathankoren
No. From the article:

“WAVE 3 News contacted Passport representative Ben Adkins, who said Passport
is not related to the group. Passport Health warned customers about engaging
with them.“

~~~
everybodyknows
All necessary clues are in:

[https://globalnews.ca/news/5132802/dna-test-cancer-
screening...](https://globalnews.ca/news/5132802/dna-test-cancer-screening-
van-louisville/)

"One of these new cancer-screening tests can cost up to $2,000 ... Some
Medicaid health insurance plans covers these tests, so they would reimburse
that money to whoever conducts the test."

"Freedom Medical Labs was allegedly offering a new DNA-based cancer-screening
test ..."

"... only offered the test to customers of Passport Health Plan, the local
low-cost Medicaid insurance provider."

Passport being the one Freedom is gearing up to robo-bill through.

The DNA gets stored away in case of audit by Medicaid, in which case the
donors might actually get their test results in the mail -- and maybe the
results would be genuine, although that expense would cut into the profit
margin of the scheme.

------
jelliclesfarm
It’s dated April 1st. Maybe it’s a prank news that caught news outlets’
attention and went ‘viral’

~~~
dontbenebby
I haven't seen any word otherwise yet, and it's a local news site that frankly
seems very... boring. The usual local news.

~~~
joshjourno
Hey everyone, I wrote the Global News piece (and I appreciate the jabs at our
format, haha)... Yes, we're mostly a Canada-focused website, but my job is to
cover international things. I stumbled on this van story and started digging
out of curiosity, and I ended up falling down a deep rabbit hole. There is a
lot happening here, so if you're interested I recommend checking in on Tuesday
or Wednesday. That's when I'm aiming to publish Part 2.

