
China Uses DNA to Track Its People. It Got Help from the U.S. - crunchiebones
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/business/china-xinjiang-uighur-dna-thermo-fisher.html
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threatofrain
There are all sorts of movies and narratives to reassure people that DNA-based
social or hiring selection is unlikely to happen anytime soon, because
supposedly there are few biological factors that allow you to easily predict
life trajectory or productivity.

But I'm afraid the slightest boost in predictive power will matter to an
organization of scale. And while it might be hard to tell if you should be a
mathematician based on your DNA, it might be easier to tell risk factors about
you or your relatives, which could cause an employer to see you as too
expensive.

It's illegal to discriminate on disability, but if I know you're predisposed
to heart disease and discriminate on similar basis, is that discrimination on
disability if society doesn't classify it that way?

Also eventually judgments may be made on people which involve weights from
thousands of data sources, only one of which will be DNA. It will be difficult
to explain why any decision was made.

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LinuxBender
In the U.S., citizens voluntarily submit this data to companies without a
counter-signed contractual agreement on data retention and protection. Some of
these companies have relationships with the government.

I predict that in the near future, companies will offer more incentives to
entice people into volunteering their DNA for various other perks.

~~~
notus
They just need a close relative to submit and they can cross reference things
to you.

~~~
LinuxBender
Good point. This could make for some interesting civil suits between family
members if they can prove damages. This might make for a fun Netflix Original
Series.

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rrggrr
Congress could enact foreign export controls for technologies that have
repressive dual uses. The PLA will find ways around it. The same holds true
for shareholder advocacy, management initiatives, etc. Restricting the sale of
technology is enormously difficult, perhaps impossible. Repression in China
will not be resolved externally. It's going to require change from within.

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EpicEng
That would disallow many tech companies from doing business in China at all,
no? Does search result filtering count? Analytics? Cell phones?

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donclark
Gattaca (1997) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_KruQhfvW4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_KruQhfvW4)

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pampa
Whats up with all this China-bashing on HN?

Comments on HN became so politically engaged in the last two years, that it
starts feeling like a Fourth International cell.

~~~
dang
If you see things happening on HN that are also happening on a macro social
scale, that's all the explanation needed.

HN can't be immune from larger trends. We do what we can to contain them.

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rm2889
I'm curious, why was this flagged?

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zachguo
TBH the whole story sounds a bit like conspiracy. Good clickbait title.

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subjoriented
Surveillance I understand (its a fairly ubiquitous form of government control
at this point, including use of DNA - Israel feeds that information into its
domestic assassination program), but this op-ed repeatedly claims repression.

In China (based on its Marxist roots) cults and religion are deemed to be
damaging to a person and to mass popular culture ("Religion is the opium of
the people" \- Marx). China considers religion to be within the freedom of an
individual to observe, but not to impose on another person: in China you can
not be indoctrinated into a religion until you are 18 years of age.

Combine this with the wave of Islamic reevaluation on the Asian supercontinent
- ISIS is and has been a huge problem in China, with mailbombing campaigns and
other acts of widespread terrorism.

Repression is an opinion expressed in the op-ed that hasn't considered factors
that are alien to the Western author's perspective.

~~~
devoply
As far as I know there was no fundamentalist terrorism in China due to the
Uighurs. In the West we usually leave things alone that are not causing
problems... Even if they have the potential to cause such problems. That's one
of the reasons that one party authoritarian systems are wrong in that such
systems are always worried about their stability and survival where more
robust systems have no such worries. And that's why China will fail sooner or
later because such systems come under control of strong men who then eliminate
all of the survivability of institutions to consolidate power and then die and
the system collapses or becomes dysfunctional.

However NSA shoveling all unfiltered data to Israel is in general an insane
policy not in line with general liberalism.

~~~
subjoriented
It's not specifically "the Uighurs" (that's like saying 'there was no
fundamentalist terrorism in the US due to "the Muslims"').

It's much more about the region (Xinjiang) and particular fundamentalists
groups present there. This happens to demographically correlate with the
Turkic people in China's Northwest.

[https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/01/the-islamic-state-
pledg...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/01/the-islamic-state-pledged-to-
attack-china-next-heres-why/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_China#Xinjiang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_China#Xinjiang)

