I Kan't Spell

 
DNA Primary Keys

Old 1L already has this up on his site. But I thought I would bring it back to my none-tertiary surfing audience. Plus I wanted to make some longer comments than what he already had. It's an article written about using DNA as a primary key in a silo type database structure that will automatically sort of take form as soon as primary keys switch over to using your DNA. Here Are some quotes and my responses:

"There are several large populations that do not enjoy constitutional protections of privacy, such as the armed services, prisoners, and children. "
MY Comments--- Could this be a more perverse statement. I would never consider children (i.e. parents) as a sect of the population who don't care about their constitutional privacy rights. I have no fear of any child around me becoming abducted by a pedophile or being subject to a mass fall out holocaust relocation program that would have the need for someone to scan their DNA. Why, because it happens about as often as people are killed by rabies. And I don't set up raccoon hunting expeditions in my free time to cure that problem. This is another one of those sick, twisted selling safety messages that is used to strike fear into an already sheepish society. I remember when I was 7, my father heard that my day care was taking fingerprints of all their children so they could "track them" if they ever got "taken away by a stranger". My father went down there and ripped me out of day care and threatened to sew if ink ever got close to my hand. The fear that this country strikes into the hearts of people via the news and chalked up stories of abduction and terrorism is just ridiculous. And no, I will not sacrifice my own liberty for the sake of another's well-being. Therefore I enjoy, and presume that they would enjoy (with the exception of the military or criminals...who live by different rules) their constitutional privacy intact.

"In this model, the single universal database never gets created, not because privacy advocates prevent it, but because it is no longer needed. If primary keys are issued by nature, rather than by each database acting alone, then there is no more need for central databases or advance coordination, because the contents of any two DNA-holding databases can be merged on demand in something close to real time.....The keys and the readers both exist, and the price and general availability of the technology all point to ubiquity and vanishing low cost within a decade. "
MY Comments--- I have never really claimed to be a database expert. But I would personally like to know how the technologies get introduced to one another. So you have your DNA /DNA reader and then you have your 20 million different databases in the world. Is the person issued a card at the DMV after getting their DNA scanned and that card has your new ID number on there? Do people voluntarily give it up as they do their social security number? Why did a social security number primary key not work? Answer that question and you can find how DNA might work. One, not everyone has one. Two, not everyone gives an honest one. What are the major databases that will interact with each other? Obviously my little company's SQL system has no reason to interact with a credit or airplane system. But it still may have information pertinent to "anti-terrorism movement", and isn't that what they'll try and sell us on anyway. I mean I could care less about the car theft analogy or the credit card fraud analogy (which is now becoming confused with terrorism as well), I'm more worried about what I do being thrown into an equation that can label me as a" threat" or not in the name of safety. I don't see these smaller companies. that may have valuable data. being able to totally legitimize their DNA sample taking abilities and then being able to mesh that information into the Gov't DB. I could see that going down if this new enterprise architecture scheme really works out and everyone does transfer over to a strange level of SCORM or XML interoperability.


"The privacy debate tends to be conducted as a religious one, with the absolutists making the most noise. However, for a large number of people, privacy is a relative rather than an absolute good. The use of DNA as an ID will spread in part because people want it to, in the form of credit cards that cannot be used in other hands or cars that cannot be driven by other drivers. Likewise, demands that DNA IDs be derived from populations who do not enjoy constitutional protections, whether felons or children, will be hard to deflect as the cost of reading an individual's DNA falls dramatically, and as the public sees the effective use of DNA in things like rape and paternity cases."
MY Comments--- The privacy debate is not a religious one! I could care less if God or Jesus or anybody else comes into the picture. i don't want myself personally tracked or traced or known in anyway. "Privacy is a relative good" Man who sold you up the creek? Was it all those videos of Al Qaeda froces training? Did you watch the snipers on TV for 3 hours a day? Or how about the anthrax scare, did you get enough of that? All these images and overobsessive things were spawned by 9-11. But think back to OJ abnd Rodney King and all the hype around that. Think about how people wanted investigation of cops and whether or not they were racist or using excessive froce all the time. Everbody bought into it becuase that's what they were selling you. Our dependency for personal opinion, that is now based on Channel 2 news, is just rediculous. These are all ways that the media pushed you into that door known as "leave civil liberties here and enter the world of safety". And I'm not saying safety is bad. But that safety is an illusion. And the world I envision where you have checkpoints and alerts and sirens going off. That sounds a whole bunch scarier than a world where I fend for myself and for the fate of my community, by myself or with my community. I would like to live my life without intruding legislation and without the loss of my own privacy. It's bad enough I pay more than 50% of my incomce in taxes (eh hem socialism/communism). Oh, and how do children not have constitutional protection?

That was a really good article and I'm sure it is a technology that will eventually happen. I just hope that it is used for ease of interoperability and not for tertiary tracking systems that are meant to keep my life in check because people don't know whether or not I'm a "threat". I guess the only thing that bothered me, as it always does, is the thought of people just eating the slop that the media and Gov't slap on their plates. "Hmm can I have more scare tactics. Oh it's ok you can take away pornography. What's that, I need to have good credit to fly. Oh you wan to empty my suitcase in the airport. No problems here." Ahh that fires me up!

Link posted by JVMM : 11:08 AM