Veritasium
1 HN recommender · recommended in 5 months, 2021–2023
27:12 · 10M views · Sep 30, 2021
Veritasium explains how investigators caught the Golden State Killer using forensic genealogy, matching crime scene DNA to distant relatives in public genealogy databases. It also covers the privacy implications of DNA databases.
HN points to it as the go-to explanation of how police can identify anyone through relatives' DNA tests, in privacy and genetics threads.
9 comments from Hacker News
DNA is a genie that's flown far and free from their bottle. Even if you are not in the system directly (from, say, 23&me, rape kits, arrests, etc), someone within 2-3 degrees of separation on your family tree is. It's enough for you to be identified in most cases. If you haven't watched the video Veritasium did about the Golden State Killer, I highly recommend it. It details quite nicely how if anybody has your DNA sample, the police have access to it. this video Bonus points for noticing how many of these company reps who tout "nothing to hide" like protecting their own privacy.
> Even my brother and I share only ~50% DNA. This is completely false. Any two random humans have more than 99% overlap by virtue of being the same species. It's even higher for brothers. We also share around 90% DNA with cats, dogs and elephants. [LINK] > I'm not too worried about it because it's never a 100% overlap. This doesn't make sense. If they were equal, you'd be the same person except for environmental differences. Many applications don't need equal DNAs. E.g. this video > About insurance companies, they're legally forbidden to use such data. This is a very weak argument. There's a long history of companies doing illegal things, and even if it's illegal today it doesn't mean it'll be illegal tomorrow.
Not directly useful to me. In hind-site I guess obvious. All the solutions you should do anyway. Lung cancer, any cancer, Alzheimer's, heart disease - Don't smoke, filter your air, don't drink (to much), lower stress, eat healthy, have good relationships with people. My skin cancer was low, should I wear sunscreen less? Maybe it breaks some peoples self denial or gives them a kick in the ass? Definitely do it though a Chinese company if you can. Keep it out of the hands of governments that control you. Probably you are screwed anyway on this - "How 1 Person Can Expose The Identities of 1000" - Veritasium - this video I think it's good to get control of your body. Maybe it's busy work. Maybe it's not.
Do they store the dna in a database that law enforcement could, perhaps with a subpoena, have access to? Here's a video how law enforcement can get a match on a dna database through any of your relatives that did a dna test there. this video This kind of thing creates a chilling effect in which people avoid getting the medical help they need just to not contribute with a permanent genetic database. This kind of stuff is exactly why HIPAA exists. Also: why did they give you a summary, but gave the doctors a full report? Could you get the full report if you asked them?
Finding people from remote relatives and medical inferences. If someone has access to enough nicely distributed DNA samples they can correctly identify you from your DNA even if you are not in any database only based on your family tree. Varitasium video for reference: this video This is generally time consuming and done to identify criminals but it is very simple.