I remember nostalgically when this kind of thing would have been so unpopular in the USA, including (especially?) among the "populist right", that it would not have happened.
The escalation of the surveillance security state has been quick and vast.
It's still unpopular. The difference today is that the public is so thoroughly disempowered, that there is nothing you can do to change/resist it. Point me to the major political party, or even individual candidate, where "dismantling surveillance" is even a minor part of their platform. There are probably a single digit number of politicians in the entire country, from federal all the way down to local, who are against surveillance.
I remember maybe a decade ago talking to a person in computer security. What I was surprised was a strange turn of events in the 'exploits' arena. Although they monitored exploits/cert/etc, they also monitored the people who were involved in exploits.
I kind of wonder if the political arena is quietly doing the same thing. Instead of targeting dissenting opinions, it might be possible and effective to target the people with dissenting opinions.
I haven't fully made up my mind here, but I'm thinking that (most forms of) privacy is simply no longer viable due to technological advances. Mass collection of data is getting cheaper and cheaper, so these databases will be built. If not by the state than by corporations. And if laws prevent corporations, then by those operating outside the law like intelligence agencies (including foreign ones) and organized crime.
Having the government be the only ones without the data is a weird situation.
We could absolutely regulate corporations so that they didn't collect, keep, and sell everyone's personal data. When the consequences are high enough and enforcement is consistent your grocery store won't go overseas to hand your data to a mafia boss and Netflix isn't going to sell your data in a dark alley to an illegal black market data broker.
Corporations didn't need our current level of surveillance in order to become massively wealthy and they won't risk their wealth just to find out the last time you took a shit or who you're sleeping with and how often.
Surveillance capitalism is a choice. It's happening because at the moment it's profitable, but it can be made unprofitable (or even dangerous) to collect and sell and the moment that happens it all stops.
Just because the technology exists to abuse something that doesn't make it inevitable that it will happen everywhere all the time. The problem we have now is that abusing technology to exploit and control people through the misuse and sale of their personal data is making a lot of people money hand over fist (including people in government) and they'll fight like hell to keep that easy cash and to convince you that any other kind of life would be impossible. Don't fall for the lie.
How much of that, at least among elites, is due to looking at China's dizzying development, bound straight for the singularity, while the old appeals to liberty and rights seem to have only got the USA bogged down in gridlock and squabbling?
Revolutions happen, inter alia, to break gridlock, whether consciously or unconsciously. The rise of the surveillance state might be seen as the coup by elites that is one of the known forms of revolution.
its almost like there a special interest group working behind the scenes that has been simultaneously developing expertise in maintaining surveillance state technology and is motivated to maintain strict control over american public opinion to manage those resistant to their manufactured consent mechanism.
Of course that would require decades of testing and refining the technology on a people so conditioned for us to malign that our mainstream shows can make jokes about their dead babies and only be met with applause.
One thing that i would prefer in biometrics would be that the iris/fingerprints get treated as what they are publicly available and easily obtainable data.
At worst using it a a secret key is similar to using your name as a hidden variable for authorisation, whent it sshould strictly be a identification token.And once leaked you cant revoke it .
Back on topic , a Gattaca type system is unbelievably bleak and when(not if) it is finallly shoved through.It wont take long to foist it on the rest of the planet (see the recent visa requirements viz social media and insane bond requirements demanded of some countries like Mali citizens being asked for $15K per visa application).
Absolutely not. That is legitimately beyond insane.
Fingerprints are used for investigating crimes. Giving them the access to this information before hand puts you as being investigated everytime they find a fingerprint at a crime scene.
Imagine someone wanting to frame someone for a crime and using their publicly available fingerprint data to manufacture gloves that reproduce that fingerprint.
Also, the science behind fingerprints is not particularly solid. Fingerprint experts can sometimes disagree on whether a particular print matches or not and even then, it hasn't been proven that fingerprints are unique - it's just likely to be so.
DNA too. Until 2018 it was used here as waterproof evidence until the police managed to lock up an innocent person based on DNA and blurry surveillance camera photos only. He was only exonerated because the real perpetrator was caught by chance and confessed a week later.
The transmission chain that was later identified on CCTV was hand to escalator rail to hand, a 2+ km walk, and finally hand to latex glove.
Biometrics are identification means (including DNA).
They can be used to uniquely identify you, but they're not secret. You literally leave fingerprints and DNA everywhere you go, and obtaining your biometrics is not as hard as guessing your password.
Biometrics should be used for identification, for authentication along with other means (passwords, PIN, device keys, etc), and never for authorization.
What if people just publicized their own social security number, and then whenever they had to deal with "identity theft", they just pointed out that their SSN is public information and so it was negligent for the company to believe it was them just because of a SSN.
Just for the record, I think it’s a crazy idea to make things like DNA or fingerprints public. But a social security number is different. It’s wild how in the US, if someone gets hold of your number, they can do so many things with it. I’m from Sweden, and here we have a similar number called a personal identification number. The last digits are not secret but still sensitive. You can actually Google and find out almost anyone’s number if you want to, and it’s used for similar purposes. But it wouldn’t be enough to cause serious harm just by knowing someone’s number. Identity theft happens here too, but for a company it’s not much different from someone just having your name. It’s still a pain, but it’s nothing like in the US where your life can basically fall apart if someone gets your social security number.
Most doctor's offices just use my name and birthday to assume authorization to transfer sensitive medical information. I kinda feel like privacy is massive "emperor has no clothes" aspect of society.
This behaviour is just because their IT system doesn’t allow regular users to search for names, just for birth dates. Then they pick you by name from a list of people with that birthday.
This is nowhere near the only use of the "birthday + name == all info" hack in the US medical industry. It's basically one big giant frat club with shakes and implicit trust all around. Except that it doesn't actually work; you can fake being a doctor to just about any US medical office and get nearly any American's private medical data.
Exactly. This is just snake oil. No idea why I'm getting downvoted for stating the truth: the employee doesn't care about privacy. They don't use the birthdate because they think it's more secure, the ask for it because they have to.
So what? The person on the counter doesn't care at all about your privacy. They just cannot type your name into a search box, they have to ask for your birth date first before they can select you from a list based on the name that you state afterwards. At least that's the case at many doctor's offices I've been to.
What do you mean so what? How does asking for a name help if it comes back with a list of multiple people with the same name? Adding the birthday makes it (much closer to) unique
Changing your social security number is only slightly easier. Okay, maybe that's hyperbole. But having your SSN exposed isn't a good enough to be able to change it. You have to show it is actively being abused, and you can't address the problems another way.
A coworker from Chile has described their equivalent to a SSN as being used as a public ID rather than a password. Every IT company and government service has the same primary key in their database for each citizen. Wouldn't that be great!
Lots of countries use the SSN equivalent as a public ID and sometimes have for decades now. The Nordic countries, for example, often require it on any application that requires your real name. I, as an academic, just put in a grant application to a private foundation, and my number was required there like many other places.
In the US, leak of SSN apparently can result in identity theft and so its public use can seem especially troubling, but other countries use different secrets and processes for identity.
Biometrics can be a secure secret key, as long as there's a trusted guard manning the reader, ensuring that you're showing your real fingerprint / face and not a fake.
The guard makes sure the biometircs presented to the reader actually belong to the person standing there. The reader identifies who (in its database) the presented biometircs belong to.
Not very secret though, considering that they are publicly visible most of the time. You might as well get your bank PIN tattooed on your face if you think that faces are secret.
Many SSNs have been compromised already. The jig is up. It was never supposed to be an identity system but organisations keep insisting on using it as one. Even if they aren’t literally publicly available and easily obtainable, they should be treated as such.
Unless you’ve been a hermit or homeless for the entirety of your life, just about anyone can get your SSN from Accurint or TLO for a few bucks.
Sure, in theory Accurint and TLO do KYC. In practice you can find tons of people on various crime forums offering those lookups for a few dollars a pop.
That's so stupid. Just because I posted a video on TikTok doesn't mean someone should be able to go to the city's public website, look me up on a yellow page and download my photo id and fingerprints.
What treating this biometric info as public means is that it won’t be accepted as valid proof of identity. Just because you posted a video on TikTok shouldn’t mean that a scammer can take out a loan in your name.
You don't leave iris prints everywhere you go. Even most fingerprints you leave are unusable for identification. Contrary to what CSI may have taught most Americans, even usable DNA samples aren't a given.
Biometrics aren't "publicly available" let alone "easily obtainable". They're easy to extract from you but this is why extraction and retention of this kind of data should be considered extremely invasive and sensitive. That wallet in your pocket may be "publicly available and easily obtainable" but that doesn't mean we should treat it as such - rather we should make sure it's actually illegal to do so without your consent: that's why theft is a crime.
The problem with these types of technologies is that you will be at the mercy of whoever uses them. It's like chat control, censorship, gun laws, etc. You can't control how they will be leveraged.
I lived in California for some time a few years ago, and it was a mess, so I understand people being okay with this type of stuff if it will make them more secure, but it's a very risky slippery slope.
The other thing is that with all the data Google has, they can probably uncover everything they need just by paying for Google Ads data :/
Big old cable connected to people's heads to control their movements and their thoughts would make some people feel more secure, but this is not what we're going to agree to. That's not enough that some people feel not secure...
... arent as vital as other freedoms like travel, anonymity, speech and contract. I dont like this conflation because i see it as a nasty and harmful bias.
All those other rights are backed up by credible capacity for violence. You need to distribute some of that credible capacity for violence among the populace in order to check the long tail of potential abuses the system (not necessarily the government, though there is much overlap) may engage in.
There's a discussion to be had about what the right amount is though.
It's weird how many people's perception of this type of behavior is shaped by the person sitting in the White House.
EDIT: It's also weird how my comment is being perceived exclusively as criticizing the critics of this administration rather than criticizing the supporters of this overreach. My comment was intentional phrased very generally, if you think it is specifically about you, that reveals something about you.
The way to prevent authoritarians from abusing power is to not elect them, and to throw them in jail when they violate the law. They're not hard to spot; people warned about the current guy for a decade before he took over.
What's happening right now is not because the government had a database lying around and an unspecified authoritarian picked it up.
What's happening is that after a specific authoritarian staged a coup against the government, he was nevertheless allowed to continue his anti-democratic efforts. Trump should have a 27 year sentence like his Brazilian compatriot Bolsonaro, who in monkey-see-monkey-do fashion, similarly affected a coup against his government. Had we actually prosecuted those crimes the way Brazil did, we could still be talking about how to prevent theoretical authoritarian governments from abusing their power. But now we have a specific instance, and in this case, all the anti-authoritarian measures in the world mean jack if the government just allows actual insurrectionists to run for president, which is barred by the Constitution for a good reason. In that case they're just asking for it.
>The way to prevent authoritarians from abusing power is to not elect them, and to throw them in jail when they violate the law.
This was the true motivation for my comment. It's futile trying to design your laws to withstand the dangers of a future authoritarian regime taking power when that authoritarian regime can just as easily change or ignore those laws once they take control. Our government is experiencing a rubber hose attack, the strength of our encryption doesn't matter.
Yup, the fight against American authoritarianism happened between 2015 and 2025. It's now over, authoritarianism won. All that's left now is for it to burn itself out as people bear the consequences they refused for a decade to entertain were possible.
We spent 10 years warning about him, pointing out his specific authoritarian tendencies, January 6 was predicted years before it happened, but when people said "he's not going to leave" they were met with mockery.
Who tf cares about databases when their plan was to just use their power to throw out entire states worth of votes? The entire J6 plot was that Pence was to reject the certification of the vote so that states could send "alternative electors" who voted for Trump, which would have disenfranchised millions of people at once. What is the law supposed to do against such anti-democratic "might makes right" depravity? At that point, the players have abandoned the game entirely, they're playing by different rules, your laws are meaningless.
Edit: to the dead comment below me:
> If you actually believed you were living under a dangerous, authoritarian government you wouldn't be posting about it on the internet. You'd be scared shitless trying to delete any trace of this connected to yourself.
Bro, I'm already labelled part of a terrorist organization by this government for my political beliefs. There's nothing I can say here or elsewhere that would change that, so at this point my fate is locked in because I'm not going to change what I believe.
There's not point in hiding anything, now is not a time for hiding, it's a time for speaking your mind. These people are authoritarians, but they are not all powerful. Yet. They have no consolidated power. Yet. They 100% want to, but that's not going to be possible as long as people continue to speak out. Read Timothy Snyder's, On Authoritarianism. He describes what you suggest is the rational response as "obeying in advance", which is the primary way in which the authoritarians seize power -- it's freely given by people who are too afraid to push back.
>The problem is that people really want authoritarianism, to use against their enemies.
Look no further than a typical HN comment thread on a niche public policy issue.
They are rife with people scheming up all sorts of ways to thread the needle of public policy so that government enforcement action far in excess of what the public would support can be brought to bear on whoever is on the wrong side of whatever the issue being discussed is.
Yeah, if you go into my comment history from just this week there's a guy who told me "We won the last election. We can and will, with sadness but determination power, turn the power of the state against you and make you leave us the hell alone."
That's the mindset of an authoritarian. No needle threading here though, just use "the power of the state to" get our way (no sadness detected).
It still amazes me that there was no penalty for storing classified paperwork in his bathroom. I always thought that governments treated security very seriously, but apparently not.
He got lucky that the sitting attorney general was loathe to appear that he was politically motivated, so was very slow to appoint a special prosecutor. He then got extremely lucky that his hand picked judge was assigned to the case, and slow walked it until he got reelected and took control of the very department that was investigating him.
This on top of the fact that the "law and order" party apparently is only for law and order if it's being used against people they don't like. Evidently most people aren't self aware enough to question their own beliefs, who knew?
I mean I think, while that possibly always _should_ have been the assumption, 20 years ago the assumption would have been very much that someone like that could _not_ take power, and that the worst the US had to fear was the likes of Dick Cheney (admittedly still pretty bad). The idea that the US might just transform into a weird batshit autocracy is really _pretty new_; it wasn't taken all _that_ seriously even in Trump's first term, because, well, the courts will just slap him down, right?
I don't think most people realize just how slow the court system is. It's horribly underfunded. They generally come to good decisions, but it takes a really long time, and a lot of damage can happen in the mean time.
FWIW, I've believed we've had an authoritarian in power for quite a while now. Obama, Trump, Biden, and Bush have all tried and succeeded in expanding executive power. They've all engaged in extrajudicial killings overseas.
Nothing sets me off like seeing people think this behavior from Trump doesn't have shared roots across both parties.
Biden kept kids in cages. Obama bombed weddings. Yes, the current admin is accelerating hard but like, prior admins were accelerating.
People should really try to stop thinking about politics like it's a two party game where you have to pick a side. Figure out your principles, and start finding candidates who match those principles.
Yes, it has been accelerating a long time. But I worry a bit about toning it down too much by both-sides-ing it. The Dems were no angels, but they most assuredly did not ever try to overturn the counting of the vote for president. They did not relentlessly claim the whole game was rigged. They never openly mocked the citizens who did not vote for them, made policy specifically to spite red states, etc. Or created government web sites like https://www.whitehouse.gov/mysafespace
By both-sides-ing this, it plays into hands of the people who support the current abhorrent behavior by claiming they're not doing anything different than their opponents have done. That is patently false, and we should not accept it.
I'm sorry, I refuse to just simply not acknowledge the role liberalism has in the rise of fascism. Whether it's in the past or today, fascism don't just materialize because one guy talks good. It's neither incorrect nor inappropriate to say (neo)liberalism and austerity are direct antecedents to fascist rhetoric.
It's not both sidesing to identify and critique the role democrats had to play here, especially when I say the gop is clearly worse. A critical assessment of how the Dems failed to protect us is not only not helping the GOP, it's exactly the sort of root cause analysis that helps ensure the mid terms go OK.
Saying now's not the time to criticize Dems is the same sentiment that gets us "vote blue no matter who" when Biden runs but "I think we have to consider our options" when Mamdani runs. It's sticking your head in the sand rather than having to face the fact that the party has a losing platform.
I didn’t agree with your first comment, but reading this one I think we actually have very similar opinions. I think your first comment sounded a bit too much like the libertarian nut jobs that comment on here all the time claiming drivers licenses are fascism.
There’s this quote I read recently: “When a political system collapses, the replacement is chosen from the choices available at the time ”.
I think it’s pretty clear to anyone with a brain that neoliberalism has failed the majority of people. Trump provided an alternative, and democrats ran on “nothing will fundamentally change”. The results are what we see today.
Step 1 is to get people to stop readily voting for the worst option. Step 2 is to get people to vote for the right option. When you confuse the order of these two steps, you short yourself and others in the foot.
Authoritarianism by definition is about controlling all the forms of power, not about expanding one.
Nor it has anything to do with what countries do around the world. You can be democratically elected, law abiding, not overreach and bomb weddings abroad, those are not related.
US has the same constitutional weakness of the countries that went authoritarian in the last decades: a presidential republic.
There's one thing that Russia, Belarus, Philippines, Tunisia, Turkey, Nicaragua made constitutionally simpler to allow authoritarianism to happen, they gave the country a president elected by the government.
Thus enabling:
- personality cult
- hard to remove individuals
- claiming popular mandate despite anything
- deadlocks
All those situations are breeding grounds for chaos.
Say what you want about slow Europe, but it's hard, very hard to pull this stuff here where most countries don't have popular elections for presidents.
In parliamentary republics those shifts are very difficult and are generally centred on party-ism, so identification between state and party.
This is the Indian and Hungarian playbook, as the constitutions don't allow individuals to power grab with ease, it's a very tougher game to succeed.
You don't win an election and start firing executive orders and stretching their limits while courts get to decide what the limits are.
>Wouldn't it be weird if that didn't shape their perception?
No. I flat out reject the excuse you make on their behalf and consider you lesser than you would be had you not made it.
We're presumably discussing adults, not ten year olds or monkeys. They ought to f-ing act like it.
These people are almost all likely capable of the emotional restraint and logical thinking and sufficient abstract thought to think these things through and decide whether policy or action is good or bad regardless of if it's their guy doing it or their interest being served by it. The fact that they decline to do so is a failing of them. To excuse it only serves to reinforce or validate it and should be ridiculed.
> It's not surprising that people are less trusting when an authoritarian is in power.
The majority of Americans don't feel that way, but did about the last administration, and enough to do something about it. What's surprising is, given that revelation, a few people still actually think that.
I see it as a blessing: privacy advocates have previously argued that yes these invasive tools might currently help an honest government do its job to stop bad guys, but the tools could eventually fall into the hands of a not so honest government. Now, you don't really need much of an imagination to see what happens when the tools fall into the wrong hands, and hopefully more of the citizenry can get behind the idea of privacy as a fundamental right, and not just something for those who have something to hide.
I think it's selective attention plus recency bias.
This drift has started 24 years ago with 9/11 and no president has stopped or slowed it.
People who dislike who's in charge say the same things as always, people who dislike such measures same the same things as always regardless of who's in the white house, etc.
Do you have any evidence that public concern over privacy changes depending on who is in the white house?
A quick search suggests a solid majority has been consistently upset about this issue for decades. The phrasing of the question seems to have more impact than the year, but I cannot find any hard data on consumer privacy concern trends over years.
Fwiw, I would be unhappy with the Biden and Obama administrations trying to do this as well. For me this has nothing to do with who's in the White House, it's an overreach plain and simple.
100%. Let’s not let partisanship distract us from the omni-presence of the military industrial complex and the authoritarian bent of everyone who’s been in power in the US over the last several decades. Dems will tinker around the edges to make it more palatable, but there’s still: black sites, torture, drone strikes, unjustified wars, installing of puppet governments in sovereign nations, abuse of the commons for private profit and an absolute hunger for every scrape of your data to monitor and manipulate you no matter who is in the White House.
If I have to choose between voting for pro-corporate neoliberalism or fascism 2.0, I’ll vote the former, but that’s basically just asking which speed you’d like quality of life to erode for the average person. I’d really like a couple more options on the ballot please.
Nit: Quality of life for average Germans went up, not down, once they brought back slavery and started pillaging other countries. If that's the metric we're using to decide what form of government we want, then all bets are off; ethics and morality play no part.
Yes, I would not like my own prosperity to come at the cost of others’ suffering (where “others” here means all of humanity). I understand hard choices must sometimes be made but I think our technology has progressed to the point that we can honestly provide a good quality of life for the vast majority of human beings globally if we were able to overcome old modes of thinking and actually set ourselves to that problem.
But it seems there are certain types of people or that under certain circumstances have grown to have this twisted need for “all”, instead of “just enough”. I don’t really understand that mindset as I haven’t experienced it myself. If my friends and family had UBI that allowed us all a good quality of life, I would split my time between spending time with them, reading and endlessly tinkering with new technology and adjacent creative fields, and be perfectly satisfied with that life. I crave the occasional toy, but simply don’t understand this constant ache for material accumulation that some people have. It seems to hurt them as much as it does everyone else around them.
Just from reading your comment, I think I have a very similar view to yours about the meaning of life, what constitutes a life well lived, and what we should spend our time on. Like you, I'm ridiculously uninterested in toys, especially toys that are bought to show status (as opposed to ones you're just interested in). Like you, I'm very satisfied with a life of tinkering and exploring code / art / music / writing that makes me a full person with a sense of accomplishment.
As someone who came from the extremely far left (with an anarchist bent), I just want to respond to this, though:
>> it seems there are certain types of people or that under certain circumstances have grown to have this twisted need for “all”, instead of “just enough”.
My observation has been that the desire for all, or at least more, is inherent to all people. You may be happy with a UBI, but the great complaint is wealth inequality.
I look around and find myself pretty well-off, with easy access to goods and services my father struggled for, and which my grandfather could never have imagined. I look around and see people of my own well-off technical elite upper-middle-class touting stuff like Maoism, because America allegedly has worse wealth inequality than China did in the 1970s. And logically I have to ask: Are these people so obsessed with keeping up with the Joneses that they can't see what they have?
Greed comes in different forms, right? There's this amazing line in Dostoevsky's "Devils": Why is it that all these desperate socialists and communists are so incredibly miserly, acquisitive, and proprietorial? In fact, the more socialist someone is, the further he's gone in that direction, the stronger his proprietorial instinct. Why is it?"
Okay, so imagine you live a life with 100x the material wealth of your grandfather, like me, but you still are in the middle 40-60% of the country in terms of wealth. You'll never own a private jet, you'll never party on a private island. The question is: Are you happy with yourself and your life? Can you see how much prosperity you've achieved and be proud of it? Or do you spend your time worrying that someone else has more than you, that it's unfair, that the system is rigged against you, etc.
Maybe this is because I come from an immigrant family mindset, but, prosperity and self-reliance are so much more important to me than trying to compare my life to what anyone else has.
Personally, I'd be happy enough in a prison cell or on my death bed, if I had a pen and paper to write on. So I'm okay with other people having luxuries I don't have. I count each day as an amazing blessing if I can wake up, find work, get laid, eat a good meal, watch a good Netflix show, get stoned and go to bed with my lover. Every single one.
I never for a moment thought that Elon or Bezos or any of them were happy. Their toys always seem to rot, their possessions don't intrigue me because they're clearly miserable.
In large bore: Those "certain types of people" you mention exist on both the Left and the Right - they will find a way to blame anyone who has something they don't have. That's the genesis of all the nasty politics we see. I'm not advocating for having less or having nothing or anything like that. I'm just saying, a small amount of appreciation (historically) for what you have now goes a long way toward letting people be happy and chill instead of angry and aggrieved. And someone will always have more unless you're the King of AI or King of Logistics or King of Twitter. So, we lead more modest lives, but lives are all finite, and we have happiness that they can't possibly achieve.
It's also weird how people gatekeep resistance on the basis of their perception that it's motivated by the person sitting in the White House.
If people are ready to resist now, let's welcome them, rather than questioning whether their motives are related to some tangentially related disagreement.
>It's also weird how people gatekeep resistance on the basis of their perception that it's motivated by the person sitting in the White House.
Because let's be real here, whether such discussion is allowed to stand or is shut down in a politically fairly homogenous community is typically a direct reflection of that fact. You see the same thing on the opposite side of the isle.
>If people are ready to resist now, let's welcome them, rather than questioning whether their motives are related to some tangentially related disagreement.
You have to draw a line somewhere. This sort of shortsighted expediency based politics is how we got the current political parties.
I suspect this government isn’t receptive to commentary from anyone other than only one person. While I’d never discourage anyone from advocating their beliefs this feels like at best a waste of energy. They are going to do it because they decided to do it - the solicitation of comments is performative and required. The only way to stop it is via the courts and by voting next November.
There's even precedent for the current president's agencies compiling some pretty sketchy "comments" in the past due to not doing basic sanity checks on pretty obvious fake comments that happened to support their agenda, like when supposedly seeking input from the public about repealing net neutrality[1]. There were so many duplicates that only thirty 30 unique comments made up 57% of the overall total, and the second most common "name" among the authors was literally "The Internet".
No one in the current administration cares about what random members of the public think about their policies, and that's by design. Even the government positions that are intended to be permanent across administrations aren't a safe bet at this point with was things have been going
You are 'this government's best friend, advocating for their opponents to give up and quit. In a remarkable pattern that I never thought I'd see in the rugged individualistic, idealistic, freedom-loving USA, a large group is literally self-defeating: They defeat themselves before even getting out of bed.
That's why your opponents are unstoppable - because you don't stop them. The performative nonsense is their aggression display.
They still want to win the election. Political and policy outcomes aren't all or nothing; the more they see, the more it will nudge them in whatever direction you want. Others will see it and it will nudge them too. If one person didn't embrace being a quitter, others would do the same.
> the root problem is not incompetence, it's that half of America wanted exactly this, for a second time now.
That is the same psychology I described in the GP: Instead of looking in the mirror and figuring out what they need to do better, they blame outside forces. It's victim psychology - powerless, someone else's fault, etc.
Your group failed; people didn't vote for it because you are well-known quitters and whiners and victims - and losers; you're ok with losing and quit when it happens - and you conduct shitty politics as a result. Who votes for that? Who even can stand to listen to it - it's sickening, depressing, disheartening.
The right wing says, 'we believe in X and we won't be stopped no matter what; we will never give up'. That gets votes. That gets things done.
Get out of bed, stop crying, and get to work. That you still hold on politically with this victim psychology shows how bad the right wing's message is. Never give up, never even talk about it.
> Instead of looking in the mirror and figuring out what they need to do better, they blame outside forces.
I'm not American, so let me ask you: what do you think they should have done better? Maybe a not presenting a woman candidate? I ask because that's the most common denominator in their last two election losses.
Take a good position - the GOP leaves the field wide open, maybe as simple as 'Liberty and Justice for All' (part of the American pledge of allegiance that everyone knows) - and fight for it, stand up for yourself, against all enemies and attacks, and fight until you win. Take punches, never go down, keep going, have a winning strategy and keep going until it works. Nobody will believe in you until you do it.
The Dems never confront the GOP and always fold. I think if they fought, successfully, for almost any policy, they'd attract a lot of support.
> the most common denominator
Not at all. How about they were Democrats, Senators, .... If it stand out the most to you, maybe ask why?
Taking performative actions you are certain will fail unnoticed is a waste of energy. I most certainly didn’t advise doing nothing, this seems like a hyperbolic take that ignores what I suggested was more impactful. By extension, encouraging others to take those actions is productive and there are other actions I didn’t enumerate that are productive - I didn’t intend to be exhaustive in all actions that could be productive, just that this specific action of commenting on their preordained policy decisions is pointless. I don’t see any argument here that in any way refutes that so I assume you agree.
> Taking performative actions you are certain will fail unnoticed is a waste of energy.
It's true, but usually in the opposite way you intend. If you go into ventures thinking they will "fail unnoticed", you certainly will fail. For example, who would hire someone or invest in someone with this attitude?
If you go in determined to succeed no matter what, there are no guarantees but you have a good chance.
Comments certainly contribute - the only risk to their power is people like you mocking them. And have you ever seen a successful team where some people mock others doing work?
I’d note you’ve not really proposed anything related to how commenting on policy in this administration achieves anything just pointed to cases where negative thinking brings bad mojo or something. Along that vein, I have been trying to grow wings and fly to the moon for the last 15 years but despite the investment of effort have not succeeded. It’s probably because people kept telling me it’s not possible and a waste of time, by the reasoning here. If I could get people to stop mocking me when I flop off the roof onto the ground I surely would succeed?
There are activities that are absolutely not worth doing because their chance of succeeding is zero percent even with the strongest of desire for it to not be zero.
I posit because this administration literally does not care what you have to say only what one individual on this planet has to say there’s no point in trying to reason with them. The only action that will work to stop them is in court and in the voting booth, and by proxy activities that magnify the value of either of those activities by getting others to participate. I think protest is a much more effective use of energy for that reason - it energizes like minded people and when this administration reacts with brutality to opposing opinions it shocks people not aligned with dictatorial oppression - which is almost everyone. But participating in the comment processes of their regulatory capture? Waste of time with zero chance of causing even an iota of change no matter how hard you wish it to be otherwise or how much you ignore the naysayers. Spend that energy growing wings and flying to the moon.
The government isn't one person, and I think both bureaucrats and judges are actually quite receptive to lots of people - only it's nebulous to who and why. Trying to please, and hoping to get rewarded, but neither you or they themselves are 100% certain of by who. Opaque power structures, everyone's paranoid, including the powerful.
Actually the comment collection process has in fact caused changes in policy over many administrations, largely because the policy makers were interested in achieving some goal aligned to their function and believed in our system. When commentary went strongly against their policy there was often a step back and reassessment. This administration appears to have two goals: maximally hurt people who hurt Trumps feelings and create the deep state they lamented but never really existed until now to continue to maximally hurt people similar to those who hurt trumps feels in perpetuity.
Don't most people in the US get fingerprinted at some point?
Let's see. I've been fingerprinted, all 10 fingers, for, at least, 1) the US Army, 2) security clearance for a DoD job, multiple times, 3) a permit to ride a horse on SF Water Department property, and 4) Customs and Border Protection Global Entry, which also took an iris scan.
California DMV takes a thumbprint, but not all 10 fingers. They've been recording me at every transaction for decades.
So I'm on file.
I think of being IDd as a normal part of life, for any position of trust. Is this unusual?
What may be information regarding a check for position of trust today, may well be information regarding a check if you should be locked up because of other reasons, tomorrow.
The issue is not the information itself, but how the information will be used. The chance of abusing information is not zero. But having rigorous rules and processes regarding that information, for instance mandatory destruction of said information, will greatly reduce the chance of abuse in the uncertain future.
I'm in my 50s and British and I've only had it done once: by the police when the house I was living in got burgled and they wanted to rule out our finger prints. It was 30 years ago and I imagine I could have refused. I didn't really think about it at the time.
Likewise a British citizen in the UK. Funnily, while the UK government does not have my fingerprints, the US gov does! They were taken at the border when I visited. All 10 fingers
Surely there's a difference between collecting a thumbprint for a driver's license or even collecting full fingerprints for a specific job type, and collecting your DNA and an iris scan just for being a citizen?
I'm German. My government literally issues ID cards and requires fingerprints for those nowadays as well (because terrorism or the children or whatever works as the excuse at the moment) but the idea of a government agency collecting my DNA seems far more invasive given the kind of things you can do with that information and the kind of things governments (especially in my country but in the US and Canada too) have historically done to groups of people under them.
If you think there's nothing concerning about the government wanting to collect extensive biometric data including DNA from not only people applying for immigration but also people associated with them or their application, maybe it would sound more concerning to you if I said that in German.
In the EU, national ID cards are required to contain fingerprints in an electronically readable section. (a private key is required to read them via NFC) As a result, Ireland started issuing passport cards, since compliant passports can be used in place of a national ID card. The only biometric data on my passport is a black and white image of my face. (that can be read with a key derived from data on the passport itself)
> Surely there's a difference between collecting a thumbprint for a driver's license or even collecting full fingerprints for a specific job type, and collecting your DNA and an iris scan just for being a citizen?
Not really; every citizen is expected to have a driver's license, and this takes place before anyone has really thought about the issue even if they're likely to object later. It's sort of like the difference between baptizing infants and baptizing adults.
You're right that there's more information in the DNA, but what difference do you see in the iris scan?
Also in the US, never been fingerprinted. Well, I think. You mentioned CA DMV, and I don’t remember a fingerprint, but I did have a California drivers license over a decade ago, so maybe? But most people don’t have security clearance, most are not in the military, most do not have global entry. Also the horse permit one is just funny.
Exactly. As a naturalized citizen my fingerprints are already on file.
- everytime I entered the US when I was not a citizen
- when I filed my green card application
- when I went for my citizenship interview
- TSA precheck biometrics because I travel quite a bit.
Depend what the "position of trust" is taken. Security clearance for departement of defense is certainly not something the median citizen can be expected to go through.
Did you know that the State of California has a DNA sample from every person born in the state since 1983? It's required by law for the hospital to collect it and give it to the state.
This is a particularly incendiary way of putting this information out there.
What is collected and stored is a small blood-spot sample from a heel prick on a newborn. This is used to test for various kinds of conditions that affect newborns.
This isn't a full DNA genome sequence or even any data at all, just the blood-spot specimen.
Law enforcement does not have automatic access to this sample, but individual samples have been given to law enforcement through court orders or warrants. There isn't a clear SOP for how law enforcement typically gets this information or how often it's given to law enforcement, but there's been proposed legislation to make this more transparent.
The blood sample isn’t a DNA sample right up until the point they decide to sequence it. This is the same legal doctrine allowing the government to systematically collect all of your personal data without violating your privacy as long they don’t look at what they collect without a warrant.
The government has granted themselves an option on your personal data that can’t be revoked.
I agree with you in principle. And I agree that the government has been steadily eroding our privacy. And I agree that California probably shouldn't be retaining these samples forever.
However, the likelihood of being able to "sequence" the biomatter on a blood spot is quite low, and the probability of getting good signal out of it continues to go down over time. It'll still remain useful for various kinds of spot testing and genetic disease testing, but it's not going to produce a fully validated genomic sequence or even be that useful for forensic purposes.
This isn't some sort of sealed blood vial, it's literally just blood on paper.
This is wrong, the sample efficiency of DNA collection, amplification and sequencing technology has gone way up, to the extent that for example bubonic plague could be identified from DNA samples in the dental plaque of skulls which are multiple centuries old.
Also your statement directly conflicts with the purported confirmed utility of law enforcement getting warrants to use said samples.
You don't think that it's easier to identify whether something is bubonic plague than it would be to identify whether two DNA samples are related? Especially when one of them is aged such that it's not even a whole sequence anymore?
Yes, our ability to manipulate and read DNA has increased significantly in the past 40 years. But you can't create data from something that isn't there or has been corrupted beyond recovery.
And as far as the efficacy of police goes, I don't think that a warrant is sufficient to prove that there's confirmed utility in getting these samples.
I agree but the State has already the monopoly on violence, which is something that only the State has. If they have a warrant, they can also break into your private property and you have to accept it. This is not too dissimilar.
They don’t need to arrest you to obtain your DNA, which is the entire point. They don’t need to arrest you to use your DNA, previously collected, to identify a family member.
The government has my biometrics. Most people should assume, by default, that the government has theirs as well.
Then they don't need to recollect it for "any applicant, petitioner, sponsor, supporter, derivative, dependent, beneficiary, or individual filing or associated with a benefit request or other request or collection of information, including U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals and lawful permanent residents, and without regard to age"
It's about as accurate a Buzzfeed headline, but I guess that's par for the course on the internet these days.
It's not a "DNA sample" in the way that most people would consider it these days, no more than a used cup would also be called a "DNA sample". But to your point, it can still be used for surveillance and tracking.
Also, your phrasing is designed to make it seem like a huge overreach, when this act has likely saved millions of lives through early diagnosis of preventable diseases and early intervention on disabilities. I have personally experienced this.
So yes, I do think your framing here is inaccurate through omission of key facts.
> this act has likely saved millions of lives through early diagnosis of preventable diseases and early intervention on disabilities
Why does the state have to collect and keep the sample for that to happen? Why can't it be the private property of the parents, provided to whatever private testing labs are used to do the tests?
That seems like a fair criticism. I don't know enough to quantify the benefit of retaining these samples, but I do know that the reason for keeping samples primarily relates to quality control, research, and development of tests.
There is a process for people to have the sample destroyed, I also have no idea how easy or how often that is used.
the implication was misleading, yes. the implication being that California has database of its citizens' genetic data. when the reality is that CA has a _physical sample_ of blood.
A collection of cars is also a collection of steering wheels, a collection of tires, a collection of seats, a collection of engines a collection of seats, ...
as blood contains white blood cells, and these cells tend to contain DNA, yes a collection of identified blood samples is also a collection of DNA (molecules).
A DNA collection doesn't need to have been sequenced to qualify as a DNA collection.
On the other hand blood samples degrade over time depending on how you store it. This makes DNA sequencing more difficult and/or impossible. Presumably the ROI (in a non-dystopian society) of storing those sample long-term doesn't make sense, especially if the primary usecase is screening for diseases (a random PDF from the Association of Public Health Laboratories says biomonitoring/biothreat samples are stored 1 year https://www.aphl.org/AboutAPHL/publications/Documents/ID_Spe... ).
So yes a collection of blood sample is technically also a collection of DNA sequences, but it has an expiry date (a short one compared to the lifespan of an individual!) contrary to a DNA sequence that's pure data.
It didn't sound like that at all, it just says DNA samples are collected and stored. The implication that such DNA in such samples can be sequenced after the fact is not novel at all, every time DNA is sequenced, it is first collected.
it was misinformation, the DNA in such a sample is not only miniscule and unstandardized, but also not treated for longterm archival specimen retention.
the blood "spot" is about general morphology, and antigenic specificity.
It is as accurate as any of the incendiary Pravda propaganda pieces[1] about how the capitalist swine lived. Other posters have helpfully pointed out the specifics of why your particular spin on it is not entirely honest.
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[1] Often mostly factually accurate, but I doubt you'd find much common ground with the particular spin they'd put on describing your daily life.
Because the US has laughably weak privacy laws and most Americans snicker at the EU GDPR because of "cookie banners" (which btw isn't a thing - most consent dialogs are non-compliant as they shouldn't serve to just inform you but to actually obtain voluntary, revokable and specific informed consent) instead of thinking about what it means to actually have a fundamental human right to privacy and ownership of your own data or not.
They keep the samples for the same reason US tech startups keep deleted data and track seemingly useless behavior. Because they might find a use for it someday and there's literally no law preventing them from doing it.
No, they are correct, and it's disingenuous to claim otherwise. They have a DNA sample of everyone. Those samples haven't been sequenced. As you've pointed out, they are sequenced when the state needs them to be.
It would be like scanning your drivers license and putting it in a sealed envelope and claiming "I don't have your home address!", when I'm known to get the home address from other peoples envelopes when asked for it.
At least they can't trawl them for random matches when they're like that, the cost of sequencing is a barrier. Probably even more in that a 20 year old blood spot on a piece of paper isn't an ideal DNA sample.
Do you have a source? I know there is an index[0] of the information on California birth certificates from 1905 to 1995 and technically, despite the privacy implications, birth records in California are considered "public record".
I just got back from the Millennium Seed Bank in the UK and was marveling at the size of a small footprint facility that stores samples of more than 10% of all known living plants.
Reading this thread, I was curious about what the size of California's sample collection looks like. I made an estimate using a little 1ul vial and an estimated 40 million people born in California since 1930. 100 samples in each box means 400,000 boxes. It's something like a 60 foot by 60 foot room with shelving.
If you extended it to a bank of 100 billion (about all humans ever born), that gets you to a pretty low tech solution that stores samples in the footprint of five Costcos.
The trick is that you don't elect someone like Donald Trump. I just read on the BBC that the president of America threatened New Yorkers not to vote for Mamdani.
People in the Netherlands trust their government because noone in the 500 years of history has ever gotten close to getting dictatorial power unless you count Napoleon and Hitler.
Despite the downvotes you are right that democracies mostly deliver what voters want. And if voters want silly things, they get silly things.
It's easy to fret at how dysfunctional and insane politics are. But after you talk to some actual voters (and look at opinion polls), instead you marvel at how comparatively sane policies manage to be---despite voters.
Take it easy. The federal budget for the backup of that database was cancelled. We just have to wait for the next HD failure. And then we are anonymous again !
I think it's worth mentioning that while biometrics for identification have flaws (as mentioned in this thread, they're not 100% collision free, are not necessarily secret, and are non-trivial to collect), DNA has a different risk profile if it leaks than fingerprints and iris scans if you consider technology advances. DNA could let people (moving beyond government, since you should probably assume anything in a government database will be leaked at this point) target your family and not just you, it includes information that could let adversaries find out ways you're uniquely exploitable (for instance allergies, sensitivities, diseases) and in general its potential for harm goes far beyond impersonation or being used in court.
(On the plus side, I suppose, I think the story on storing DNA at the scale we're talking about is not fully complete. DNA does denature and it takes a reasonably good sample to get a full genome sequence, and fully sequencing and storing data for every person has other practical issues. The article itself only references using DNA results to "prove or disprove biological sex", which is much more trivial and while it's likely to come with its own problems and edge cases, is also much less information.)
Be careful - this may be a case where they say they're going to do one thing (collect data from US citizens), but walk that part of it back after people protest - while those very same people overlook the fact that they're still going to be getting every immigrant to submit to the scans.
A Sam Altman project which seemingly popped up out of nowhere, and offered people free money in exchange for biometric registration on the network, in a lot of countries all over the world. It seemed to be an attempt to set up some sort of global electronic ID system and currency all in one.
That silver sphere is an iris scanner, IIRC.
Got shut down pretty hard in a bunch of places as a potentially illegal invasion of privacy.
It was 'worldcoin'. And yes I used the term 'money' very loosely there.
Apparently the token was only offered in some countries, and in some places where it was offered, that was considered enough of a bribe to render void the informed consent to collect and process private data.
> but apparently were behind how Iris scanners look these days
Not necessarily - they look whatever you want them to look. In this case sama wanted to create a feeling of futurism - the story being he is leading a global AGI revolution and you can be a part of it by staring in a metal ball.
Just another step closer to the creepy desires of building an AI "replica" human. Gotta get the look right (with Sora), the fingerprints and iris (with Worldcoin), the personality (ChatGPT erotic mode)...
A worldcoin gizmo which is basically a digital camera and I think has some face scanner stuff like an iphone. Once they've scanned and checked you are someone who hasn't been done already they give you basically a crypto wallet with some 'worldcoin' shitcoin in. And there's an app.
You only get a scan at the start, after that it's basically a usual crypto wallet + private key. They don't ask for your name or id or anything at the start. Although they are now offering me like $25 if I'll scan my passport and do kyc stuff. I think they are trying to make it into a payment/investment network.
If by "reality" you mean "the universe", then the way the universe is depends on a cause, as the existence of the universe is not explained by the universe itself (even an "eternal" universe). Its existence is contingent on some other cause that ultimately cannot be contingent and thus does not require explanation.
So the cause or dare I say reason for the universe being the way it is will depend on its cause.
I feel like the language of this argument is self-undermining. The existence of the universe being dependent on a cause that is itself not contingent on anything else… As easily the existence of the universe could be not contingent with anything else.
And you have an implied axiomatic assertion that everything must have a cause, even though that necessarily results in an infinite recursion of cause-finding.
Nowhere did I say or imply everything needs a cause. That's your baggage. In fact, it is the exact opposite: that because an infinite regress is incoherent and impossible, there must be some necessary uncaused cause where the buck stops.
"The universe" cannot be that cause, as the universe and everything in it is contingent.
The cause of the universe must itself be uncaused, or else it is only an intermediate cause that must itself refer ultimately to an uncaused cause. An infinite regress is impossible with respect to existence. Unlike causes per accidens which can in principle be infinite in length, a cause `per se` cannot; without a terminus, there would be nowhere from which the latter causes would derive their force, so to speak, like an arm pushing a stick that is pushing a rock that is pushing a leaf. Meaning, the cause is not some distant one in time, but one always acting; otherwise, everything would vanish. The only cause that could have this property is self-subsisting being.
From there, you can know quite a bit about what else must be true of self-subsisting being.
There doesn’t need to be a why the world exists. It does that’s all there is to know. There doesn’t have to be purpose just an explanation of how not why
Sure but that's somewhat tautological and not very helpful if you seek an empirical or predictive understanding of it. The question really is what complexity of the system (meaning: all of it) is irreducible and what can at least be approximated with simplified models.
You may balk at this as being ultimately futile but our entire existence is built on trying to break apart and simplify the world we exist in, starting with the first cut between self/inside and other/outside (i.e. "this is me" vs "this is where I am" - a distinction that becomes immensely relevant after the moment of birth). Language itself only functions because we can create categories it can operate on - regardless of whether those categories consistenly map to reality itself.
This is the most maddening topic I've experienced in recent times. My guess is it's the ghost of ww2. Anything that looks or smells like a definitive reduction of a human being to numbers is to be opposed, regardless of utility.
What you are choosing, instead, is the management of the phenomenon you're trying to avoid by corporations—more or less emergent feudalism.
Consider the options: a corporation knows everything about you vs. no entity knows any information about you except for whether you're eligible for the service being provided, and that you exist. The former is the current state of affairs. The latter, I think, is a better state of affairs.
I used to think this kind of thing didn’t concern me. But once family members get pulled in and citizens get scanned by association, it’s hard to stay untouched.
Is this really about safety, or are we quietly building something we won’t be able to roll back?
The USA needs a national ID, it will help to avoid fraud, to get socialized health care, etc.
To collect data just for police enforcement is horrifying and it will increase the control that goverment has in private affairs without proving anything of value to society.
The USA claims freedom to avoid taking care of their own, but it claims security to spy and control its own citizens.
It’s somewhat important to point out that this is the same thing that was done during the Iraq war to potential “insurgents” so the biometrics tech was “trained” and used experimentally there before it has been brought home. Wouldn’t be surprised if the people that used it in Iraq (as technicians) are now going to be the people operating the tech now in the US.
India, which given its colonial-era ruling-elites who are maniacally obsessed with the Anglosphere, is today considered a "laboratory" for doing social experiments that'd be considered a outrage against human dignity in their own countries. This country was the first in line not only the biometric identification projects (Aadhar), and for demonetization (of 2016 with UPI). All of these were funded and pushed by USAID.
Both of these were implemented by running roughshod over constitution and regulation, by "roping-in" key regulatory people by giving them what they desire the most - access to the ruling elites in the US. Eg. Infosys' Nandan Nilekani was thrust to the top with his USAID funded projects.
Now the results of this "human corralling" experiments (note: a lot of what Orwell described came out of his experience in British-colonial India), is now coming to the West.
EU's recently rejected chat control looks like child's play compared to this. These are some Stasi methods that are going to destroy the US if implemented. Europe already went through creating dossier on citizens in the past, the next immediate step is always fascism. Nothing good comes out of fascism, as the history showed.
> It is a shame that your people suffered so. Just as in this situation, it was all avoidable. Why did Mandalore resist our expansion? The Empire improves every system it touches. Judge by any metric. Safety, prosperity, trade, opportunity, peace. Compare Imperial rule to what is happening now. Look outside. Is the world more peaceful since the revolution? I see nothing but death and chaos.
Yes, in a rundown communist state. What could have followed , would be a Kim leader steering the country in the North Korean direction — which I’d call fascist.
Luckily there was Gorbachev and in the people enough decency and civilisation left, so the system just folded
My dude did you not read the Snowden papers. The United State’s surveillance is much much worse than anything the Stasi could pull out of its ass.The United States has always been kinda fascist they always supported fascists always worked with them etc. Now that their empire is crumbling this fascism is turning inwards.
Do you not realize how much of a constant, non-trivial challenge identifying foreign nationals is for immigration officials? Forged identities, corrupt/bribed document offices, stolen identites, state-backed agents, etc are all a constant threat. These are not citizens, these are foreigners electing to seek the privilege of entering a country that is not their own. Using technology to mitigate these very real threats should not be controversial. We do it with fingerprints.
> Do you not realize how much of a constant, non-trivial challenge identifying foreign nationals is for immigration officials? ... These are not citizens, these are foreigners electing to seek the privilege of entering a country that is not their own.
Who cares? You used to not even need a passport at all for international travel.
Yeah because international travel was fucking hard, took weeks or months, killed half your party, and I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you didn't exactly have a welcoming party anywhere you went. What a wild take.
Do you also oppose fingerprinting immigrants? What about photographing them? Or asking them for identification? Background screenings?
Privacy is important, but so is knowing who people are when you let them into your country.
Migrating to the United States is not a right anyone has, it's a privilege. Documents can easily be forged, or official ones created for a bribe. I'd rather live in a country that will put our own citizens' rights to safety and security ahead of the rights to privacy given to a foreign national who is willingly seeking the privilege of immigrating to a country that is not their own.
Every time I fly from SFO, there’s a face-tracking camera that takes your photo after you stand up close to it. There’s definitely some sort of data harvesting there and there’s no opt out that I know about.
I also have Clear, which was voluntary but certainly collected my biometric data years ago.
I also have Global Entry, which has a similar scanning tech to point 1.
Yeah, I think the crappy side of it at this point is that the biometric data they collect is never leveraged to help you as a citizen.
If I lose my passport while abroad, given that the government has my fingerprints etc, why can't I use those biometrics to reenter the country (and have a replacement passport reissued immediately)?
Officially, you are supposed to be able to opt out of the face recognition cameras at security but I think whether staff actually respect that is not consistent.
As a US citizen, you likely have your photo in a state or federal database somewhere from getting your ID or driver's license.
Depending on your job, background check history, or interactions with the police, your fingerprints might be in a database somewhere.
If you fly, your facial image/photograph/video is held by TSA and also as part of the REAL ID program.
So there are some biometrics that the government has of us, but clearly the article is describing a huge increase in not just the kind of biometric data collected, but also the kinds of people who would be required to give it up.
I guess I wasn't counting my photo ID as biometrics since there's no 3D map of my face to accompany it. I haven't been through an airport in over ten years either so hopefully my biometrics remain out of government databases for now.
The TSA uses facial recognition right now at most US airports. While they claim to not store the pictures, they've "accidentally" stored data many other times they promised not to so consider me skeptical.
I haven't been through an airport in over 10 years, but it was my understanding that you could opt out of the facial scanning stuff? I've asked my wife to do it each time she flies to California, just to see what happens, but she doesn't want to be a nuisance. :\
I don't have one, but even if I did that's only a 2D photo right? I guess when I think biometrics I think of the full on 3D depth maps, vocal signatures, iris recognition, etc. that a phone is doing to tell who's trying to unlock it. Not that I want them to have a plain photo of me either, but that ship has sailed unfortunately.
I remember nostalgically when this kind of thing would have been so unpopular in the USA, including (especially?) among the "populist right", that it would not have happened.
The escalation of the surveillance security state has been quick and vast.
It's still unpopular. The difference today is that the public is so thoroughly disempowered, that there is nothing you can do to change/resist it. Point me to the major political party, or even individual candidate, where "dismantling surveillance" is even a minor part of their platform. There are probably a single digit number of politicians in the entire country, from federal all the way down to local, who are against surveillance.
> surveillance security state
The only security is of those in power. For ordinary people it gets more unsafe with every measure.
I remember maybe a decade ago talking to a person in computer security. What I was surprised was a strange turn of events in the 'exploits' arena. Although they monitored exploits/cert/etc, they also monitored the people who were involved in exploits.
I kind of wonder if the political arena is quietly doing the same thing. Instead of targeting dissenting opinions, it might be possible and effective to target the people with dissenting opinions.
sort of scary.
I haven't fully made up my mind here, but I'm thinking that (most forms of) privacy is simply no longer viable due to technological advances. Mass collection of data is getting cheaper and cheaper, so these databases will be built. If not by the state than by corporations. And if laws prevent corporations, then by those operating outside the law like intelligence agencies (including foreign ones) and organized crime.
Having the government be the only ones without the data is a weird situation.
We could absolutely regulate corporations so that they didn't collect, keep, and sell everyone's personal data. When the consequences are high enough and enforcement is consistent your grocery store won't go overseas to hand your data to a mafia boss and Netflix isn't going to sell your data in a dark alley to an illegal black market data broker.
Corporations didn't need our current level of surveillance in order to become massively wealthy and they won't risk their wealth just to find out the last time you took a shit or who you're sleeping with and how often.
Surveillance capitalism is a choice. It's happening because at the moment it's profitable, but it can be made unprofitable (or even dangerous) to collect and sell and the moment that happens it all stops.
Just because the technology exists to abuse something that doesn't make it inevitable that it will happen everywhere all the time. The problem we have now is that abusing technology to exploit and control people through the misuse and sale of their personal data is making a lot of people money hand over fist (including people in government) and they'll fight like hell to keep that easy cash and to convince you that any other kind of life would be impossible. Don't fall for the lie.
The government is an adversary that we must constantly keep in check
That's the real WW3.
How much of that, at least among elites, is due to looking at China's dizzying development, bound straight for the singularity, while the old appeals to liberty and rights seem to have only got the USA bogged down in gridlock and squabbling?
Revolutions happen, inter alia, to break gridlock, whether consciously or unconsciously. The rise of the surveillance state might be seen as the coup by elites that is one of the known forms of revolution.
its almost like there a special interest group working behind the scenes that has been simultaneously developing expertise in maintaining surveillance state technology and is motivated to maintain strict control over american public opinion to manage those resistant to their manufactured consent mechanism.
Of course that would require decades of testing and refining the technology on a people so conditioned for us to malign that our mainstream shows can make jokes about their dead babies and only be met with applause.
One thing that i would prefer in biometrics would be that the iris/fingerprints get treated as what they are publicly available and easily obtainable data.
At worst using it a a secret key is similar to using your name as a hidden variable for authorisation, whent it sshould strictly be a identification token.And once leaked you cant revoke it .
Back on topic , a Gattaca type system is unbelievably bleak and when(not if) it is finallly shoved through.It wont take long to foist it on the rest of the planet (see the recent visa requirements viz social media and insane bond requirements demanded of some countries like Mali citizens being asked for $15K per visa application).
Absolutely not. That is legitimately beyond insane.
Fingerprints are used for investigating crimes. Giving them the access to this information before hand puts you as being investigated everytime they find a fingerprint at a crime scene.
They haven’t seen those movies.
Imagine someone wanting to frame someone for a crime and using their publicly available fingerprint data to manufacture gloves that reproduce that fingerprint.
Also, the science behind fingerprints is not particularly solid. Fingerprint experts can sometimes disagree on whether a particular print matches or not and even then, it hasn't been proven that fingerprints are unique - it's just likely to be so.
DNA too. Until 2018 it was used here as waterproof evidence until the police managed to lock up an innocent person based on DNA and blurry surveillance camera photos only. He was only exonerated because the real perpetrator was caught by chance and confessed a week later.
The transmission chain that was later identified on CCTV was hand to escalator rail to hand, a 2+ km walk, and finally hand to latex glove.
That transmission chain is fascinating. I haven't been able to find which case this is describing - can you provide any more details?
Biometrics are identification means (including DNA).
They can be used to uniquely identify you, but they're not secret. You literally leave fingerprints and DNA everywhere you go, and obtaining your biometrics is not as hard as guessing your password.
Biometrics should be used for identification, for authentication along with other means (passwords, PIN, device keys, etc), and never for authorization.
It'll be treated just as stupidly as Social Security numbers, and soon we'll have biometric data breaches. >sigh<
Aside: Social Security numbers should be public now, too. That ship sailed a long time ago and it should be recognized.
What if people just publicized their own social security number, and then whenever they had to deal with "identity theft", they just pointed out that their SSN is public information and so it was negligent for the company to believe it was them just because of a SSN.
Just for the record, I think it’s a crazy idea to make things like DNA or fingerprints public. But a social security number is different. It’s wild how in the US, if someone gets hold of your number, they can do so many things with it. I’m from Sweden, and here we have a similar number called a personal identification number. The last digits are not secret but still sensitive. You can actually Google and find out almost anyone’s number if you want to, and it’s used for similar purposes. But it wouldn’t be enough to cause serious harm just by knowing someone’s number. Identity theft happens here too, but for a company it’s not much different from someone just having your name. It’s still a pain, but it’s nothing like in the US where your life can basically fall apart if someone gets your social security number.
Most doctor's offices just use my name and birthday to assume authorization to transfer sensitive medical information. I kinda feel like privacy is massive "emperor has no clothes" aspect of society.
This behaviour is just because their IT system doesn’t allow regular users to search for names, just for birth dates. Then they pick you by name from a list of people with that birthday.
This is nowhere near the only use of the "birthday + name == all info" hack in the US medical industry. It's basically one big giant frat club with shakes and implicit trust all around. Except that it doesn't actually work; you can fake being a doctor to just about any US medical office and get nearly any American's private medical data.
Exactly. This is just snake oil. No idea why I'm getting downvoted for stating the truth: the employee doesn't care about privacy. They don't use the birthdate because they think it's more secure, the ask for it because they have to.
Names are not unique
So what? The person on the counter doesn't care at all about your privacy. They just cannot type your name into a search box, they have to ask for your birth date first before they can select you from a list based on the name that you state afterwards. At least that's the case at many doctor's offices I've been to.
What do you mean so what? How does asking for a name help if it comes back with a list of multiple people with the same name? Adding the birthday makes it (much closer to) unique
Classic take on "identity theft":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E
poor netsec aside, at least I don't leave my social security number lying around every time I touch a door knob.
Hey now, at least I'm able to change my social security number and passwords.
Good luck changing eyes.
https://youtu.be/nAttA7gzhOI?t=41
Changing your social security number is only slightly easier. Okay, maybe that's hyperbole. But having your SSN exposed isn't a good enough to be able to change it. You have to show it is actively being abused, and you can't address the problems another way.
Gotta rotate your access eyelenses every 3 months office policy incoming. /s
A coworker from Chile has described their equivalent to a SSN as being used as a public ID rather than a password. Every IT company and government service has the same primary key in their database for each citizen. Wouldn't that be great!
My question would be how do we get there?
Lots of countries use the SSN equivalent as a public ID and sometimes have for decades now. The Nordic countries, for example, often require it on any application that requires your real name. I, as an academic, just put in a grant application to a private foundation, and my number was required there like many other places.
In the US, leak of SSN apparently can result in identity theft and so its public use can seem especially troubling, but other countries use different secrets and processes for identity.
yea, in the US, we use the SSN or the last 4 digits, as a security question, which is why it can lead to identity theft
the goal would be to stop using SSN(4) as a secret
Biometrics can be a secure secret key, as long as there's a trusted guard manning the reader, ensuring that you're showing your real fingerprint / face and not a fake.
Why bother with the scan if you can have a perfect guard in place?
The guard makes sure the biometircs presented to the reader actually belong to the person standing there. The reader identifies who (in its database) the presented biometircs belong to.
Not very secret though, considering that they are publicly visible most of the time. You might as well get your bank PIN tattooed on your face if you think that faces are secret.
> Biometrics can be a secure secret key
Nadela, is that you ? /s
Why should they be publicly available and easily obtainable?
Many SSNs have been compromised already. The jig is up. It was never supposed to be an identity system but organisations keep insisting on using it as one. Even if they aren’t literally publicly available and easily obtainable, they should be treated as such.
https://constella.ai/verifying-the-national-public-data-brea...
Unless you’ve been a hermit or homeless for the entirety of your life, just about anyone can get your SSN from Accurint or TLO for a few bucks.
Sure, in theory Accurint and TLO do KYC. In practice you can find tons of people on various crime forums offering those lookups for a few dollars a pop.
That's not what GP said though.
The point was not to make them publicly available but treat them as if they had already leaked and allowed anyone to frame anyone else.
Visit a bus stop, pick up a stubbed out cigarette, leave it at the scene of your next crime.
You're gonna want somewhere where people are much more likely to have a record and be in the system than a bus stop.
A bus stop in a rough part of town then.
1. Most people already share this data in the form of photos posted online.
2. So people don't treat it as a "secure secret," because we've been down this road more than once before.
That's so stupid. Just because I posted a video on TikTok doesn't mean someone should be able to go to the city's public website, look me up on a yellow page and download my photo id and fingerprints.
That’s not what the poster meant.
What treating this biometric info as public means is that it won’t be accepted as valid proof of identity. Just because you posted a video on TikTok shouldn’t mean that a scammer can take out a loan in your name.
> 1. Most people already share this data in the form of photos posted online.
So most people have a red iris. Problem solved. /s
You don't leave iris prints everywhere you go. Even most fingerprints you leave are unusable for identification. Contrary to what CSI may have taught most Americans, even usable DNA samples aren't a given.
Biometrics aren't "publicly available" let alone "easily obtainable". They're easy to extract from you but this is why extraction and retention of this kind of data should be considered extremely invasive and sensitive. That wallet in your pocket may be "publicly available and easily obtainable" but that doesn't mean we should treat it as such - rather we should make sure it's actually illegal to do so without your consent: that's why theft is a crime.
The problem with these types of technologies is that you will be at the mercy of whoever uses them. It's like chat control, censorship, gun laws, etc. You can't control how they will be leveraged.
I lived in California for some time a few years ago, and it was a mess, so I understand people being okay with this type of stuff if it will make them more secure, but it's a very risky slippery slope.
The other thing is that with all the data Google has, they can probably uncover everything they need just by paying for Google Ads data :/
Big old cable connected to people's heads to control their movements and their thoughts would make some people feel more secure, but this is not what we're going to agree to. That's not enough that some people feel not secure...
> gun laws
... arent as vital as other freedoms like travel, anonymity, speech and contract. I dont like this conflation because i see it as a nasty and harmful bias.
All those other rights are backed up by credible capacity for violence. You need to distribute some of that credible capacity for violence among the populace in order to check the long tail of potential abuses the system (not necessarily the government, though there is much overlap) may engage in.
There's a discussion to be had about what the right amount is though.
It's weird how many people's perception of this type of behavior is shaped by the person sitting in the White House.
EDIT: It's also weird how my comment is being perceived exclusively as criticizing the critics of this administration rather than criticizing the supporters of this overreach. My comment was intentional phrased very generally, if you think it is specifically about you, that reveals something about you.
Wouldn't it be weird if that didn't shape their perception? It's not surprising that people are less trusting when an authoritarian is in power.
But the assumptions should always be that one day someone like that could take power and gain access to that data.
The way to prevent authoritarians from abusing power is to not elect them, and to throw them in jail when they violate the law. They're not hard to spot; people warned about the current guy for a decade before he took over.
What's happening right now is not because the government had a database lying around and an unspecified authoritarian picked it up.
What's happening is that after a specific authoritarian staged a coup against the government, he was nevertheless allowed to continue his anti-democratic efforts. Trump should have a 27 year sentence like his Brazilian compatriot Bolsonaro, who in monkey-see-monkey-do fashion, similarly affected a coup against his government. Had we actually prosecuted those crimes the way Brazil did, we could still be talking about how to prevent theoretical authoritarian governments from abusing their power. But now we have a specific instance, and in this case, all the anti-authoritarian measures in the world mean jack if the government just allows actual insurrectionists to run for president, which is barred by the Constitution for a good reason. In that case they're just asking for it.
>The way to prevent authoritarians from abusing power is to not elect them, and to throw them in jail when they violate the law.
This was the true motivation for my comment. It's futile trying to design your laws to withstand the dangers of a future authoritarian regime taking power when that authoritarian regime can just as easily change or ignore those laws once they take control. Our government is experiencing a rubber hose attack, the strength of our encryption doesn't matter.
Yup, the fight against American authoritarianism happened between 2015 and 2025. It's now over, authoritarianism won. All that's left now is for it to burn itself out as people bear the consequences they refused for a decade to entertain were possible.
We spent 10 years warning about him, pointing out his specific authoritarian tendencies, January 6 was predicted years before it happened, but when people said "he's not going to leave" they were met with mockery.
Who tf cares about databases when their plan was to just use their power to throw out entire states worth of votes? The entire J6 plot was that Pence was to reject the certification of the vote so that states could send "alternative electors" who voted for Trump, which would have disenfranchised millions of people at once. What is the law supposed to do against such anti-democratic "might makes right" depravity? At that point, the players have abandoned the game entirely, they're playing by different rules, your laws are meaningless.
Edit: to the dead comment below me:
> If you actually believed you were living under a dangerous, authoritarian government you wouldn't be posting about it on the internet. You'd be scared shitless trying to delete any trace of this connected to yourself.
Bro, I'm already labelled part of a terrorist organization by this government for my political beliefs. There's nothing I can say here or elsewhere that would change that, so at this point my fate is locked in because I'm not going to change what I believe.
There's not point in hiding anything, now is not a time for hiding, it's a time for speaking your mind. These people are authoritarians, but they are not all powerful. Yet. They have no consolidated power. Yet. They 100% want to, but that's not going to be possible as long as people continue to speak out. Read Timothy Snyder's, On Authoritarianism. He describes what you suggest is the rational response as "obeying in advance", which is the primary way in which the authoritarians seize power -- it's freely given by people who are too afraid to push back.
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The problem is that people really want authoritarianism, to use against their enemies.
>The problem is that people really want authoritarianism, to use against their enemies.
Look no further than a typical HN comment thread on a niche public policy issue.
They are rife with people scheming up all sorts of ways to thread the needle of public policy so that government enforcement action far in excess of what the public would support can be brought to bear on whoever is on the wrong side of whatever the issue being discussed is.
Yeah, if you go into my comment history from just this week there's a guy who told me "We won the last election. We can and will, with sadness but determination power, turn the power of the state against you and make you leave us the hell alone."
That's the mindset of an authoritarian. No needle threading here though, just use "the power of the state to" get our way (no sadness detected).
It still amazes me that there was no penalty for storing classified paperwork in his bathroom. I always thought that governments treated security very seriously, but apparently not.
He got lucky that the sitting attorney general was loathe to appear that he was politically motivated, so was very slow to appoint a special prosecutor. He then got extremely lucky that his hand picked judge was assigned to the case, and slow walked it until he got reelected and took control of the very department that was investigating him.
This on top of the fact that the "law and order" party apparently is only for law and order if it's being used against people they don't like. Evidently most people aren't self aware enough to question their own beliefs, who knew?
I mean I think, while that possibly always _should_ have been the assumption, 20 years ago the assumption would have been very much that someone like that could _not_ take power, and that the worst the US had to fear was the likes of Dick Cheney (admittedly still pretty bad). The idea that the US might just transform into a weird batshit autocracy is really _pretty new_; it wasn't taken all _that_ seriously even in Trump's first term, because, well, the courts will just slap him down, right?
I don't think most people realize just how slow the court system is. It's horribly underfunded. They generally come to good decisions, but it takes a really long time, and a lot of damage can happen in the mean time.
At this point, at least a third of the country always thinks an authoritarian is in power.
FWIW, I've believed we've had an authoritarian in power for quite a while now. Obama, Trump, Biden, and Bush have all tried and succeeded in expanding executive power. They've all engaged in extrajudicial killings overseas.
Nothing sets me off like seeing people think this behavior from Trump doesn't have shared roots across both parties.
Biden kept kids in cages. Obama bombed weddings. Yes, the current admin is accelerating hard but like, prior admins were accelerating.
People should really try to stop thinking about politics like it's a two party game where you have to pick a side. Figure out your principles, and start finding candidates who match those principles.
Yes, it has been accelerating a long time. But I worry a bit about toning it down too much by both-sides-ing it. The Dems were no angels, but they most assuredly did not ever try to overturn the counting of the vote for president. They did not relentlessly claim the whole game was rigged. They never openly mocked the citizens who did not vote for them, made policy specifically to spite red states, etc. Or created government web sites like https://www.whitehouse.gov/mysafespace
By both-sides-ing this, it plays into hands of the people who support the current abhorrent behavior by claiming they're not doing anything different than their opponents have done. That is patently false, and we should not accept it.
I'm sorry, I refuse to just simply not acknowledge the role liberalism has in the rise of fascism. Whether it's in the past or today, fascism don't just materialize because one guy talks good. It's neither incorrect nor inappropriate to say (neo)liberalism and austerity are direct antecedents to fascist rhetoric.
It's not both sidesing to identify and critique the role democrats had to play here, especially when I say the gop is clearly worse. A critical assessment of how the Dems failed to protect us is not only not helping the GOP, it's exactly the sort of root cause analysis that helps ensure the mid terms go OK.
Saying now's not the time to criticize Dems is the same sentiment that gets us "vote blue no matter who" when Biden runs but "I think we have to consider our options" when Mamdani runs. It's sticking your head in the sand rather than having to face the fact that the party has a losing platform.
I didn’t agree with your first comment, but reading this one I think we actually have very similar opinions. I think your first comment sounded a bit too much like the libertarian nut jobs that comment on here all the time claiming drivers licenses are fascism.
There’s this quote I read recently: “When a political system collapses, the replacement is chosen from the choices available at the time ”.
I think it’s pretty clear to anyone with a brain that neoliberalism has failed the majority of people. Trump provided an alternative, and democrats ran on “nothing will fundamentally change”. The results are what we see today.
>FWIW, I've believed we've had an authoritarian in power for quite a while now.
Relevant:
https://img.ifunny.co/images/d85bf67967cdc2fd0616343ed6c1004...
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Did you read my post, where I clearly said the GOP is worse?
Better is not the same as good. The Dems are better. They are still bad. Stop pretending "not the worst" is an acceptable bar.
Step 1 is to get people to stop readily voting for the worst option. Step 2 is to get people to vote for the right option. When you confuse the order of these two steps, you short yourself and others in the foot.
Authoritarianism by definition is about controlling all the forms of power, not about expanding one.
Nor it has anything to do with what countries do around the world. You can be democratically elected, law abiding, not overreach and bomb weddings abroad, those are not related.
US has the same constitutional weakness of the countries that went authoritarian in the last decades: a presidential republic.
There's one thing that Russia, Belarus, Philippines, Tunisia, Turkey, Nicaragua made constitutionally simpler to allow authoritarianism to happen, they gave the country a president elected by the government.
Thus enabling: - personality cult - hard to remove individuals - claiming popular mandate despite anything - deadlocks
All those situations are breeding grounds for chaos.
Say what you want about slow Europe, but it's hard, very hard to pull this stuff here where most countries don't have popular elections for presidents.
In parliamentary republics those shifts are very difficult and are generally centred on party-ism, so identification between state and party.
This is the Indian and Hungarian playbook, as the constitutions don't allow individuals to power grab with ease, it's a very tougher game to succeed.
You don't win an election and start firing executive orders and stretching their limits while courts get to decide what the limits are.
"You can be … law abiding … and bomb weddings abroad"
No you can't. International law (e.g. UN charters, Geneva conventions, etc.) once ratified become actual US domestic law.
What makes this objectionable is that it's an authoritarian thing to do.
>Wouldn't it be weird if that didn't shape their perception?
No. I flat out reject the excuse you make on their behalf and consider you lesser than you would be had you not made it.
We're presumably discussing adults, not ten year olds or monkeys. They ought to f-ing act like it.
These people are almost all likely capable of the emotional restraint and logical thinking and sufficient abstract thought to think these things through and decide whether policy or action is good or bad regardless of if it's their guy doing it or their interest being served by it. The fact that they decline to do so is a failing of them. To excuse it only serves to reinforce or validate it and should be ridiculed.
They should bear in mind that someone they consider an authoritarian will inevitably be elected.
> It's not surprising that people are less trusting when an authoritarian is in power.
The majority of Americans don't feel that way, but did about the last administration, and enough to do something about it. What's surprising is, given that revelation, a few people still actually think that.
I see it as a blessing: privacy advocates have previously argued that yes these invasive tools might currently help an honest government do its job to stop bad guys, but the tools could eventually fall into the hands of a not so honest government. Now, you don't really need much of an imagination to see what happens when the tools fall into the wrong hands, and hopefully more of the citizenry can get behind the idea of privacy as a fundamental right, and not just something for those who have something to hide.
I don't think it is.
I think it's selective attention plus recency bias.
This drift has started 24 years ago with 9/11 and no president has stopped or slowed it.
People who dislike who's in charge say the same things as always, people who dislike such measures same the same things as always regardless of who's in the white house, etc.
Do you have any evidence that public concern over privacy changes depending on who is in the white house?
A quick search suggests a solid majority has been consistently upset about this issue for decades. The phrasing of the question seems to have more impact than the year, but I cannot find any hard data on consumer privacy concern trends over years.
Such trend data would be useful.
Fwiw, I would be unhappy with the Biden and Obama administrations trying to do this as well. For me this has nothing to do with who's in the White House, it's an overreach plain and simple.
100%. Let’s not let partisanship distract us from the omni-presence of the military industrial complex and the authoritarian bent of everyone who’s been in power in the US over the last several decades. Dems will tinker around the edges to make it more palatable, but there’s still: black sites, torture, drone strikes, unjustified wars, installing of puppet governments in sovereign nations, abuse of the commons for private profit and an absolute hunger for every scrape of your data to monitor and manipulate you no matter who is in the White House.
If I have to choose between voting for pro-corporate neoliberalism or fascism 2.0, I’ll vote the former, but that’s basically just asking which speed you’d like quality of life to erode for the average person. I’d really like a couple more options on the ballot please.
Nit: Quality of life for average Germans went up, not down, once they brought back slavery and started pillaging other countries. If that's the metric we're using to decide what form of government we want, then all bets are off; ethics and morality play no part.
To be fair, pixelready said "average person," not "average American."
Yes, I would not like my own prosperity to come at the cost of others’ suffering (where “others” here means all of humanity). I understand hard choices must sometimes be made but I think our technology has progressed to the point that we can honestly provide a good quality of life for the vast majority of human beings globally if we were able to overcome old modes of thinking and actually set ourselves to that problem.
But it seems there are certain types of people or that under certain circumstances have grown to have this twisted need for “all”, instead of “just enough”. I don’t really understand that mindset as I haven’t experienced it myself. If my friends and family had UBI that allowed us all a good quality of life, I would split my time between spending time with them, reading and endlessly tinkering with new technology and adjacent creative fields, and be perfectly satisfied with that life. I crave the occasional toy, but simply don’t understand this constant ache for material accumulation that some people have. It seems to hurt them as much as it does everyone else around them.
Just from reading your comment, I think I have a very similar view to yours about the meaning of life, what constitutes a life well lived, and what we should spend our time on. Like you, I'm ridiculously uninterested in toys, especially toys that are bought to show status (as opposed to ones you're just interested in). Like you, I'm very satisfied with a life of tinkering and exploring code / art / music / writing that makes me a full person with a sense of accomplishment.
As someone who came from the extremely far left (with an anarchist bent), I just want to respond to this, though:
>> it seems there are certain types of people or that under certain circumstances have grown to have this twisted need for “all”, instead of “just enough”.
My observation has been that the desire for all, or at least more, is inherent to all people. You may be happy with a UBI, but the great complaint is wealth inequality.
I look around and find myself pretty well-off, with easy access to goods and services my father struggled for, and which my grandfather could never have imagined. I look around and see people of my own well-off technical elite upper-middle-class touting stuff like Maoism, because America allegedly has worse wealth inequality than China did in the 1970s. And logically I have to ask: Are these people so obsessed with keeping up with the Joneses that they can't see what they have?
Greed comes in different forms, right? There's this amazing line in Dostoevsky's "Devils": Why is it that all these desperate socialists and communists are so incredibly miserly, acquisitive, and proprietorial? In fact, the more socialist someone is, the further he's gone in that direction, the stronger his proprietorial instinct. Why is it?"
Okay, so imagine you live a life with 100x the material wealth of your grandfather, like me, but you still are in the middle 40-60% of the country in terms of wealth. You'll never own a private jet, you'll never party on a private island. The question is: Are you happy with yourself and your life? Can you see how much prosperity you've achieved and be proud of it? Or do you spend your time worrying that someone else has more than you, that it's unfair, that the system is rigged against you, etc.
Maybe this is because I come from an immigrant family mindset, but, prosperity and self-reliance are so much more important to me than trying to compare my life to what anyone else has.
Personally, I'd be happy enough in a prison cell or on my death bed, if I had a pen and paper to write on. So I'm okay with other people having luxuries I don't have. I count each day as an amazing blessing if I can wake up, find work, get laid, eat a good meal, watch a good Netflix show, get stoned and go to bed with my lover. Every single one.
I never for a moment thought that Elon or Bezos or any of them were happy. Their toys always seem to rot, their possessions don't intrigue me because they're clearly miserable.
In large bore: Those "certain types of people" you mention exist on both the Left and the Right - they will find a way to blame anyone who has something they don't have. That's the genesis of all the nasty politics we see. I'm not advocating for having less or having nothing or anything like that. I'm just saying, a small amount of appreciation (historically) for what you have now goes a long way toward letting people be happy and chill instead of angry and aggrieved. And someone will always have more unless you're the King of AI or King of Logistics or King of Twitter. So, we lead more modest lives, but lives are all finite, and we have happiness that they can't possibly achieve.
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It's also weird how people gatekeep resistance on the basis of their perception that it's motivated by the person sitting in the White House.
If people are ready to resist now, let's welcome them, rather than questioning whether their motives are related to some tangentially related disagreement.
>It's also weird how people gatekeep resistance on the basis of their perception that it's motivated by the person sitting in the White House.
Because let's be real here, whether such discussion is allowed to stand or is shut down in a politically fairly homogenous community is typically a direct reflection of that fact. You see the same thing on the opposite side of the isle.
>If people are ready to resist now, let's welcome them, rather than questioning whether their motives are related to some tangentially related disagreement.
You have to draw a line somewhere. This sort of shortsighted expediency based politics is how we got the current political parties.
Biden cancelled this during his administration
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You can submit a public comment on the proposal to DHS at the link below:
https://www.regulations.gov/document/USCIS-2025-0205-0002/co...
I suspect this government isn’t receptive to commentary from anyone other than only one person. While I’d never discourage anyone from advocating their beliefs this feels like at best a waste of energy. They are going to do it because they decided to do it - the solicitation of comments is performative and required. The only way to stop it is via the courts and by voting next November.
There's even precedent for the current president's agencies compiling some pretty sketchy "comments" in the past due to not doing basic sanity checks on pretty obvious fake comments that happened to support their agenda, like when supposedly seeking input from the public about repealing net neutrality[1]. There were so many duplicates that only thirty 30 unique comments made up 57% of the overall total, and the second most common "name" among the authors was literally "The Internet".
No one in the current administration cares about what random members of the public think about their policies, and that's by design. Even the government positions that are intended to be permanent across administrations aren't a safe bet at this point with was things have been going
[1]: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2017/11/29/public-comme...
You are 'this government's best friend, advocating for their opponents to give up and quit. In a remarkable pattern that I never thought I'd see in the rugged individualistic, idealistic, freedom-loving USA, a large group is literally self-defeating: They defeat themselves before even getting out of bed.
That's why your opponents are unstoppable - because you don't stop them. The performative nonsense is their aggression display.
They still want to win the election. Political and policy outcomes aren't all or nothing; the more they see, the more it will nudge them in whatever direction you want. Others will see it and it will nudge them too. If one person didn't embrace being a quitter, others would do the same.
First, the post literally gives instructions to do something.
Second, the root problem is not incompetence, it's that half of America wanted exactly this, for a second time now.
> the root problem is not incompetence, it's that half of America wanted exactly this, for a second time now.
That is the same psychology I described in the GP: Instead of looking in the mirror and figuring out what they need to do better, they blame outside forces. It's victim psychology - powerless, someone else's fault, etc.
Your group failed; people didn't vote for it because you are well-known quitters and whiners and victims - and losers; you're ok with losing and quit when it happens - and you conduct shitty politics as a result. Who votes for that? Who even can stand to listen to it - it's sickening, depressing, disheartening.
The right wing says, 'we believe in X and we won't be stopped no matter what; we will never give up'. That gets votes. That gets things done.
Get out of bed, stop crying, and get to work. That you still hold on politically with this victim psychology shows how bad the right wing's message is. Never give up, never even talk about it.
> Instead of looking in the mirror and figuring out what they need to do better, they blame outside forces.
I'm not American, so let me ask you: what do you think they should have done better? Maybe a not presenting a woman candidate? I ask because that's the most common denominator in their last two election losses.
> what do you think they should have done better?
Take a good position - the GOP leaves the field wide open, maybe as simple as 'Liberty and Justice for All' (part of the American pledge of allegiance that everyone knows) - and fight for it, stand up for yourself, against all enemies and attacks, and fight until you win. Take punches, never go down, keep going, have a winning strategy and keep going until it works. Nobody will believe in you until you do it.
The Dems never confront the GOP and always fold. I think if they fought, successfully, for almost any policy, they'd attract a lot of support.
> the most common denominator
Not at all. How about they were Democrats, Senators, .... If it stand out the most to you, maybe ask why?
> Not at all.
With a straight face lmao
Taking performative actions you are certain will fail unnoticed is a waste of energy. I most certainly didn’t advise doing nothing, this seems like a hyperbolic take that ignores what I suggested was more impactful. By extension, encouraging others to take those actions is productive and there are other actions I didn’t enumerate that are productive - I didn’t intend to be exhaustive in all actions that could be productive, just that this specific action of commenting on their preordained policy decisions is pointless. I don’t see any argument here that in any way refutes that so I assume you agree.
> Taking performative actions you are certain will fail unnoticed is a waste of energy.
It's true, but usually in the opposite way you intend. If you go into ventures thinking they will "fail unnoticed", you certainly will fail. For example, who would hire someone or invest in someone with this attitude?
If you go in determined to succeed no matter what, there are no guarantees but you have a good chance.
Comments certainly contribute - the only risk to their power is people like you mocking them. And have you ever seen a successful team where some people mock others doing work?
I’d note you’ve not really proposed anything related to how commenting on policy in this administration achieves anything just pointed to cases where negative thinking brings bad mojo or something. Along that vein, I have been trying to grow wings and fly to the moon for the last 15 years but despite the investment of effort have not succeeded. It’s probably because people kept telling me it’s not possible and a waste of time, by the reasoning here. If I could get people to stop mocking me when I flop off the roof onto the ground I surely would succeed?
There are activities that are absolutely not worth doing because their chance of succeeding is zero percent even with the strongest of desire for it to not be zero.
I posit because this administration literally does not care what you have to say only what one individual on this planet has to say there’s no point in trying to reason with them. The only action that will work to stop them is in court and in the voting booth, and by proxy activities that magnify the value of either of those activities by getting others to participate. I think protest is a much more effective use of energy for that reason - it energizes like minded people and when this administration reacts with brutality to opposing opinions it shocks people not aligned with dictatorial oppression - which is almost everyone. But participating in the comment processes of their regulatory capture? Waste of time with zero chance of causing even an iota of change no matter how hard you wish it to be otherwise or how much you ignore the naysayers. Spend that energy growing wings and flying to the moon.
The government isn't one person, and I think both bureaucrats and judges are actually quite receptive to lots of people - only it's nebulous to who and why. Trying to please, and hoping to get rewarded, but neither you or they themselves are 100% certain of by who. Opaque power structures, everyone's paranoid, including the powerful.
> this government isn’t receptive to commentary from anyone
Name one government of the past 60 years that was.
Actually the comment collection process has in fact caused changes in policy over many administrations, largely because the policy makers were interested in achieving some goal aligned to their function and believed in our system. When commentary went strongly against their policy there was often a step back and reassessment. This administration appears to have two goals: maximally hurt people who hurt Trumps feelings and create the deep state they lamented but never really existed until now to continue to maximally hurt people similar to those who hurt trumps feels in perpetuity.
Don't most people in the US get fingerprinted at some point?
Let's see. I've been fingerprinted, all 10 fingers, for, at least, 1) the US Army, 2) security clearance for a DoD job, multiple times, 3) a permit to ride a horse on SF Water Department property, and 4) Customs and Border Protection Global Entry, which also took an iris scan.
California DMV takes a thumbprint, but not all 10 fingers. They've been recording me at every transaction for decades.
So I'm on file.
I think of being IDd as a normal part of life, for any position of trust. Is this unusual?
What may be information regarding a check for position of trust today, may well be information regarding a check if you should be locked up because of other reasons, tomorrow.
The issue is not the information itself, but how the information will be used. The chance of abusing information is not zero. But having rigorous rules and processes regarding that information, for instance mandatory destruction of said information, will greatly reduce the chance of abuse in the uncertain future.
I live in the apparent dystopia that is the UK and I've never had my fingerprint or DNA taken. Seems a bit of an overreach.
I'm in my 50s and British and I've only had it done once: by the police when the house I was living in got burgled and they wanted to rule out our finger prints. It was 30 years ago and I imagine I could have refused. I didn't really think about it at the time.
Likewise a British citizen in the UK. Funnily, while the UK government does not have my fingerprints, the US gov does! They were taken at the border when I visited. All 10 fingers
> I've never had my fingerprint or DNA taken.
Automated passport-and-fingerprint (sometimes also iris) scanning is now often the default route at many airports.
Surely there's a difference between collecting a thumbprint for a driver's license or even collecting full fingerprints for a specific job type, and collecting your DNA and an iris scan just for being a citizen?
I'm German. My government literally issues ID cards and requires fingerprints for those nowadays as well (because terrorism or the children or whatever works as the excuse at the moment) but the idea of a government agency collecting my DNA seems far more invasive given the kind of things you can do with that information and the kind of things governments (especially in my country but in the US and Canada too) have historically done to groups of people under them.
If you think there's nothing concerning about the government wanting to collect extensive biometric data including DNA from not only people applying for immigration but also people associated with them or their application, maybe it would sound more concerning to you if I said that in German.
In the EU, national ID cards are required to contain fingerprints in an electronically readable section. (a private key is required to read them via NFC) As a result, Ireland started issuing passport cards, since compliant passports can be used in place of a national ID card. The only biometric data on my passport is a black and white image of my face. (that can be read with a key derived from data on the passport itself)
> Surely there's a difference between collecting a thumbprint for a driver's license or even collecting full fingerprints for a specific job type, and collecting your DNA and an iris scan just for being a citizen?
Not really; every citizen is expected to have a driver's license, and this takes place before anyone has really thought about the issue even if they're likely to object later. It's sort of like the difference between baptizing infants and baptizing adults.
You're right that there's more information in the DNA, but what difference do you see in the iris scan?
Also in the US, never been fingerprinted. Well, I think. You mentioned CA DMV, and I don’t remember a fingerprint, but I did have a California drivers license over a decade ago, so maybe? But most people don’t have security clearance, most are not in the military, most do not have global entry. Also the horse permit one is just funny.
Exactly. As a naturalized citizen my fingerprints are already on file. - everytime I entered the US when I was not a citizen - when I filed my green card application - when I went for my citizenship interview - TSA precheck biometrics because I travel quite a bit.
Depend what the "position of trust" is taken. Security clearance for departement of defense is certainly not something the median citizen can be expected to go through.
Did you know that the State of California has a DNA sample from every person born in the state since 1983? It's required by law for the hospital to collect it and give it to the state.
This is a particularly incendiary way of putting this information out there.
What is collected and stored is a small blood-spot sample from a heel prick on a newborn. This is used to test for various kinds of conditions that affect newborns.
This isn't a full DNA genome sequence or even any data at all, just the blood-spot specimen.
Law enforcement does not have automatic access to this sample, but individual samples have been given to law enforcement through court orders or warrants. There isn't a clear SOP for how law enforcement typically gets this information or how often it's given to law enforcement, but there's been proposed legislation to make this more transparent.
The blood sample isn’t a DNA sample right up until the point they decide to sequence it. This is the same legal doctrine allowing the government to systematically collect all of your personal data without violating your privacy as long they don’t look at what they collect without a warrant.
The government has granted themselves an option on your personal data that can’t be revoked.
I agree with you in principle. And I agree that the government has been steadily eroding our privacy. And I agree that California probably shouldn't be retaining these samples forever.
However, the likelihood of being able to "sequence" the biomatter on a blood spot is quite low, and the probability of getting good signal out of it continues to go down over time. It'll still remain useful for various kinds of spot testing and genetic disease testing, but it's not going to produce a fully validated genomic sequence or even be that useful for forensic purposes.
This isn't some sort of sealed blood vial, it's literally just blood on paper.
This is wrong, the sample efficiency of DNA collection, amplification and sequencing technology has gone way up, to the extent that for example bubonic plague could be identified from DNA samples in the dental plaque of skulls which are multiple centuries old.
Also your statement directly conflicts with the purported confirmed utility of law enforcement getting warrants to use said samples.
You don't think that it's easier to identify whether something is bubonic plague than it would be to identify whether two DNA samples are related? Especially when one of them is aged such that it's not even a whole sequence anymore?
Yes, our ability to manipulate and read DNA has increased significantly in the past 40 years. But you can't create data from something that isn't there or has been corrupted beyond recovery.
And as far as the efficacy of police goes, I don't think that a warrant is sufficient to prove that there's confirmed utility in getting these samples.
I agree but the State has already the monopoly on violence, which is something that only the State has. If they have a warrant, they can also break into your private property and you have to accept it. This is not too dissimilar.
They can arrest you (with a warrant) and take your DNA whenever they want so I don't see what your point is.
They don’t need to arrest you to obtain your DNA, which is the entire point. They don’t need to arrest you to use your DNA, previously collected, to identify a family member.
The government has my biometrics. Most people should assume, by default, that the government has theirs as well.
Then they don't need to recollect it for "any applicant, petitioner, sponsor, supporter, derivative, dependent, beneficiary, or individual filing or associated with a benefit request or other request or collection of information, including U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals and lawful permanent residents, and without regard to age"
> but individual samples have been given to law enforcement through court orders or warrants.
Then I can easily guarantee you that individual samples have been given to law enforcement _without_ orders or warrants.
> There isn't a clear SOP for how law enforcement typically gets this information
Which means there is zero oversight, logging, or auditing.
> This is a particularly incendiary way of putting this information out there.
Was it inaccurate?
It's about as accurate a Buzzfeed headline, but I guess that's par for the course on the internet these days.
It's not a "DNA sample" in the way that most people would consider it these days, no more than a used cup would also be called a "DNA sample". But to your point, it can still be used for surveillance and tracking.
Also, your phrasing is designed to make it seem like a huge overreach, when this act has likely saved millions of lives through early diagnosis of preventable diseases and early intervention on disabilities. I have personally experienced this.
So yes, I do think your framing here is inaccurate through omission of key facts.
> this act has likely saved millions of lives through early diagnosis of preventable diseases and early intervention on disabilities
Why does the state have to collect and keep the sample for that to happen? Why can't it be the private property of the parents, provided to whatever private testing labs are used to do the tests?
That seems like a fair criticism. I don't know enough to quantify the benefit of retaining these samples, but I do know that the reason for keeping samples primarily relates to quality control, research, and development of tests.
There is a process for people to have the sample destroyed, I also have no idea how easy or how often that is used.
the implication was misleading, yes. the implication being that California has database of its citizens' genetic data. when the reality is that CA has a _physical sample_ of blood.
A collection of cars is also a collection of steering wheels, a collection of tires, a collection of seats, a collection of engines a collection of seats, ...
as blood contains white blood cells, and these cells tend to contain DNA, yes a collection of identified blood samples is also a collection of DNA (molecules).
A DNA collection doesn't need to have been sequenced to qualify as a DNA collection.
On the other hand blood samples degrade over time depending on how you store it. This makes DNA sequencing more difficult and/or impossible. Presumably the ROI (in a non-dystopian society) of storing those sample long-term doesn't make sense, especially if the primary usecase is screening for diseases (a random PDF from the Association of Public Health Laboratories says biomonitoring/biothreat samples are stored 1 year https://www.aphl.org/AboutAPHL/publications/Documents/ID_Spe... ).
So yes a collection of blood sample is technically also a collection of DNA sequences, but it has an expiry date (a short one compared to the lifespan of an individual!) contrary to a DNA sequence that's pure data.
It's very inaccurate.
OP made it sound like Cali was genome sequencing everyone born in the state and then storing that.
What's really going on is they're doing routine blood tests.
So yeah, pretty inaccurate.
Blood isn't stored after routine blood tests?
It didn't sound like that at all, it just says DNA samples are collected and stored. The implication that such DNA in such samples can be sequenced after the fact is not novel at all, every time DNA is sequenced, it is first collected.
it was misinformation, the DNA in such a sample is not only miniscule and unstandardized, but also not treated for longterm archival specimen retention.
the blood "spot" is about general morphology, and antigenic specificity.
It is as accurate as any of the incendiary Pravda propaganda pieces[1] about how the capitalist swine lived. Other posters have helpfully pointed out the specifics of why your particular spin on it is not entirely honest.
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[1] Often mostly factually accurate, but I doubt you'd find much common ground with the particular spin they'd put on describing your daily life.
> This is used to test for various kinds of conditions that affect newborns.
Then why do they keep the samples?
Because the US has laughably weak privacy laws and most Americans snicker at the EU GDPR because of "cookie banners" (which btw isn't a thing - most consent dialogs are non-compliant as they shouldn't serve to just inform you but to actually obtain voluntary, revokable and specific informed consent) instead of thinking about what it means to actually have a fundamental human right to privacy and ownership of your own data or not.
They keep the samples for the same reason US tech startups keep deleted data and track seemingly useless behavior. Because they might find a use for it someday and there's literally no law preventing them from doing it.
No, they are correct, and it's disingenuous to claim otherwise. They have a DNA sample of everyone. Those samples haven't been sequenced. As you've pointed out, they are sequenced when the state needs them to be.
It would be like scanning your drivers license and putting it in a sealed envelope and claiming "I don't have your home address!", when I'm known to get the home address from other peoples envelopes when asked for it.
At least they can't trawl them for random matches when they're like that, the cost of sequencing is a barrier. Probably even more in that a 20 year old blood spot on a piece of paper isn't an ideal DNA sample.
"There isn't a clear SOP for how law enforcement typically gets this information..."
Then no, it wasn't an incendiary claim.
Ag puhleez
Do you have a source? I know there is an index[0] of the information on California birth certificates from 1905 to 1995 and technically, despite the privacy implications, birth records in California are considered "public record".
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Birth_Index
https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CFH/DGDS/Pages/nbs/default....
I just got back from the Millennium Seed Bank in the UK and was marveling at the size of a small footprint facility that stores samples of more than 10% of all known living plants.
Reading this thread, I was curious about what the size of California's sample collection looks like. I made an estimate using a little 1ul vial and an estimated 40 million people born in California since 1930. 100 samples in each box means 400,000 boxes. It's something like a 60 foot by 60 foot room with shelving.
If you extended it to a bank of 100 billion (about all humans ever born), that gets you to a pretty low tech solution that stores samples in the footprint of five Costcos.
California has been storing the samples in its biobank since 1983 not 1930.
What about people born outside of a hospital?
... The concept of DNA sample collection existed in 1983?
They actually started in 1966 (it's a blood spot collection) but they only started keeping it in 1983.
And what information did they hope to glean back then?
https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/tag/newborn-blood-spot-pr...
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The trick is that you don't elect someone like Donald Trump. I just read on the BBC that the president of America threatened New Yorkers not to vote for Mamdani.
People in the Netherlands trust their government because noone in the 500 years of history has ever gotten close to getting dictatorial power unless you count Napoleon and Hitler.
Why does Belgium exist? Is it because the Flemish revolted against Dutch rule?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_Revolution
Despite the downvotes you are right that democracies mostly deliver what voters want. And if voters want silly things, they get silly things.
It's easy to fret at how dysfunctional and insane politics are. But after you talk to some actual voters (and look at opinion polls), instead you marvel at how comparatively sane policies manage to be---despite voters.
I think it's an interesting visual to compare the Stasi's rows of scent jars to data centers filled with banks of flash memory storing biometric data.
The horror of that constrasted with the blithe compliance of modern citizens.
Hospitals in california steal the DNA of every single baby born there and collect it in a database.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-newborn-dna-privacy-...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/baby-dna-parental-consent-genet...
Take it easy. The federal budget for the backup of that database was cancelled. We just have to wait for the next HD failure. And then we are anonymous again !
Unless it gets backed up by some hackers.
I think it's worth mentioning that while biometrics for identification have flaws (as mentioned in this thread, they're not 100% collision free, are not necessarily secret, and are non-trivial to collect), DNA has a different risk profile if it leaks than fingerprints and iris scans if you consider technology advances. DNA could let people (moving beyond government, since you should probably assume anything in a government database will be leaked at this point) target your family and not just you, it includes information that could let adversaries find out ways you're uniquely exploitable (for instance allergies, sensitivities, diseases) and in general its potential for harm goes far beyond impersonation or being used in court.
(On the plus side, I suppose, I think the story on storing DNA at the scale we're talking about is not fully complete. DNA does denature and it takes a reasonably good sample to get a full genome sequence, and fully sequencing and storing data for every person has other practical issues. The article itself only references using DNA results to "prove or disprove biological sex", which is much more trivial and while it's likely to come with its own problems and edge cases, is also much less information.)
Be careful - this may be a case where they say they're going to do one thing (collect data from US citizens), but walk that part of it back after people protest - while those very same people overlook the fact that they're still going to be getting every immigrant to submit to the scans.
Hilariously, this is the second Sam that wants to collect everyones iris's for nefarious purposes
This WorldCoin image will forever live rent free in my head:
https://www.crikey.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2023/08...
What exactly am I looking at?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_(blockchain)
A Sam Altman project which seemingly popped up out of nowhere, and offered people free money in exchange for biometric registration on the network, in a lot of countries all over the world. It seemed to be an attempt to set up some sort of global electronic ID system and currency all in one.
That silver sphere is an iris scanner, IIRC.
Got shut down pretty hard in a bunch of places as a potentially illegal invasion of privacy.
>A Sam Altman project which seemingly popped up out of nowhere, and offered people free money
Was it free money? I recall that it was some shitcoin token paid out, which may or may not be worth something.
I could be wrong, of course.
Depending on degree of cynicism*, both takes are compatible with what was observable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_(blockchain)
* For what it's worth, my cynicism for Worldcoin and that eye scanner thing is currently about 7/10: moderately high but could be much worse.
By comparison, I'm 9/10 in cynicism for Facebook and 10/10 in cynicism for everything Musk does except SpaceX, my SpaceX cynicism is only 5/10.
It was 'worldcoin'. And yes I used the term 'money' very loosely there.
Apparently the token was only offered in some countries, and in some places where it was offered, that was considered enough of a bribe to render void the informed consent to collect and process private data.
It was crypto coins that you could trade for money. I did it and have got about $300 worth.
Ah got it. I've heard about that but apparently were behind how Iris scanners look these days.
> but apparently were behind how Iris scanners look these days
Not necessarily - they look whatever you want them to look. In this case sama wanted to create a feeling of futurism - the story being he is leading a global AGI revolution and you can be a part of it by staring in a metal ball.
Just another step closer to the creepy desires of building an AI "replica" human. Gotta get the look right (with Sora), the fingerprints and iris (with Worldcoin), the personality (ChatGPT erotic mode)...
A worldcoin gizmo which is basically a digital camera and I think has some face scanner stuff like an iphone. Once they've scanned and checked you are someone who hasn't been done already they give you basically a crypto wallet with some 'worldcoin' shitcoin in. And there's an app.
You only get a scan at the start, after that it's basically a usual crypto wallet + private key. They don't ask for your name or id or anything at the start. Although they are now offering me like $25 if I'll scan my passport and do kyc stuff. I think they are trying to make it into a payment/investment network.
Looks suspiciously like the robot that pumped Princess Leia full of drugs.
"How does it work?"
"It's magic. All technology is."
Given that we don’t know why electromagnetism exists, this is basically true for many technologies.
What do you mean? We know quite well how electromagnetism arises from U(1) symmetry in gauge theory. What else is there to know?
What does U(1) symmetry in gauge theory arise from?
It's turtles all the way down.
Not from bribes and/or moving faster than the regulators. Altman's projects, on the other hand...
At some point the answer is “because that’s what reality is.”
If by "reality" you mean "the universe", then the way the universe is depends on a cause, as the existence of the universe is not explained by the universe itself (even an "eternal" universe). Its existence is contingent on some other cause that ultimately cannot be contingent and thus does not require explanation.
So the cause or dare I say reason for the universe being the way it is will depend on its cause.
I feel like the language of this argument is self-undermining. The existence of the universe being dependent on a cause that is itself not contingent on anything else… As easily the existence of the universe could be not contingent with anything else.
> As easily the existence of the universe could be not contingent with anything else.
But the universe is contingent. It isn't necessary. It is one big chain of dependence.
The universe just is that way because it is. THAT is the root cause.
That's not a cause. That's a tautological assertion that obscured by the use of the word "because".
And you have an implied axiomatic assertion that everything must have a cause, even though that necessarily results in an infinite recursion of cause-finding.
Nowhere did I say or imply everything needs a cause. That's your baggage. In fact, it is the exact opposite: that because an infinite regress is incoherent and impossible, there must be some necessary uncaused cause where the buck stops.
"The universe" cannot be that cause, as the universe and everything in it is contingent.
I said why, not how, for a reason. I did expect some idiots to come around arguing though.
In science, it is the same thing.
We don't know why the world itself exists so everything is magic
Speak for yourself. That "we" is presumptuous.
The cause of the universe must itself be uncaused, or else it is only an intermediate cause that must itself refer ultimately to an uncaused cause. An infinite regress is impossible with respect to existence. Unlike causes per accidens which can in principle be infinite in length, a cause `per se` cannot; without a terminus, there would be nowhere from which the latter causes would derive their force, so to speak, like an arm pushing a stick that is pushing a rock that is pushing a leaf. Meaning, the cause is not some distant one in time, but one always acting; otherwise, everything would vanish. The only cause that could have this property is self-subsisting being.
From there, you can know quite a bit about what else must be true of self-subsisting being.
This is true, and the fact that humans mostly become blind to this magic past the age of 5 is one of the reasons we live in such a dismal world.
There doesn’t need to be a why the world exists. It does that’s all there is to know. There doesn’t have to be purpose just an explanation of how not why
GP probably meant "how" as in "By what mechanisms" not "why" as in "For what purposes". So "why" as in "what makes it do what it does".
Well, it does what it does because it's shaped like itself.
Sure but that's somewhat tautological and not very helpful if you seek an empirical or predictive understanding of it. The question really is what complexity of the system (meaning: all of it) is irreducible and what can at least be approximated with simplified models.
You may balk at this as being ultimately futile but our entire existence is built on trying to break apart and simplify the world we exist in, starting with the first cut between self/inside and other/outside (i.e. "this is me" vs "this is where I am" - a distinction that becomes immensely relevant after the moment of birth). Language itself only functions because we can create categories it can operate on - regardless of whether those categories consistenly map to reality itself.
This but unironically.
In this case, I suspect it's more Uncle Donald (or Aunt Kristi, but she usually doesn't do anything without Uncle Donald's approval).
Big difference between a hash for use as an attestation (proof of humanity) and a digital ID associated with your name
This is the most maddening topic I've experienced in recent times. My guess is it's the ghost of ww2. Anything that looks or smells like a definitive reduction of a human being to numbers is to be opposed, regardless of utility.
What you are choosing, instead, is the management of the phenomenon you're trying to avoid by corporations—more or less emergent feudalism.
Consider the options: a corporation knows everything about you vs. no entity knows any information about you except for whether you're eligible for the service being provided, and that you exist. The former is the current state of affairs. The latter, I think, is a better state of affairs.
I used to think this kind of thing didn’t concern me. But once family members get pulled in and citizens get scanned by association, it’s hard to stay untouched.
Is this really about safety, or are we quietly building something we won’t be able to roll back?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came
> Is this really about safety
The question is „whose safety?“
The USA needs a national ID, it will help to avoid fraud, to get socialized health care, etc.
To collect data just for police enforcement is horrifying and it will increase the control that goverment has in private affairs without proving anything of value to society.
The USA claims freedom to avoid taking care of their own, but it claims security to spy and control its own citizens.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK NNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOO
This is the only sane and decent answer to that. I wish more people were honest and had some gut at least to say this.
It’s somewhat important to point out that this is the same thing that was done during the Iraq war to potential “insurgents” so the biometrics tech was “trained” and used experimentally there before it has been brought home. Wouldn’t be surprised if the people that used it in Iraq (as technicians) are now going to be the people operating the tech now in the US.
Every grocery store I have been to in the US is recording people at the checkout.
There is a massive difference between collecting your DNA and iris or fingerprint.
a Gattaca-esq society is terrifying.
DNA seems especially egregious. That’s useful for things other than identification and has commercial value and thus incentive to abuse.
Idk I’m just planning to stay clear of the US till we see if they recover from their bout of authoritarianism
You've been asleep or something? Current policy of every Five Eyes country:
"You could be refused entry to [...] if you:
[...]
- refuse to let an immigration officer take your photo, fingerprints or an iris scan"
Unsurprising.
India, which given its colonial-era ruling-elites who are maniacally obsessed with the Anglosphere, is today considered a "laboratory" for doing social experiments that'd be considered a outrage against human dignity in their own countries. This country was the first in line not only the biometric identification projects (Aadhar), and for demonetization (of 2016 with UPI). All of these were funded and pushed by USAID.
Both of these were implemented by running roughshod over constitution and regulation, by "roping-in" key regulatory people by giving them what they desire the most - access to the ruling elites in the US. Eg. Infosys' Nandan Nilekani was thrust to the top with his USAID funded projects.
Now the results of this "human corralling" experiments (note: a lot of what Orwell described came out of his experience in British-colonial India), is now coming to the West.
The party of liberty and small government.
DNA is already stored after every infant is born and blood drawn.
I'm quite disappointed by the discourse in this thread.
We can build privacy-preserving identity. It's a huge opportunity. Go work on it!
If you're in the Bay, there's a conference on it every year where the people building the tech and setting the standards are hashing out the ideas!
When the government comes knocking, they're not coming up with stuff from scratch—they're picking up the tools we left around ready to use.
Does anyone know about PRISM?
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EU's recently rejected chat control looks like child's play compared to this. These are some Stasi methods that are going to destroy the US if implemented. Europe already went through creating dossier on citizens in the past, the next immediate step is always fascism. Nothing good comes out of fascism, as the history showed.
To be honest, one could argue that places like Singapore turned on amazingly well by most metrics.
Isn’t that a quote from The Mandalorian?
> It is a shame that your people suffered so. Just as in this situation, it was all avoidable. Why did Mandalore resist our expansion? The Empire improves every system it touches. Judge by any metric. Safety, prosperity, trade, opportunity, peace. Compare Imperial rule to what is happening now. Look outside. Is the world more peaceful since the revolution? I see nothing but death and chaos.
>the next immediate step is always fascism.
Chronologicaly the Stasi was built after fascism ended. It operated in East Germany, a communist state.
Yes, in a rundown communist state. What could have followed , would be a Kim leader steering the country in the North Korean direction — which I’d call fascist.
Luckily there was Gorbachev and in the people enough decency and civilisation left, so the system just folded
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My dude did you not read the Snowden papers. The United State’s surveillance is much much worse than anything the Stasi could pull out of its ass.The United States has always been kinda fascist they always supported fascists always worked with them etc. Now that their empire is crumbling this fascism is turning inwards.
This shows how complex the balance is between security and privacy, every new technology seems to push that line a bit further.
Imagine giving them your DNA data that could be sold to anyone without your knowledge because you don't have legal grounds to allow or disallow that.
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Yes, they're definitely doing this to help you, the hoi polloi whose data is being harvested.
Do you not realize how much of a constant, non-trivial challenge identifying foreign nationals is for immigration officials? Forged identities, corrupt/bribed document offices, stolen identites, state-backed agents, etc are all a constant threat. These are not citizens, these are foreigners electing to seek the privilege of entering a country that is not their own. Using technology to mitigate these very real threats should not be controversial. We do it with fingerprints.
> Do you not realize how much of a constant, non-trivial challenge identifying foreign nationals is for immigration officials? ... These are not citizens, these are foreigners electing to seek the privilege of entering a country that is not their own.
Who cares? You used to not even need a passport at all for international travel.
Yeah because international travel was fucking hard, took weeks or months, killed half your party, and I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you didn't exactly have a welcoming party anywhere you went. What a wild take.
Santa Claus is coming tonight.
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And just like that jimbo throws away his right to privacy.
Do you also oppose fingerprinting immigrants? What about photographing them? Or asking them for identification? Background screenings?
Privacy is important, but so is knowing who people are when you let them into your country.
Migrating to the United States is not a right anyone has, it's a privilege. Documents can easily be forged, or official ones created for a bribe. I'd rather live in a country that will put our own citizens' rights to safety and security ahead of the rights to privacy given to a foreign national who is willingly seeking the privilege of immigrating to a country that is not their own.
In other news, water is wet.
How is this news, the usgov has been taking my biometrics for the past 5 years
Have they? They haven't taken mine.
Every time I fly from SFO, there’s a face-tracking camera that takes your photo after you stand up close to it. There’s definitely some sort of data harvesting there and there’s no opt out that I know about.
I also have Clear, which was voluntary but certainly collected my biometric data years ago.
I also have Global Entry, which has a similar scanning tech to point 1.
Yeah, I think the crappy side of it at this point is that the biometric data they collect is never leveraged to help you as a citizen.
If I lose my passport while abroad, given that the government has my fingerprints etc, why can't I use those biometrics to reenter the country (and have a replacement passport reissued immediately)?
Officially, you are supposed to be able to opt out of the face recognition cameras at security but I think whether staff actually respect that is not consistent.
The camera at SJC says it deletes the scan immediately after querying the database.
That makes opt out (which the sign says is allowed) kinda pointless, unless the opt out also deletes the existing database entries.
Tl;dr, I don’t bother opting out.
The first kind you can just opt out: https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2025/05/19/why-how-opt-o...
Yeah, with GE/PreCheck and all the border crossing I do, I gave up on my biometric data being private long ago.
I've gotten scanned at the airport on entry and for my greencard h1b/greencard applications, I had to go get scanned at a biometrics center.
https://www.uscis.gov/forms/filing-guidance/preparing-for-yo...
Yes immigrants but not citizens.
And is now required for Americans traveling to the EU now anyway.
As a US citizen, you likely have your photo in a state or federal database somewhere from getting your ID or driver's license.
Depending on your job, background check history, or interactions with the police, your fingerprints might be in a database somewhere.
If you fly, your facial image/photograph/video is held by TSA and also as part of the REAL ID program.
So there are some biometrics that the government has of us, but clearly the article is describing a huge increase in not just the kind of biometric data collected, but also the kinds of people who would be required to give it up.
I guess I wasn't counting my photo ID as biometrics since there's no 3D map of my face to accompany it. I haven't been through an airport in over ten years either so hopefully my biometrics remain out of government databases for now.
The TSA uses facial recognition right now at most US airports. While they claim to not store the pictures, they've "accidentally" stored data many other times they promised not to so consider me skeptical.
I haven't been through an airport in over 10 years, but it was my understanding that you could opt out of the facial scanning stuff? I've asked my wife to do it each time she flies to California, just to see what happens, but she doesn't want to be a nuisance. :\
Yes, I've opted out of it every time so far this year (40+ flights) BUT that only covers the security checkpoint.
Delta also uses it at boarding time and who knows who does what via cameras in the airport as a whole.
> They haven't taken mine
If you let have a passport, State has your face.
I don't have one, but even if I did that's only a 2D photo right? I guess when I think biometrics I think of the full on 3D depth maps, vocal signatures, iris recognition, etc. that a phone is doing to tell who's trying to unlock it. Not that I want them to have a plain photo of me either, but that ship has sailed unfortunately.