UC Berkeley Asking Incoming Students For DNA 468
peterofoz writes "The students will be asked to voluntarily submit a DNA sample. The cotton swabs will come with two bar code labels. One label will be put on the DNA sample and the other is kept for the students' own records. The confidential process is being overseen by Jasper Rine, a campus professor of Genetics and Development Biology, who says the test results will help students make decisions about their diet and lifestyle." No word in the story on just what "confidential" means — who will have access to the results, how long they'll be kept, or what else they might someday be used for. Will the notoriously liberal Berkeley campus see this as a service or an invasion of privacy?
Welcome (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Welcome (Score:5, Funny)
Please leave your DNA with the school nurse...
Is she cute?
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Re:Welcome (Score:4, Insightful)
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Privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Coming soon to your community; risk assessment of every individual, eugenics, fascism.
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This is only a problem while "one side" has a monopoly on the use of these technologies. If invasive technology is ubiquitous and uncontrollable, then any abuse of that technology should be totally transparent to everybody.
In short, the answer to "who will watch the watchers" needs to be "everyone ... and records should be kept forever."
Re:Privacy (Score:4, Insightful)
Why did you tell me that? I was living in oblivious happy ignorance until you told me MS has government backdoors in my software. :-( Oh well.
Is Mac OS any better? (falls over laughing)
As for the DNA I wouldn't have any problem giving it voluntarily since they don't know who I am (just a barcode). The problem is that voluntary often evolves into compulsory. SSI was originally a voluntary retirement program* but it quickly became mandatory, and Weekly Tax withholding used to be a "convenience" for workers but by the 1950s it became mandatory too.
*
* Some communities still have voluntary SS, like Amish Americans and state government workers in Arizona (I think it's AZ - have to double check).
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Is Mac OS any better? (falls over laughing)
Well, at least large chunks of OS X are open source (and I don't mean "Pay us lots of money and promise to never even think of what you saw and we'll let you have the source", I mean GPL, LGPL, BSD and a few other real open source licenses. Here you go [apple.com]).
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You think you've got all the source.
Remember the story of the hacked compiler which would compile login with a backdoor and create a new hacked compiler if it was compiling unhacked sources?
You can never be sure. Unless you read machine code and build everything yourself, but there is the BIOS, CPU microcode, etc.
You can NEVER be sure.
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There's a way...but it involves cross-compilation. If you're really paranoid, cross-compilation and an intermediate language designed de novo. Then you write interpreter for the new language, and in that new language you write the compiler for a subset of the target language to emit assember code for a different platform . Taking this emitted code, you assemble it. (Static assembly, no system libraries. If you're really paranoid, design it to run on bare metal with no OS or memory management.) Now
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Do you have any information about this hidden key (I suppose it wasn't just named '_KEY3')?
Re:Privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
People still believe in the NSAKEY rumor? How cute.
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[citation and sources please]
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just like the voluntary DNA swabs, giving me all your money or all your accounts and account information is voluntary too! but that doesn't mean it's a good idea.
Also, someone having this information does mean that they could be compelled to give it up by legal authorities or others. So yes, privacy is a concern.
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Voluntary often turns into compulsory eventually. Why would they possibly need anyone's DNA? And if some woman is attacked on campus are they then going to turn samples over to law enforcement or other agency to test for a possible match?
In Texas, parents recently found out that since 2002, blood drawn from their infants [statesman.com] for routine screening, was being kept and sometimes sold. There was an "opt-out" program, which of course most parents didn't know about. Who wants your kid's DNA floating around?
Both, of course (Score:5, Funny)
Liberals tend to think for themselves, so I imagine we will see many different viewpoints emerge, rather than some lock-step, campus wide consensus.
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I think it greatly depends on how firmly they are "asked". I personally tend not to mind when people ask for lots of things so long as I'm not bound by law to provide it.
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Liberals tend to think for themselves, so I imagine we will see many different viewpoints emerge, rather than some lock-step, campus wide consensus.
No bias here whatsoever.
Re:Both, of course (Score:4, Funny)
Liberals tend to think for themselves, so I imagine we will see many different viewpoints emerge, rather than some lock-step, campus wide consensus.
No bias here whatsoever.
You have no bias? We've conversed before, so unless you've changed recently, I don't believe you, sorry.
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Oh hell no, of course I do. But I would think the obvious difficulty of applying a political label (any political label) to an entire group of people that genuinely 'think for themselves' would have caused you to press 'Cancel' rather than 'Submit'.
Alas, you were blinded by bias, and I just thought I'd point that out...
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"Folks who think for themselves and tend not to vote Republican?"
Really? Let's look at that statement logically:
You are saying that the people who think for themselves tend not to vote for the people who allow them to make their own decisions? In other words, "People who think for themselves tend to vote for people to do the thinking for them", right?
You mastery of logic amazes me.
Re:Both, of course (Score:4, Insightful)
>>>Liberals tend to think for themselves
I guess that's why they all share the same talking points: "Let's call them teabaggers." "There are no people of color in the Tea Partys." "Tea partiers are racist." "What he needs is more gravitas." - And so on. I call that mimicking one another, not independent thought.
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>>>But those things you mention are true.
So predictable. I knew some liberal would say that before I even posted my message. Ye think for yourself huh? (Please note I'm just ribbing you - no offense intended.) So are those things true?
I'm a member of the local Tea Party and have attended two protests. Have I ever "teabagged" a lover? Nope. Am I racist? Nope; my two best friends are hispanic and chinese. Is the Tea Party a color-free zone? Nope - there are lots of non-whites at these even
Re:Both, of course (Score:4, Informative)
Oh please. The tea party movement started as a campaign to mail tea bags to congress. Sure the teabagger label may have first been used by detractors, but it didn't come out of the blue, and it was quickly adopted by it's proponents - fully aware of the double entendre. It was only after Fox news decided to sponsor the movement that they realized that some uptight conservative might google "teabagger" and have their delicate sensibilities upset that spokespeople for the movement decided they were the tea party movement, not the tea bag movement. Libertarians may be wrong about just about everything, but at least they (usually) have a sense of humor. The same can't be said for Fox news's target demographics.
I would never say that everyone who attends tea party rallies was racist, but there's some ugly stuff percolating in the movement. Ever since the GOP decided to swell it's ranks by picking up southern defectors from the democratic party in the wake of the civil rights movement, they've been plagued by racism. If the tea party movement doesn't want to be associated with racism, they should clean up their house. Speakers should shame protesters with racist placards. They should stop pushing the Obama is a Muslim line. But they won't. Dick Armey and Liz Cheney are smart people. They know that denouncing racism and racists in the strongest possible terms will alienate a small, but important part of their base. They need to play to the fears and insecurities of lower middle class white America - and those fears and insecurities have a distinctive racial bias. Why else would immigration and affirmative action (which, outside of academia is for all intents and purposes defunct) be such important issues?
Re:Both, of course (Score:4, Informative)
Back when the tea party movement actually was grassroots (for about 2 weeks) before Dick Armey's freedomworks [freedomworks.org] and Fox News [mediamatters.org] co-opted it. This [snopes.com] is how the tea party movement got it's start.
Look. There's no excuse for violence at a non-violent protest. In any group some people are asses. I'm not faulting the tea party movement for it's fair share of idiots, I'm faulting it for the racist element it harbors above and beyond its idiot quotient. Aside from the really overt [google.com] and disguisting [wordpress.com]stuff, there's only so many times you can say "real americans" need to "take back america" from Obama who isn't eligible to be president because he's a secret Kenyan Muslim Manchurian candidate before it comes across as racially motivated.
When polling finds this: [washington.edu]
When you put it all together, it's impossible to conclude that racism isn't an important motivating factor in the tea party movement.
How is this different from (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League_nude_posture_photos [wikipedia.org]
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I think you're right. I think Liberals do think for themselves.
Unfortunately, in the US at least, they are so afraid of appearing politically incorrect or being on record for having an opinion that Jon Stewart might mock that they will parrot whatever the mocha-decaf-latte-frappucino line of thought is on any particular subject. What they think, and what they will say about what they think in mixed company, are frequently at odds. I can't count how many self-professed liberals I have met who become pro-l
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I don't know who you spoke to, but liberals often think that their opinions don't make for good public policy.
Many liberals think abortion is morally wrong, would rather not have to deal with gays, and think we should enforce our borders.
However, they don't think they should legislate what medical procedures women should have, they don't think that gays should be legally second class citizens, and they don't think that Lou Dobbs is right about immigration.
Conservatives, on the other hand think that all thei
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Liberals tend to think for themselves, so I imagine we will see many different viewpoints emerge, rather than some lock-step, campus wide consensus.
Don't make me laugh. Liberals & conservatives both follow the party line. With this absolutely horrible Political Correctness agenda, policies that reward poverty and step on self-employment and small business; thinking for ones self appears to be the last thing on the Liberal Agenda.
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Yes, "liberals and conservatives are all the same" is a popular lie put out by conservatives. As is "Political correctness," "Rewarding poverty," and "Stepping on self employment." All of which are actually things conservatives do. Which makes them different from liberals.
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The self employment tax was thought up entirely by democrats. Considering that the vast mjority of people who self employ are the type who would gladly give up SocSec and Medicare in return for that extra 15%, I'm pretty damned sure that counts as stepping on self employment.
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That's cute, you think China is somehow "liberal" or that all liberals are "commiies" or some such nonsense. I wish I could say I was surprised, but since I just came from Digg, I'm not.
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The GP made the mistake of not clarifying "Liberal". It seems he meant what in the US would be called "Libertarian" (with a small or a big L dependent on whom you ask) - which in large parts of the world is the same thing as meant with "liberal".
In the US you've managed to make "liberal" mean "socialist" (or at least what you believe to be socialist, which would still be far far right wing in other countries).
(libertarians can be both right a
Re:Both, of course (Score:5, Informative)
Someone who would be described as liberal in the US has what the rest of the world would call "center left economic opinions" - not socialist.
Libertarian, on the other hand means bat-shit-crazy wherever you go.
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Please tell me that's sarcasm.
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>>>Upholding the status quo means thinking the same thing: everything is peachy just the way it is and the old ways are best.
I'm a conservative, and I think things are FAR from peachy in the U.S. We've basically just traded one set of oligarchs (King George and his nobles) for another set of oligarchs (King Bush, King Obama, the Congress, and the Justices). :-|
A new and truly liberal idea is to let each Individual be sovereign & run his/her own affairs with virtually no government interferenc
Re:Both, of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but in order for people to be free, we need government intervention. Otherwise, the powerful oppress the weak. That was the whole reason we fought off King George, and we still need protection against tyrants, who now use economic coercion. Wage slavery is still slavery. Wall Street CEOs are the new kings, not Obama.
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Both. Meaning, I actually believe what I'm writing, but yes, I am writing it deliberately to piss off the closed minded. If you even need to question whether or not I am the best troll ever, you've not been paying attention.
Re:Both, of course (Score:4, Insightful)
But government IS the oppressor. How else do you explain that I will be fined $950 because I exercised a Pro-Choice decision not to have hospital insurance
Corporations are the oppressor. How else do you explain all the people who simply simply could not choose to have health insurance because no one would take them? How do you explain the people who had health insurance, got sick, and were promptly dropped? How much choice did they have?
So, you're out $950. Big deal. People have lost their lives because of the malfeasance of the health insurance industry. You still have the freedom to complain about it. The dead don't have any freedom at all.
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Indeed. So long, that is, as we understand that all forms of concentrated wealth arise from government interference -- landlordism, corporate ownership, inheritance, et cetera -- and eliminate them.
I don't think, though, that you'll find many conservatives arguing that the government's power to issue and enforce land deeds, corporate charters, copyrights, patents, etc
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Conservatives love to get angry at liberals, which is why they read liberal viewpoints: simply to have something to justify their anger.
Liberals think that everything is open to debate, and that both new laws and old must be weighed in terms of utility and effectiveness, whereas conservatives think the old ways must not be questioned. But that's just my experience, take from it what you will.
Bullshit. How many people who think differently than say, Keith Olbermann, are allowed on his show for an honest to goodness debate? Compare that to Bill O'Reilly, or Sean Hannity.
Re:Both, of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope. Despite the propaganda put out by certain groups that do think in lock-step, liberals are fairly... liberal in their thinking.
Bullshit. Anyone who would ever accept the name "liberal" in the U.S. is already buying into the idea that there is only one possible spectrum of ideas, which goes from "conservative" to "liberal." Most people seem to think that any possible collection of political ideas should be able to be mapped onto that one-dimensional scale. If you actually were thinking independently, you wouldn't buy into this oversimplified (and inaccurate) model.
Liberals don't tend to hold the view that things are perfect just the way they are. Upholding the status quo means thinking the same thing: everything is peachy just the way it is and the old ways are best.
Here's a newsflash -- the reality is that a lot of ideas have been around for a long time. Those who are supposedly "liberal" may actually be wanting to go back to older ideas as well, or older ideas that were rejected in the past for various reasons. If you think that "conservatives" only want things to stay the same, take a look at the "neo-conservative" movement, which has actively tried to change society in the past few decades. In your naive conception of conservative/liberal, is it even possible to have a "neo-conservative"? You might argue that the neo-cons are actually trying to return to some deeper past, but we all know that's just rhetoric -- their idealized past never existed.
Instead, liberals are open to new ideas and new ways of looking at the world, so they tend to be more eclectic in their thoughts and ideals than some other groups.
That may have had some traction in the classic "liberalism" on the nineteenth century. Today, though, the vast majority of "liberals" are just sheep buying into a certain collection of ideas that certain people deem "liberal."
You want to be truly open to new ideas? Start thinking independently for yourself. Analyze every political question from your own perspective and logic, and decide what makes the most sense to you. The standard modern "conservative" and "liberal" positions aren't very consistent and make a lot of assumptions that don't necessarily make a lot of sense.
HITN flamebait? (Score:3, Insightful)
With flamebait lines like that, I don't know how you got a +5 insightful.
As far as one-dimensional thinking goes, yes, everybody knows the liberal-conservative axis is just a loose approximation. Assigning the left-center-right label is sort of like PCA [wikipedia.org]. I read liberal blogs often and I note plenty of eclecticism among liberals; they're not sheep. For instance, all la
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Collecting people's DNA and using it to screen things isn't a NEW idea at all. Merely the screening process has evolved. Eugenics is quite old.
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Well there are some aspects of the Democratic Liberal point of view not shared by the 'conservatives', things like jobs should pay a living wage, no one should die of starvation or lack of medical care. On the conservative side, 'let them eat cake', I don't want my tax dollars going to help people, bomb them over there maybe but not here. I'll educate my children in a private school, I don't want to pay for anyone elses education. If I can keep them dumb I can pay them less (the jobs I dont send overseas) a
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I would say that >5% of liberal in the U.S. are liberals in the classic sense.
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I'd say your wild guess is very far from the truth.
Re:Both, of course (Score:4, Insightful)
No blacks with guns were filmed and called white racists. The majority of America supports health care reform. The Democrats have tried to be bipartisan, but the Republicans have stone-walled them. The conservative minority is fracturing, going crazy with conspiracy theory fueled rage. The deception from the right wing is astonishing: Obama is a Muslim, Obama is Kenyan, death panels, the list goes on. Meanwhile, Republican after Republican is caught doing the exact opposite of what they preach, usually in bed with someone not their spouse. Who are the deceptive fuckheads, really?
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The majority of America supports health care reform.
Citation needed.
The Democrats have tried to be bipartisan, but the Republicans have stone-walled them.
The Democrat party’s idea of bipartisan politics is best described as “my way or the highway”. Particularly now that they have the presidency and both houses of congress.
conservative minority
Citation needed.
The deception from the right wing is astonishing: Obama is a Muslim, Obama is Kenyan, death panels, the list goes on.
When Bush was president, left-wing nutjobs were not much better. Are we comparing the worst of the worst of both parties?
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Bush was in fact elected in a very undemocratic manner.
Bush was elected legally. He did not steal the election, although an attempt to steal the election was made, but it failed.
Bush did in fact expand the power of the government, and restrict indivdual liberties more than any president in living memory.
Um... I believe the current president is considered "in living memory". Yet, all those who screamed that Bush was taking liberties are now strangely silent. It makes me believe that those people were not worried about losing their liberties. They were simply using it as a club to beat the 'R' over the head with.
And as for Bush taking liberties away... I could do everything I could d
Re:Both, of course (Score:4, Informative)
Um... I believe the current president is considered "in living memory". Yet, all those who screamed that Bush was taking liberties are now strangely silent. It makes me believe that those people were not worried about losing their liberties. They were simply using it as a club to beat the 'R' over the head with.
Yes, Obama is pretty bad. He voted for the patriot act and has continued the practice of warrantless wiretapping. Bush still comes out ahead because he started it. I do wish more attention was paid to how bad Obama is for civil liberties though.
And as for Bush taking liberties away... I could do everything I could do in 2001 that I could do in 2009. Exactly zero of my liberties were taken. For that matter, I don't know of anyone who lost any freedoms whatsoever under Bush.
We lost the freedom to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures. We lost the right to a writ of Habeas Corpus. We lost the right not to be tortured by our own government. Any one of those is a much greater infringement of freedom than what amounts to a tax raise.
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You mean the lies you parroted back? Get us some proof of your outrageous claims, or everyone will be forced to conclude you are full of shit. Your claims are so outrageous, normal Americans will need a lot of convincing. So where's your proof? And right wing blogs don't count, as right wing bloggers simply don't care about facts, this is a game to them and lies are just part of the strategy.
Gattaca? (Score:3, Interesting)
There's no gene for fate.
Re:Gattaca? (Score:5, Funny)
There's no gene for fate.
Maybe not, but there's one for AWESOME!
No. Sadly, I don't have it.
I'm torn (Score:5, Interesting)
It's voluntary, so there is no invasion of privacy going on, when you give up your DNA willingly you can't be expected it to be held very strongly in confidentiality. It's kind of like that whole unsecured Wifi debacle. If you don't know exactly what they want to do with your DNA, you'd be a fool to give it to them. That is their mistake to make though, I'm not going to deny them that by saying this kind of action should be illegal.
If kids want dietting tips, or help on decisions, there are plenty of resources out there. I'm a little more paranoid at the idea of this becoming Comfortable. First its "Let us take your DNA to help you diet". Even if only 10% of people sign up, if they enjoy their results they'll tell their friends to partake in it next year. It will grow, until more schools are doing it. Then the elementary schools will do it. Then that confidentiality agreement will phase away, and there goes the neighbourhood.
I guess the only course of action is to warn people of the dangers and hope they make the right choice.
As long as it's explicit. (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately with most bureaucracies (especially universities), voluntary things have a bad habit of being "required". For example, a student goes in, University bureaucrat just says "and give me your DNA sample." Most students having to go through all the horseshit, including having to give Social Security numbers, probably won't even think to ask if it is in fact voluntary.
Speaking of S
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It's voluntary, so there is no invasion of privacy going on, when you give up your DNA willingly you can't be expected it to be held very strongly in confidentiality. It's kind of like that whole unsecured Wifi debacle.
Where did you get the idea that voluntary = weak confidentiality?
Unlike Wifi, I can negotiate the terms of my DNA's storage and usage.
Re:I'm torn (Score:4, Informative)
You think the school is going to negotiate with every student on campus? They haven't the manpower or the resources or the time.
There will be a set contact, and you can either take it or leave it, I imagine. And since we don't know the details of that arrangement, I'd err on the side of caution.
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Maybe because it has happened before? [aolnews.com] Once they have your data, negotiated terms are only as strong as the morality of the person you are giving them too. Since large organizations can be amoral you are running a risk regardless of your terms.
It's not *really* voluntary. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's voluntary from the college's point of view. The problem is that things that are voluntary from the school's point of view are things that students who are applying are strongly compelled to do. It's absurd, but higher education admissions are a game of signals, and high school students (And their parents) don't want to risk giving the wrong signals when there are thousands of people competing with them. This means that there's a strong incentive do anything "voluntary" on the application.
The school
Yes, it is (Score:5, Informative)
Read the article, please. The request is in the welcome package for new students, not the application. Thus, "signals" in the application process are not an issue. The only people getting the request are those who already know that they have been accepted.
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Well, I'll agree that voluntarily (if it's truly voluntary and not semi-coerced as in 'we won't let you do $desirable_but_not_mandatory_thing until you 'volunteer') providing a sample isn't an invasion of privacy. But your notion that doing so willingly means I can't expected it be confidential is utter hogwash. I willingly and voluntarily gi
Re:I'm torn (Score:5, Insightful)
You said:
It's voluntary, so there is no invasion of privacy going on, when you give up your DNA willingly you can't be expected it to be held very strongly in confidentiality.
There's an interesting related story here [nytimes.com]. From the article itself:
Members of the tiny, isolated tribe had given DNA samples to university researchers starting in 1990, in the hope that they might provide genetic clues to the tribe’s devastating rate of diabetes. But they learned that their blood samples had been used to study many other things, including mental illness and theories of the tribe’s geographical origins that contradict their traditional stories.
We all know what the majority of slashdotters probably think about the tribe's beliefs, origin myths, etc. But the fact is that the researches thought that once they had the material (the DNA/blood), they could crunch the numbers in attempts to answer many questions. But the donors of said material didn't approve all that was done. I'm not trying to say who is right or wrong, but it's a cautionary tale for any organization that wants to conduct research of this kind.
Why? (Score:2)
What is this DNA going to be used for? How is it going to "help students make decisions about their diet and lifestyle." Will they use it for genetic screening? In my opinion, most DNA screening is useless. It's like a full body scan, I'm sure you're going to find something, but is it going to be anything you can change? Or anything you care about? Or will it just make you nervous about a 1% increase in the chance that you'll get some rare cancer? Most gene association studies are weak at best anyway.
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I realize this is slashdot and all, but if you read the article it states: "Once the DNA sample is sent in and tested, it will show the student’s ability to tolerate alcohol, absorb folic acid and metabolize lactose."
Not sure if they will test for other things or not, but that's the list provided thus far.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Once the DNA sample is sent in and tested, it will show the student's ability to tolerate alcohol, absorb folic acid and metabolize lactose."
Not sure if they will test for other things or not, but that's the list provided thus far.
Frankly, I'm not sure you could survive college without knowing those things about yourself...
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Because for all those years student have not noticed that he or she is lactose-intolerant. Yeah, sure.
Frequently you only develop lactose intolerance later in life, though the eventual onset of that intolerance can be inferred from your DNA.
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A lot of people get lactose intolerant in their 30s, without ever understanding that that's what it is.
"My stomach cannot tolerate the coffee anymore" is not uncommon to hear - and it's seldom the coffee.
Curious (Score:2)
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You think it's more likely for law enforcement to make a mistake when they get DNA than when they don't? How exactly does that work?
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Pretty easily. If the cops have access to your DNA, and they're searching through DNA for a suspect, there's a chance they'll hit upon your DNA. If it's not in the database, that's not possible. Imagine the DNA database is a phone book. They're looking for Tom Smith, your name is Jon Smith, they misread things and arrest you. If your name was never in the phone book in the first place, that would never have happened.
Absolutely UNREAL that the Berkeley IRB approved. (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe they just don't give a damn about potential research subjects' rights during recruitment, but permitting the solicitation to go out AS PART OF A FUCKING FRESHMAN ORIENTATION PACKET is beyond the pale. This research subject recruitment strategy is damnably coercive my view. Berkeley's IRB should be ashamed. Or better yet, replaced.
Re:Absolutely UNREAL that the Berkeley IRB approve (Score:4, Interesting)
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There is zero reason why it couldn't be voluntary AFTER the students are settled on campus. Putting it in the orientation packet makes the incoming student vulnerable to parental pressure to "volunteer," and sends a message (regardless of the word "voluntary") that this is something expected of incoming freshmen by the University, not something one clueless researcher somehow conned the IRB into approving. It's an outrageous recruiting tactic that should never have been approved, ESPECIALLY for subjects who
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I'm sorry, but your two points against this seem to be:
1) Students could be pressured to volunteer by their parents.
2) Students might infer that this is "required".
Both are simple ways to say students can't think for themselves and we shouldn't subject them to simple decisions. When you enter college you're usually 18. You're an adult. Part of being an adult is understanding what a voluntary program is and understanding that you do _not_ have to volunteer.
If you can't read a piece of paper that says to
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Don't you love it when your palm taps the touchpad and you overwrite your own sentence?
"If you can't read a piece of paper that says this program is voluntary and realize you don't have to follow along, I'm not sure what you're going to learn in college."
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I don't quite understand what the big deal is. You're acting as though the incoming class is being asked to sign its soul away.
I think universities should do this sort of thing much more often. If universities turned around and made the results of their research available to students on an accelerated schedule, it would be exciting, inspirational, and motivate learning a lot better than, "Well, read this textbook about stuff that happened 20 years ago while we do a lot of exciting new things that we won't
It's for their own good. (Score:3, Insightful)
> Will the notoriously liberal Berkeley campus see this as a service or an
> invasion of privacy?
It's only invasion of privacy if it's done by an evil "corporation" or other capitalist running dog. Everything a liberal organization does is for your own good and only a right-wing wacko would ever suspect one of failing to diligently and effectively safeguarding his privacy (especially when said organization is part of the state of California: you know they have only your best interests at heart and know better than you what you need).
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"It's only invasion of privacy if it's done by an evil "corporation" or other capitalist running dog."
And its only a liberal loony who would think that any good can come of this type of activity at all. Only a liberal loony believes that any governing agency is only looking after the good of its people. Even a university. Gattica was an interesting story, rent it.
Wrong key word in summary (Score:2)
Barcode is moot (Score:2)
I just thought I'd point out that the whole barcode thing is irrelevant. They may as well put your name on the sample, because as soon as you seek to turn in your code and discover the result, you're mapped back to the sample.
Unless you can look at all the samples, and you're bright enough to examine several hundred mixing your own in somewhere at random. You'd need a printer of some sort, a free barcode font, and a $70 reader to reverse-engineer the code. It wouldn't hurt to have a handful of friends' c
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I just thought I'd point out that the whole barcode thing is irrelevant. They may as well put your name on the sample, because as soon as you seek to turn in your code and discover the result, you're mapped back to the sample.
From TFA:
"The results of the test will be put in a secure online database where students will be able to retrieve their results by using their bar code."
There doesn't seem to be any indication that you'd have to identify yourself to retrieve the results - they give you a code, you enter it in & see the results. If none of the samples are linked to names, it doesn't really matter that you could look at other results. So I don't think you'd be mapped back to the sample.
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Is it going on the web? And even if via web, are they anonymizing the IP's somehow? Or perhaps in a secure location, which would be monitored?
The point being, since they know you're coming after the data, they'll have no trouble tracking you if they so desire.
How quickly we forget: "posture photos" (Score:5, Informative)
From the 1940s to the 1970s, Ivy League colleges took naked pictures of every incoming freshman [wikipedia.org], supposedly for use in scientific studies of the students' posture.
I am not making this up. See, e.g., this Times coverage from 1995 [nytimes.com].
I'm not going to make any kind of normative statement about whether people should say Yes to Cal's offer, here, but just wanted to point out that weird-ass instrusions into student privacy are nothing new.
There are no "Temporary" records (Score:2)
Once it's recorded, it is recorded for life.
Be ready to pulled in for questioning with a presumption of guilt when the police get a 90% dna match on the 13 markers sometime in the next decade when the police are using records from that "temporary" database.
DO NOT WILLINGLY SUBMIT YOUR DNA!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Kids, DO NOT DO THIS!!! Ever! For any reason! Holy shit, do you have any idea how crazy this is? There are sooooo many ways this information could be used against you, both now and in the future that I could type for hours without even scratching the surface.
Once you give this data away, you can't take it back. You can't control it. You will have no way to know where it goes or who has access to it.
Berkeley students, you should be out marching and protesting right now. Your protests should make national headlines by Friday. Get to it!
Re:DO NOT WILLINGLY SUBMIT YOUR DNA!!! (Score:4, Informative)
... umm, did you miss the part of the story where they *aren't* storing the student's identity with the DNA? I could walk outside for an hour or two and get a couple hundred random DNA samples from random strangers for study, and have absolutely no more idea who they belong to. Since our DNA just sort of falls off of us terribly easily.
The profiles aren't connected to students names, records, SSN, identities, nothing. Just a random number encoded in a barcode. The only way anyone can know that 123456789 happens to be you is if you tell them or show them your barcode.
Its research. And an interesting service.
Yes, the tinfoil hat wearing can argue that between IP logs and cookies and such, someone could probably figure out your identity if they really wanted to.
But then they can also just get your DNA from your *skin cells* that you shed all the time. And if they were going to be nefarious like that, the usage of that DNA sample for any random purpose against your interests would probably be legal: you have no expectation of privacy there.
DNA profiles on Facebook next? (Score:2)
Dont laugh. Blood types, a very simple version of one's gentic idnetity, is a major pseudo-science in Japan. You cant date someone of the "wrong type".
Two words... (Score:3, Interesting)
BITE ME!
That is the only way they would get a DNA sample from me. And they better hold me down, or, I will use that technique to get a sample of their DNA.
Damn, how stupid have people become?
They can have my DNA when they... (Score:3, Funny)
(cue Charlton Heston voice)
pour it from my cold, dead keyboard!
UC Berkeley's Not Liberal (Score:4, Interesting)
UC Berkeley's campus isn't liberal. It's got the most stereotypical frat/sorority ghetto I've ever seen. Its budget is stuffed with defense contractor and other giant corporation contracts, especially oil and telecom corps. Its law school hired John Yoo, the Bush lawyer who wrote the US torture regime rationalizations.
The list goes on. But these "Conservative" (corporatist, or worse) activities are defined by being exclusive, even covert, even secret. While Berkeley's actually "liberal" (or whatever's not "Conservative") activities are usually defined by being public, even extroverted. Then take the mass media's interest in hiding the "Conservative" activities behind a distracting "liberal" show, and you get Berkeley a reputation for being "liberal".
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And the frat/sorority system isn't quite typ
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It is the involuntary contribution of DNA samples that they really want to crack down on.