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Genetic Access Control Code Uses 23andMe DNA Data For Internet Racism
rjmarvin writes: A GitHub project is using the 23andMe API for genetic decoding to act as a way to bar users from entering websites based on their genetic data — race and ancestry. "Stumbling around GitHub, I came across this bit of code: Genetic Access Control. Now, budding young racist coders can check out your 23andMe page before they allow you into their website! Seriously, this code uses the 23andMe API to pull genetic info, then runs access control on the user based on the results. Just why you decide not to let someone into your site is up to you, but it can be based on any aspect of the 23andMe API. This is literally the code to automate racism."
1: Stop caring what other people do.
2: Don't have a 23andMe profile (accessible to random websites on the internet, or at all) if you really care and think this will actually affect you.
Perhaps some users will implement it in a harmless and beneficial way, such as creating a safe space for women. But it’s just as likely that, in a few years, Googling for a snippet of this code yields search results that are the equivalent of a who’s who of racist and misogynist sites.
3: Take your sexist, racist agenda and go the fuck away.
Finally a way to avoid offending certain people and gorillas.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
So visitors to his website:
* Must have been sequenced by 23andMe
* And be so interested in his website that they are willing to give him access to their genetic data
* And meet whatever genetic filter he has imposed.
At this point, what he is running is less of a 'website', more of a 'diary', as it will have only one reader.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
I didn't realize that "race" could now be determined by a genetic sequence (or two). If true this may lead to some very troubling possibilities.
It would be possible using CRISPR (a recently developed means of precisely targeting an exact genetic sequence) to have a virus that could infect just one particular population. Smallpox comes to mind because 1) very few people in the world are currently vaccinated against it (it was made extinct a while ago) and 2) its DNA has been sequenced and published online. So, using a DNA synthesis machine you could make a version of this virus that would target a particular population.
I believe such machines can now make DNA sequences long enough to create viruses. I also remember someone creating a much more lethal version of smallpox that could kill all of the laboratory animals it infected, including ones vaccinated against "normal" smallpox (I think it was 100% lethal).
Of course, making a virus that would go after a particular Sex as opposed to a racial characteristic should be much easier (just target any gene found on one of the sex chromosomes and not the other.) This particular scenario was explored in Frank Herbert's book "The White Plague". A related scenario might be the film "Children of Men" where all the women(?) are made sterile.
I think the author, using the "offensive-computing" nick, knew very well that this would trigger a discussion and that's probably the reason this project was created in the first place.
For this to work, there are two required components: code and data. The code has already been created and if it hadn't been, implementing OAUTH and using a REST API is within the scope of many developers' skills. So the route to avoiding abuse of this technology is by restricting access to the data. Simply put, don't give any web site access to your genetic data.
The problem is that with enough uptake it's no longer a self-extinguishing problem, but a shutting-you-out problem. No DNA profile with that third party website? No access to facebook, google+, whatnot else. With even governments (like, infamously, the UK gov't) considering using facebook profiles to "authenticate" citizens for access to government services, it's easy to see that this may well end badly.
And you can't really leave this to "the market" because it inherently shuts out the negative control feedback, since shut-out people have no voice. A bit like the breakage and shutting out of visitors by "upgrading" your website to cloudflare -- and cloudflare deciding some visitors are really spambots even though they're merely behind CGNAT that cloudflare didn't know about, for example -- that may or may not even be visible in site stats.
Would you mind being an overlooked minority statistic if that means complete loss of access to, say, all government services?
So while "don't play ball" is a good start, it may well not be enough.
how secure could that actually be as an access control?
I mean, the access control isn't checking your DNA. It is checking if you have access to a genetic profile of someone with matching criteria. Or, as a completly different attack vector: access to body fluids of someone matching the allowed filters. ("whitelisting" gets a whole new meaning here....)
bickerdyke
I thought the narrative was that race doesn't exist? That we're all the same race? How then is is possible that one can determine so called race by examining the genetic profile of a person?
Is it possible we were lied to and that race is indeed something that can be determined as a composition of genes and other genetic data?
The correlation between genes and culture is becoming weaker in the modern world. People have far more interaction than before with people from other backgrounds since travel is easier, many people live in large cities and people communicate online. Therefore, to guard access to an online community based on genetics seems like the wrong solution, since a superficial genetic profile will not predict how well an individual will fit into a community.
Now you won't just have to buy other people's pee to pass your drug test, you'll have to buy other people's spit to get access to racist websites.
If you're paying for their spit you're doing it wrong. I was at a recent rally where the "white supremacists" were in attendance and it seems like sputum is their main contribution to society.
If they're the "supreme" the rest of us whites need to take a good long look at ourselves and ask why we work, can spell, and don't sit around in a pool of phlegm. Seriously - I saw a spitoon of them (that's the correct collective noun) standing around in a circle having a friendly chat before the rally, and spitting on the ground. Really - at first I thought it was a spoof, but no - they were fair dinkum about it (one even had his confederate tattoo on one skinny bicep). And they weren't even angry. If they were angry in a strong wind it'd be a mucal maelstrom.
TB. would be the death of them.
Some people pepper their speech with "ums" and "erms" - so do they, but they punctuate with a hawk and a spit. I agree they've been marginalised - just disagree that it's unjust.
I don't think you have to worry about needing to swab up their spit to get access to their "websites" (but use gloves if you do) - those pinheads couldn't run a bath let alone a secure website. Their "leaders" are a different type - I doubt they believe any of their propaganda. So maybe their websites'd be harder to hack. But if they used genetic confirmation for access control they'd have to exclude some of their membership.
As for whether it's good or bad - I suspect it's neither. How different is that from websites that confirm your economic status, some sort of membership in other groups, or identity? If the information is misused the problem lies with the person who stupidly put their genetic data up on 23andme. Once you give stuff away without license you lose the right to retrospectively determine how it's used.
I agree, because only White people can be racist. Racism is privilege plus power. We need to stop racists from being able to do damage by programming software. They should be restricted from accessing Github and learning how to write software. We should round up all White programmers and scrutinize their political beliefs so that we can eliminate the poison that is racism from our society. It's the only way the future will be free from racism.
But only white people can be racist. Racism = privilege + power. Only white people have privilege, whereas the People of Color lack privilege and social power. Therefore it's impossible for a Person of Color man to be racist. We must unite against all racists and purge them from our society. It's the only way the future will survive.
IF haveOnlineGeneticProvile
THEN PRINT "You are too dumb to be allowed on the internet."
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Article G7 of the GitHub ToS reads:
We may, but have no obligation to, remove Content and Accounts containing Content that we determine in our sole discretion are unlawful, offensive, threatening, libelous, defamatory, pornographic, obscene or otherwise objectionable or violates any party's intellectual property or these Terms of Service.
GitHub could decide to remove the project as "offensive" or "objectionable", which are pretty generic words.
However, the code itself is entirely neutral: it just requests API access via OAuth. It is the potential use by web sites that could be undesired. I think shutting down the GitHub project would be shooting the messenger.
For me personally, the most shocking aspect of this news is that 23andMe has an API for third parties to access your DNA profile.
Disagree. Any speech or expression should be allowed, or your remarks
themselves could be considered hate-speech. The Constitution's framers
understood this fine point that speech that is not acted upon is nothing more
than speech. Now if a person acts on their words, then yes, that's a problem
I thought the narrative was that race doesn't exist? That we're all the same race?
Yup. We're all the same specie. "Race" is just an arbitrary label used to make convenient distinction among a group of individual that would other wise mate together : e.g.: breeds of dogs, etc.
How then is is possible that one can determine so called race by examining the genetic profile of a person?
Is it possible we were lied to and that race is indeed something that can be determined as a composition of genes and other genetic data?
Short answer: Nope, it's not possible.
Not so short answer: Well depend on what you define as "races" i.e.: you'll need to constantly redefine your arbitrary "race" label along as the set of gene that you try to use to map it. With that definition of "race" drifting farther and farther away from what biggots with an agenda would like it to be.
Long answer: Remember that the only valid real barrier is *specie*. i.e.: between groups that *cannot* mate together. Inside that division, all individual can mate together. Humans are specially good at that "mating" (well, maybe except some basement dweller): because from our dawn we've been one of the most mobile specie, only bested by birds and some big aquatic animals. Humans do tend to get around a lot. As a result our specie is constantly under heavy genetic mixing.
You can put some arbitrary labels (hey, let's put together individual that have darker skin tone in one big arbitrary bunch and call them niggers!)
You can even find some labels that are actually convenient (statistically, people who typically come from Caucasian ancestry tend to have a bit higher probability for some disease and a bit lower for others).
But if you got into the details, it starts to get muddy, you'll find that some people that you put in one of your arbitrary categories come from completely different lineage that split quite some time before, whereas other that you wanted to put out of that label actually share much more recent ancestry.
(That white supremacist biggot over there ? He want to be put in a special category, aside "non whites" ? well on the surface it might look like some vague idea like correlating it with skin pigmentation. Except that among those non-white he'll probably put native american, but also african and north african. And his grand-dad happens to be from an italian immigrant family, and over the course of history southern european have had a lot of exchange with northern africa. See where I'm heading ?)
So, in short what works well to separate breeds of dogs (which are bred in very controlled manners and you can somewhat keep something like a breed more or less pure) absolutely doesn't work with human that fuck around a lot.
Same for the genetics.
You'll be able to spot a few marker (let's say: a gene that helps control the base amount of melanin in the skin). But once you start using this, you'll notice that a lot of the "wrong people" end in the "wrong category".
That specific list of markers you've assembled together, will consider some of the white supremacists as non white (because of the complex mixed ancestry most people have) while failing to cast aside one of their usual target.
An idealist (like me) would dream that this would help some of the biggots to realise that we aren't that much different under the skin, we're so much mixed that there's a high probability that the biggot has a bit in their blood what their usual target is.
Saddly, the reality will be that they'll be still endlessly tweaking around their genetic definition of "race", to constantly keep itt more or less matching their agenda. They'll never have a definite set of markers, they'll constantly need to patch them. And over time it will evolve to something that at the genetic level doesn't remotely look like what they pretend to be (by the time they manage to include all their friend and exclude all their targets, melanin-related gene
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
1) Kuwait has introduced a law mandating DNA testing for everyone, already. https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/... - it's required in order to get a government ID, and a government ID is required to live, basically. 2) In America, at least, the real problem with this code (and likely the real use case) is not blocking access to a website as an expression of "racism" (whatever that even means in this context), it would be using that profile to serve up content _selectively_. It's already been shown that Google gives different results to searches that include "black" names vs "white" ones: http://thevisualcommunicationg... - they could with perfect ease include this DNA data as an input signal to ad selection also. Searching for auto insurance? Your color blindness will cause the search to show worse deals. It's axiomatic that you should never, ever make unchangeable information with abuse potential of this sort accessible to anyone, if it can possibly be prevented.
What on Earth does the NY Post think "secret" means? Not only does the administration admit they're making this database, they've said it will be partially open to the public. That isn't a secret database. That's the opposite of a secret database.
I find your comment offensive and a micro-agression against me and my kind. This is hate speech. Please ban and delete immediately.
The reason they have this API is basically "because FDA". I don't know the *current* legal status, but at one point 23andme was essentially shut down by the FDA for providing unlicensed diagnostic services. Taking a spit sample and turning it into a written list of base pairs isn't diagnosis, so that part was still FDA-OK. It's comparison against known markers for diseases that's diagnosis. So they turned the "diagnosis" part of the business over to a licensed third party (or rather, they gave you the option of selecting the third party of your choice. Or simply using grep ;))
"It's already been shown that Google gives different results to searches that include "black" names vs "white" ones"
And why wouldn't they, and why would you NOT expect to get different results?
Searching for 'Louis Farrakhan' SHOULD give different results than searching for 'Maria Sharipova'. Or 'Lothrop Stoddard'.
Such a vapid argument. Try harder, please.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
The study, and the related hoopla (this is just one link), was designed to indicate that Google uses a non-obvious, racially skewed signal as an input to search and advertising results. Actually, they probably use more than one such signal. Oversimplified: if I am logged in as "Wilfred Fortescue-Smythe-Smythe III" and search for "bonds" I'll probably see advertising/results for investment vehicles. If I am logged in as "Taneisha Williams" and search for "bonds" I'll more likely see advertising/results for bail bonds. It's important to note that there is NO CHANCE WHATSOEVER that Google designs intentionally racist ad-ranking algorithms; they have too much to lose. What this phenomenon demonstrates is that complex, probably nondeterministic algorithms that sum a buttload of signals, which are designed to exploit demographic/psychographic characteristics to group users by willingness to purchase, can as an epiphenomenon amplify and expose demographic differences in purchasing behavior, some of which differences might cause political trouble with people in a given demographic who compare results with a different demographic. (This works both ways. Some of these "discriminatory" results give higher pricing on things to people in a "rich" demographic).
See my other reply on this same branch. That link I gave is just one of several, and possibly not the best reference - just the best I could find in a quick, inadequately caffeinated search this morning. (I was originally reading about airline pricing algorithms when I came across the information I was summarizing there. That led down a rabbit hole that gave the specific searching "bonds" = "investments" if you're white, "bail bonds" if you're black, example).
Go back far enough, we're all 100% African.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.