Stephen Pinker has a pretty decent article up in the New York Times called My Genome, My Self about the topic of personal genomics, i.e. getting your DNA analyzed to discover your own ‘genetic code’. For example, having a certain set of alleles (versions of a gene) guarantees that your eyes will be a particular color. You may have genes that predispose you to various diseases, or that are associated with high intelligence. The more we learn about genetics, the more subtle and fine-grained become the predictions that accompany possession of particular alleles.
Some limited personal DNA profiles are now available for under $400 and people are worried that as this information becomes commonplace, it may be used against them. That is, we may find job discrimination based on genetic makeup: “Well, this candidate appears a good fit, but her profile shows a predisposition toward anger problems and a high chance of developing health problems that impair her ability to work or stay with the company.” Likewise, insurance companies may refuse to insure those with risky genes, or to make their coverage exorbitant. If someone has an allele that makes them 87% likely to develop M.S., an insurance company may deem them too risky to insure.
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The Victims of Blowjobs
In 2007, the Georgia State Supreme Court released Genarlow Wilson from prison, after he had served 2 years of his 10 year sentence. The court concluded that his sentence was cruel and unusual punishment.
His crime? As a 17 year old, Wilson had accepted consensual oral sex from a 15 year old (the age of consent being 16). The irony? Having penetrative sex with the girl would have netted him a mere misdemeanor with no sex offender registration (because he was himself younger than 18 at the time). The fact that it was oral sex made it a felony with a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison. (Note that until 1998, oral sex between a married couple in Goergia was punishable by up to 20 years in prison).
That silly little detail in Georgia law (that oral sex — i.e. “sodomy” — was considered a felony while vaginal penetration was consider a misdemeanor) was amended as a result of the publicity from this case. However, the lawmakers specifically chose the update not to apply retroactively, meaning that people like Wilson would not have their conviction overturned. In other words, anyone convicted under this crazy law would still remain a sex offender for life.
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The auto insurance company Allstate has announced a new program to improve driving safety in older drivers. The program, InSight, consists of some computer-based cognitive training programs that are supposed to improve visual processing. In turn, they think that will improve driving performance in seniors.
Whether or not the program will have significant beneficial effects is still in testing. But if it works, it appears likely that drivers who complete the training (or maybe just those who score well on a follow-up test) will get a discount on their insurance rates.
Sounds nice, and the basic premise makes good sense. If you can indeed train people to be better drivers by playing some simple cognitive computer games, then it’s a win-win situation. Right?
The potential downside I see is more long-term and big picture.
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According to CNN earlier this month, the FBI wants to cook up a gigantic biometric database of peoples’ prints, eye scans, tattoos, face shapes, walk patterns, etc. Of course, they don’t plan to have only criminals in the database, but job seekers and the like — maybe eventually everyone.
According to the FBI, more than half of the queries to the current fingerprint database are not for criminal investigations at all, but run on normal people applying to work in an old folk’s home or with kids or in another sensitive job. Even if the applicant doesn’t match up to any criminal prints, their information might be added to the database and store. The FBI is planning a service for employers to request the FBI to keep applicant biometrics on file and to inform them if the employee ever commits a crime. The FBI says it would require applicants signing a waiver to allow this, but if it’s a condition of employment — especially if it becomes a standard condition of employment — then there isn’t a lot of real choice for the applicants.
But, of course, the government is not just compiling data from job applicants. This month the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit against the government to force disclosure of border search policies. Apparently lots of normal people at airports and borders have been forced to disclose their login passwords, to allow their laptop data (including web searches, emails and address books) to be copied, to let agents go through their cell phone numbers and text messages (taking out SIM cards).
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How would you feel if law enforcement started scanning all of your email, your file transfers, and your web search history that Google and other companies keep (often going back years)? The U.S. Director of National Intelligence, Michael McConnell, is proposing just that. It’s for our security, he says.
Security, after all, is a trade-off. We know that staying home all day would generally increase our safety, but is it worth it? Banning cars would decrease traffic deaths immensely, but is it worth it? We face a multitude of situations like this that involving weighing increased security against its costs. (This is to set aside the many cases where security tactics are mere security theater, and may be counter-productive).
Security weighed against costs — unfortunately this common-sense notion has been used to promote a false dichotomy in United States discourse recently: “security versus privacy”. It’s assumed that the more we allow privacy, the more our security is undermined because Bad Guystm can take advantage of it, hide behind it. Making ourselves safe requires giving up some of the privacy we’ve expected up until now.
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