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[TheBiggerFish]

Stay safe, Japanese and pacific coastliners.

Yeah...

[redwallzyl]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/business/china-railway-one-belt-one-road-1-trillion-plan.html?_r=0

Interesting.

also reviving this thread.

[ChairmanPoo]

Not this thread again. Are you telling me we are *still* at war with Eastasia?

[Helgoland]

Chairman, you of all people should know.

[martinuzz]

Meanwhile in China, the Chinese government is getting into a serious attempt at creating an Orwellian biometric database.
Starting in the Xinjiang province, every resident that applies for a new passport will have to give DNA, fingerprints, and speech samples for a voice recognition database.

The reason given is that it is meant to more effectively combat terrorism. The Xinjiang province houses many islamic Uyghurs. The region is plagued by frequent terrorist bombings.

Earlier this year, Chinese authorities made fitting your vehicle with a tracking device mandatory. Any car without the state supplied tracking device installed, will not be able to get service at any gas station.

Not just the Xingjiang province is subject to DNA sampling. Photgraphs on the CHinese website Tieba show that people are being required to give DNA in schools, offices, and on the streets, without obvious reason. Just cooperating as a witness for police enquiry will also ensure your DNA gets taken.
In Shandong, the entire student population of university was made to give their DNA, supposedly to help solve a crime.

Privacy laws concerning DNA are still mostly in the making, but as of now, China already has the largest DNA database in the world. Three procent of the Chinese population has been registered, making for 40 million DNA samples.

Most people do not know if they have a right to refuse having their DNA taken. State media do their best to make giving DNA look only good, broadcasting tv shows in which biological parents are reunited with their children through use of a missing persons DNA database, and giving extra attention to crimes solved thourgh DNA evidence. While collecting DNA on the streets, social media report that police officers very often convince people to give up their DNA by playing into the fear parents have that their child will be stolen and sold, a thing that happens quite often in poor areas.

http://www.volkskrant.nl/buitenland/china-legt-enorme-dna-databanken-aan-orwelliaans-genetisch-systeem~a4495411/

[Reelya]

China has the largest single database in the world, but they're far short of the largest percentage, e.g. a quick google for the UK shows that they have a database with 5.7 million people, which is double what it was 10 years ago. So UK is nearing 10% of the population DNA sampled, which looks like it makes UK the most heavily DNA sampled nation by a wide margin.

My country Australia also has about 3% of people with their DNA stored, while USA is similar (~3%) with their national database (9 million), but 49 / 50 states also have their own DNA databases:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_database

It turns out that Kuwait is one nation with mandatory DNA sampling of the entire population, although sources are contradictory on that, there was a huge backlash against the law. Portugal also wanted to set that up, but they were talked out of it. In general, Continental Europe has good protections against DNA sampling, while English-speaking countries and elsewhere do not.

[Loud Whispers]

The UK has always been at war with eastasia tbqh

[Reelya]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-39945220

Since 1989 when China started collecting DNA, it has amassed the genetic information of more than 40 million people. In the US, the national DNA index of offenders has only 12.7 million offender profiles.

Percentage-wise the US is still ahead of China though, having about 4% of the population indexed while China only has 2.9%.

The BBC however doesn't make any memtion of DNA Database in the UK which far outstrips anywhere else in percentage terms. Overall given the time they've been at it and the total figures, China has still been collecting DNA information from it's citizens slower (percentage) than the USA, and far slower than the UK, for the last three decades.

[Baffler]

Why always the tu quoque when things nonwestern countries are doing comes up? Yeah, they have less collected at this moment, but considering registration (and far more invasive than the UK or USA collects at that) is mandatory I expect they'll pass everyone else fairly soon. Hopefully it goes badly for them, so other countries don't feel the need to follow their example.

[Reelya]

I'd imagine it's going to be stymied by cost. India wanted to set something up but the cost would be prohibitive.
https://qz.com/463279/indias-dna-profiling-bill-may-become-one-of-the-worlds-most-intrusive-laws/

On costs: India wants to record the DNA of everyone ever arrested for a criminal offence. In 2012 alone, there were 3.2 million arrests. At that rate, the asked-for Rs 20 crores ($3.3 million) is probably too little to build and maintain a database. For comparison, the UK spent £300 million ($450 million) just to setup a database.

http://dnapolicyinitiative.org/forums/topic/is-dna-database-expansion-worth-the-cost/

UK Home Office figures show that the cost of running the national DNA database has more than doubled since 2002-03.

So yeah they could expand it to 10% of China (which would be proportionally similar to the UK) but I'm guessing that would become increasingly expensive to maintain. So i'm going to take a punt here and say that they won't end up doing that. it's not the most effective means of achieving whatever it is they want to achieve.

[martinuzz]

Maybe they should start by arresting less people for yelling at cows

[Loud Whispers]

Yelling at Cows is a good name for a band

[Helgoland]

Should be Yelling at Kows.

[Baffler]

I'd imagine it's going to be stymied by cost. India wanted to set something up but the cost would be prohibitive.
https://qz.com/463279/indias-dna-profiling-bill-may-become-one-of-the-worlds-most-intrusive-laws/

On costs: India wants to record the DNA of everyone ever arrested for a criminal offence. In 2012 alone, there were 3.2 million arrests. At that rate, the asked-for Rs 20 crores ($3.3 million) is probably too little to build and maintain a database. For comparison, the UK spent £300 million ($450 million) just to setup a database.

http://dnapolicyinitiative.org/forums/topic/is-dna-database-expansion-worth-the-cost/

UK Home Office figures show that the cost of running the national DNA database has more than doubled since 2002-03.

So yeah they could expand it to 10% of China (which would be proportionally similar to the UK) but I'm guessing that would become increasingly expensive to maintain. So i'm going to take a punt here and say that they won't end up doing that. it's not the most effective means of achieving whatever it is they want to achieve.

Your source is random forum posters, who do not themselves cite any sources. Why should it be any more expensive than any other large data storage project? That's getting cheaper all the time, and it's certainly within the means of the Chinese government to do that for a good portion of Xinjiang province's ~12 million Uighurs that the government is trying to use the program to suppress.

[Reelya]

When you're interfacing with real people there are a lot of set costs. Data storage is cheap, but infrastructure to collect and make use of data is the expensive part. Costs go down when you can avoid face to face communication. How is that going to work with DNA? Anyway, out of the $US 450 million that the UK spent to establish their database, the storage of DNA information only accounts for a tiny proportion of those costs. Cheaper hard drives isn't going to really reduce the costs of the infrastructure for a national DNA system.

And the only comment I posted was a guy citing figures which are easily googled to find actual articles

UK Home Office figures show that the cost of running the national DNA database has more than doubled since 2002-03.

The fact that it was a very specific claim makes it straightforward to check with google:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/05/dna_database_dosh/

Home Office figures show that the cost of running the national DNA database has more than doubled since 2002-03.

Actually that was in 2008, so the costs would be higher now I'm guessing.