Civil Liberties Education Uncategorized

UC Berkeley Loses Mind, Asks Freshmen for DNA


Hi Freshman! Welcome to the University! Now give us your DNA!


Usually, UC Berkeley helps induce a bonding experience between the members of its freshman class by having them all read the same book.

But that’s just so dead tree-based.

So this coming fall, in order to foster a sense of communality, Berkeley is asking its incoming students to swab up and hand over some samples of their DNA. (I mean how cool and bond-y is that!)

The DNA fork over is voluntary, of course.

Once the confidential (and voluntary) DNA sample is sent in and tested, KTVU.com reports that the results will “show the student’s ability to tolerate alcohol, absorb folic acid and metabolize lactose.”

(Oh, okay, they’ve got a point there. Testing one’s alcohol tolerance is indeed a time-honored form of freshman bonding. Can’t say as much for that that folic acid thingy though.)

Look, privacy is a thing of the past. We get that. And the university folks say the IDs of the students will be protected. (And I’m sure that database could never be hacked.)

But, at the risk of sounding boringly Luddite-ish, could the already suspect UC administrators possibly have found a more intrusively creepy way to say Welcome to Berkeley?

I’m just sayin’.

Here’s what Discover Magazine and the NY Times have to say on the matter.

9 Comments

  • “Privacy is a thing of the past.” Well, some of us haven’t given up fighting that – and keep pointing out that laws to protect our privacy and the ethical issues involved, are still geared toward the pre-Internet era of the 80’s and before. We need to deal with this issue and NOT just accept it. Because as you note, “confidential” is what’s the thing of the past: any database can be breached, whether medical, financial or other. In this case, “academic,” or whatever. Or just plain weird. Ironic that it’s a “progressive” institution like Berkley which is most willing to ask for “voluntary” invasions of privacy that even defy common sense.

  • Ironic? I guess you could call it that. I consider it hypocritical considering the faculty vote protesting the Patriot Act as an invasion of privacy.
    Another example of academians saying:
    “”We’ll be selective in our protests as to what we like and what we don’t like in regards to constitutional rights”.
    Faux outrage when they don’t like the Patriot Act (or who instituted it)…and then…voila….”Give us a sample of your DNA”.
    Incredible. Revealing. No way around it, these people want a police state.

  • Look, privacy is a thing of the past. We get that.

    Really? Then why all the protests over the Patriot Act?

    You “get it” when it’s convenient and correlates with your politics. As soon as doesn’t conform to your worldview, it’s outrageous.

    Now tell us again about tolerance and acceptance and all those touchy feely thingys that make you feel so good about yourself.

  • Is it not completely clear that I think this is utterly creepy? Why do you think I posted it? Reread please.

    When I say that “privacy is a thing of the past,” I mean that, well, it pretty much is. Anybody can find out most anything about you if they really want to. It sucks. But it is the reality.

    This, however, is DNA and it’s a whole different kind of invasion of privacy—AND it involves kids, even if most of them are over 18, they’re still kids. I don’t agree with the OC DA making deals to take the DNA of people who have never been convicted of a crime, and I don’t agree with this. At all.

    ATQ, about: “Now tell us again about tolerance and acceptance and all those touchy feely thingys that make you feel so good about yourself.”

    I don’t attack you or anyone here personally. You do not get to attack me personally. BACK THE FUCK OFF.

  • I wasn’t attacking you Celeste. i SHOULD’VE USED “THEY” INSTEAD OF YOU. I was speaking of/at the Berkeley academians who preach tolerance and acceptance at every turn yet pull bullshit like this. I should have made that clear, which I did not, but there is no need for you to take offense. I wasn’t speaking AT or OF you.

  • You made it clear with your header on the thread what you think of their bullshit. Of course I wasn’t talking to/at you.
    Anybody who supports this bullshit, yeah, what I said stands for them.

  • Thanks for clarifying, ATQ. It sounds like I may need more sleep and less coffee. Yesterday I spent most of the day at Homeboy Industries, and came home a bit on the overly emotional side.

  • You’re welcome. I hadn’t noticed you might of been a little on edge. LOL.

  • Finally, something to like about the political culture of Mexico, at least relative to the naively, unbelievably stupid attitude of our own country WRT posting all our private data, so that private companies profit by selling it, we have to be ever vigilant and no matter what, our ID’s and dignity are sold and ruin millions of lives on an annual basis. Even where it’s legal, the computerized data collected by banks and financial institutions, healthcare providers and pharmacies, universities and schools, even anonymous websites is routinely stolen or sold for profit.

    We’re the only country to allow our citizens to be so compromised, so that we’re the scam country of choice for scoundrels from Nigeria to Romania to South America and so even Bin Laden in a cave somewhere can find out all about any of us, while we can’t even locate him.

    The L A Times ran a story May 12, “They Called it in Mexico,” by Tracy Wilkinson, about how many refused to register their cellphones, fearing the data would turn up in the wrong hands – rightly it turned out, once again.

    “In Mexico, unlike in the United States, voter sign-up rolls and motor vehicle registrations are not a matter of public record. Mexicans, in theory at least, expect privacy.” (The same can be said for property records, and numerous other “private” court records, etc.)

    The gist of the article is that for safety reasons, Mexico puts privacy concerns over the “public’s right to know, the opposite of our country” where reporters routinely trounce respect for privacy and dignity of their subjects/victims. (A too broad and often in my opinion, bogus “Right,” used by reporters as an excuse to pry into everyone’s life without regard for relevance of the information gleaned or appropriateness, or sensitivity to the subjects and even their families – e.g. I objected to the USC J-school students who actually criticized HIPPA/ patient privacy laws and the hospitals which actually respected them, for not allowing them to pry into the patient records, in the NEon Tommy story re: Nile virus and who’s most likely to get it. Also, the students chose to compile obits for the victims: in that case, with compassion, but there’s nothing governing HOW such private data could be used by anyone who gets their hands on it. Journalists don’t have to be regulated or registered to follow ethical guidelines.)

    We spend billions chasing ID thieves after the fact, and in the process, allowing everyone’s dignity to be eroded by any busybody or even potential kidnapper or thief. We can’t even be confident about our hospitals or banks – in fact, we’re foolish if we don’t take aggressive steps to prevent their selling our data every time we have contact.

    So I will never stop harping, as do a handful of ethicists and a handful of journalists here and there, that we should NOT just accept our fate as the stupidist country in the world when it comes to accepting that “privacy is a thing of the past,” that anyone has a “Right” to anything about us, because we’ve been too complacent to demand that our legislators put in place privacy protections that at least partly match the capabilities and dangers of the internet, that we finally crawl out of the 1970’s in that regard.

Leave a Comment