Chinese officials are gathering blood samples from Uighurs in a mass DNA collection effort for use by scientists researching using DNA to map facial images
Beijing's pursuit of control over a Muslim ethnic group pushes the rules of science and raises questions about consent.
New York Times
Context & Ripple Effects
The DNA-to-face research lands on top of an already-built surveillance stack in Xinjiang. Human Rights Watch had already documented big-data predictive policing feeding re-education camps in 2018, and reporting since then traced how China compiled a global registry of Uighurs abroad and deployed the first widely used ethnic-specific face tracking system.
What is new here is the data layer underneath: blood samples gathered from Uighurs themselves give scientists a way to generate faces from genes, which would let authorities match people who have no photo on file. It extends a pipeline that earlier in 2019 was found exposed in an unsecured database of 2.5M+ Uyghur records with ID card and near real-time GPS data.
First-order effects
Uighurs in Xinjiang are being sampled without meaningful consent, adding genetic data to the biometric profile — ID records, faces, location — the state already maintains on them.
Second-order effects
If DNA-to-face mapping matures, it plugs into the existing face-tracking infrastructure reported in April 2019, letting authorities identify individuals whose faces were never enrolled — widening the net from registered persons to anyone encountered.
Third-order effects
The case becomes a test for the international research establishment: journals, universities, and funders must decide whether work built on state-coerced biometric collections is publishable or sanctionable, setting precedents that govern all future government-genomics partnerships.
The trend: State biometric surveillance is moving down the stack from faces and behavior to DNA itself, forcing science governance bodies to confront coerced data as a training corpus.
In Xinjiang, Chinese police are using the blood and faces of an oppressed minority to craft dystopian technologies that may not even work. For years, they've been publishing their findings in respected international journals. W/ @suilee https://www.nytimes.com/...
This is yet another example of Communist China's human rights abuses against the Uyghurs. It also shows the effort China is making to expand their surveillance state to crack on protests and dissidents. The world needs to wake up. https://twitter.com/...
“Growing numbers of scientists and human rights activists say the Chinese government is exploiting the openness of the international scientific community to harness research into the human genome for questionable purposes.” What can possibly go wrong? https://www.nytimes.com/...
It sounds like science fiction, but it isn't: China wants to use DNA to reconstruct images of people's faces, creating a new way to track humans. To do this, China's police used samples from a repressed minority, the Uighurs, raising ethical questions. https://www.nytimes.com/...
This article is painfully difficult to read as a researcher. I can see how ML will be naturally incorporated in the next phase. I recommend reading the article, especially before writing your next grant proposal. Excellent reporting by @suilee @paulmozur https://twitter.com/...
DNA-generated facial prediction, Western academic complicity — a story/thread so mind-bending that the video of a razed village might be (at risk of sounding insensitive)...the least surprising part. https://twitter.com/...