Thread by @nytimes

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. nyti.ms/37ZKix8

This process, called DNA phenotyping, is also being developed in the U.S. and elsewhere. Though it’s still in an early research stage, the technology can produce rough pictures good enough to narrow a manhunt or eliminate suspects. nyti.ms/2P6Fxcj

Given the crackdown in Xinjiang, ethicists worry China is building a tool that could be used to intensify racial profiling and state discrimination against largely Muslim ethnic groups, more than a million of which have been interned in camps nyti.ms/35XJXsV

Experts also raised alarms that the research is being published in international journals, often with questions about consent. Uighurs say they have no room to say no if police scientists ask for their biometrics, like blood samples and face scans.
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In essence, Chinese police are using the blood and faces of the unwilling to build a new genetic tool for social control. All the while, they have been publishing their findings in the world’s most prestigious scientific journals.
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