Alot of Viruses or Bacteria remain dorment for some time before unleashing attacks, though for a very short time, these viruses are still spreading from one person to another though various orifice including the one behind into the sewer, and if they monitor the sewer they can catch something like this early in the group of population and hence a preventive measure before the next pandemic
Yes, the above was just in someone’s head during pandemic era
But then, they were able to also determine stress level in a given population with a study done in China from sewer water Link to paper in Pubmed
Your shit reflects what you eat, what you feel and underlying health conditions
For now, you are anonymous among the group of people living in the same town so they cannot exactly tell you apart from other’s sewer. But what if they find a way to shitprint where they can uniquely identify you from the shit you just dumped? Maby just a way to extract DNA from your shit stuff.
Maby if you are a wistleblower or someone the government would want to keep track of, they may somehow engineer a biological weapon that does not harm but will replicate itself just enough for it to be released from behind and let them know where you are.
Again, this is a far fetched and frankly stupid. But our current surveillance reality was just as stupid a decade ago.
I can imagine data brokers trying to get into the sewers to gather health data for advertisement far in the future. So I guess the only viable alternative would be to build septic tank to fight such surveillance like we currently do with selfhosting to protect our data. Just like we dont let these corporations get the hold of our data willingly, should we let our sewers get into their hand?
So this is actually my industry - Wastewater Based Epidemiology or WBE. It is very anonymous. There is no way to pick out one person’s identity from the waste stream. What we get is a about 100mL of blend from 24 hour’s worth of shit water passing into the treatment plant. A tiny treatment plant is processing 100,000 gallons per day, while a top 10 plant is processing > 100 Million gallons per day.
While I have someone from the water business here I would like to ask a question: How are chemicals and plastics removed from waste water? Are they even?
The primary purpose of wastewater treatment is biological material and nutrient removal, primarily nitrogen. Check out the wikipedia page for more details, I’m a biologist, not a chemist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wastewater_treatment
They screen out large pieces of plastic. Waste water then often goes to large tanks where sediment settles out. Chemicals can also be added to coagulate smaller plastic debris for removal.
I’ve read some about wastewater testing and such, more towards the pharmaceuticals that our body excretes, which can proliferate our drinking water supply, and thus affect the population. It was quite interesting. I’m not sure if we filter for those elements now, or even if we can at the present.
We don’t. We could, but it would be absurdly expensive.
Is there anything to stop the next Shitantir(Palantir) from lobbying and then having this embedded into construction code, etc.? Look at all these small towns waking up to find ICE is accessing their traffic cameras and so are vigilante Texas sheriff’s who don’t think women should have abortions…the point being if it can be done, and the wrong people are in power and those systems are designed to be edit the wealthy and powerful, it is just a matter of doing nothing and it will happen.
This is absurdly paranoid, not a possibility any sane person should be concerned about.
Every treatment plant in the country is already collecting samples of wastewater as it enters and leaves the plant as they have to take certain measurements every day to show compliance. To my knowledge, there is no way to identify/track individuals based on wastewater. There is a government database of everyone’s license plate.
I think their point is about mandating in construction code to have per-house wastewater analysis devices
“oops it broke”
*yet
Was my point. It could be done over time.
Nah i think its fine. Let the nerds test water for viruses.
Wastewater analysis is a real thing and is very useful. People were using it to track covid after the pandemic although idk how accurate it was there.
The privacy concern here is only if they are getting per-household or per-toilette data. You don’t have to worry about per-household analysis ever happening unless your sewer system is somehow privatized, in which case, lol rip.
Smart toilets exist and definitely are a massive privacy concern. But they haven’t caught on because only rich weirdos would ever want their toilet to be an iot device.
I understand that there is a public benefit to this technology/data, but there are definitely concerns (including privacy concerns) even if the data is not currently widely available at a per household, per toilet, or per individual level. For example, insurance companies may not insure people who live in specific neighborhoods and it could lead to increased levels of surveillance through other means. There is also usually limited (or no) methods of opting out leaving a person’s consent to be questioned, especially visitors. Speaking of visitors, it could also enable location tracking/history of a person.
This really is just scratching the surface here, as is this technology. As the technology progresses, this can (and likely will) evolve into more sophisticated, granular, and wide ranged levels of tracking. Granted much of this is speculative, but the same thing has happened with computers, cell phones, TVs, cars, cameras, ancestry/DNA services, and many other services. As a result, its important to think of both current and future implications when considering the benefit and abilities of these technologies/data.
If they found a single turd, they could absolutely trace it back to you. But fecal matter gets so mixed together, I don’t think they’d be able to de-anonymize anyone by the time the waste stream reaches the sampling point.
I don’t think the toilet you shit in is going to be the main source of geographical data about you… Analyzing dookie with the intent of tracking pathogens and preventing future pandemics outweighs the risk of my poop being traced back to my butthole, imo.
So I guess the only viable alternative would be to build septic tank to fight such surveillance like we currently do with selfhosting to protect our data.
Selfhosted sewage is a very funny way to think about septic tanks. It’s not terribly off base, but the correlation made me chuckle.
the only viable alternative would be to build septic tank
Me realizing I’m ahead of the game because I live in a home with a septic tank. But when you have to pump that tank every 5 years, if you can’t do that yourself, it’s going to be a lot less anonymous than a centralized sewer.
The much more present issue is your own government ignoring the wastewater data dude. I remember they were able to do interesting things like figure out what kind of meth people were using with that wastewater analysis. It could be a really useful tool where other institutions have completely failed. I think you’re just creeped out by science man.
op is creeped out not by science, but by the possibility of per-building analysis
Right, that’s a crazy situation that nobody has even suggested that’s being dreamed up to scaremonger about wastewater surveillance, which hasn’t even been used to the extent it needs to for public health
Have chronic diarrhea so they can’t trace a single log back to you.
Teenage punk me hitchhiking through squats met everything from freegans to people who literally shit in litterboxes to save the planet’s water.
Honestly that kind of stuff combined with a few landlords has made me really hate hippies. I just associated with narcissists.
Maby if you are a wistleblower or someone the government would want to keep track of, they may somehow engineer a biological weapon that does not harm but will replicate itself just enough for it to be released from behind and let them know where you are.
You know, if that infamous author hadn’t written Do Not Create The Torment Nexus: A Cautionary Tale, there is an excellent chance the Torment Nexus would never have been built.
It seems like pouring bleach in the toilet before flushing would fix that dystopia though
Dogs are able to casually identify the individual who produced the most minute sample of shit, tell you their last three meals, what they are going to die from, and when; and dog society didn’t fall apart. We’ll manage.
I have a English pit I’ve had since she was a very little pup. Early on I noticed that there were times when she seemed distressed. She would come nose punch me in the leg and whine and paw. As time progressed, I discovered she was actually predicting my seizures. At first I thought it coincidental, but the accuracy was just too uncanny to dismiss. I have read that before a person has a seizure, they emit a certain chemical odor that the dogs can sense. My lady friend also says my demeanor changes before I have a seizure, and my pit may also be picking up on those cues. She’s never had any formal training, it’s just something she does and I am grateful.
That’s because the technology is socialized and every dog can use it. If only the dog ruling elite were able to tell that, you’d have a dog dystopian police state.
So, it all reduces to a prior problem. The sewers are a red herring.
