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?

  • runner_g@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    15 hours ago

    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.

    • irmadlad@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      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.

    • Da Oeuf@slrpnk.net
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      13 hours ago

      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?

    • pdxfed@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      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.

      • Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml
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        48 minutes ago

        This is absurdly paranoid, not a possibility any sane person should be concerned about.

      • runner_g@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        9 hours ago

        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.