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Officials bust illegal lab containing 20 infectious agents, hundreds of lab mice (arstechnica.com)
26 points by arunbahl 1051 days ago
3 comments

Honestly, how many years of storytelling in bars is this public servant going to get out of that garden hose? Solid ordinance work my man, solid!

>local authorities were first tipped off to the unlicensed facility when a local code enforcement officer noticed that a garden hose was illegally attached to the back of the building. That led city officials to obtain a search warrant to inspect the warehouse, which was supposed to only be used for storage.

>when a local code enforcement officer noticed that a garden hose was illegally attached to the back of the building. That led city officials to obtain a search warrant

This scares me more than whatever danger the unlicensed might have posed.

An abandoned warehouse, draining fluid into a parking lot from a garden hose, isn’t probable cause?
Actually, yeah. I'm assuming the warrant was granted to police and that code enforcement don't get to do their own no-knock-warrants. That helps a little but not much.
It's tempting to think of it as parallel construction.
Terrible, FUD-heavy, thin reporting begs the question:

Are we talking independent biohackers, low budget quasi-startups, and/or terrorism?

The presumptive demonization and loaded language doesn't do justice to whether there was truly harmful negligence or just low-budget sloppiness. Although I thoroughly dislike animal testing, I doubt it can be completely eliminated.

If there's a release of a dangerous pathogen, does it really matter what type of illegal lab it was?

"Why jolly oh! I may be coughing up my bloody chunks of lung, but at least this preventable danger was the result of young entrepreneurial biohacker with some hustle, by god!"

Because if you know who they are and what their intent is, you can come to different conclusions and plans in dealing with the fallout.

If it's a YouTubers self experimentation fucking up you go after them and any illicit suppliers and make public notices about how dangerous it is. If it's an Operation Sea Spray 2 you probably oughta start whistleblowing and getting a large scale response in place. If it's a foreign state actor, you need to prepare for biological warfare, and also war. Biohacker, independent or organized terrorist, attempted assassin, drug synthesizer. It would be helpful to know.

Missed the part about "presumptive demonization and loaded language", eh?

The guy was trying to say that if the dangerous lab was hustling, it's cool. It was a shit take.

It is a shit take, that's why I wasn't responding to their comment in agreement. I was responding to "If there's a release of a dangerous pathogen, does it really matter what type of illegal lab it was?" with reasons the type of illegal lab matters.
Alright. We're cool. We're friends 4evah. :)
What kind of business needs a lab like that? Seems really cyberpunk.
There are people with excess real estate who want to see makers of all sorts making stuff. The issue is separating out the people who are liabilities, e.g., truly nefarious and/or negligent from the innocent.