California Expands DNA Identification Policies 42
The Los Angeles Times is reporting on a new California policy to match the DNA of suspected criminals to the criminal's family members in order to use them as investigative leads. Use of partial DNA matching is drawing fire over privacy concerns from citizens and law experts. FBI officials are hesitating as well, though their concern is that the courts will not accept such techniques. Quoting:
"The policy, which takes effect immediately, is designed to work like this: The state's crime lab will tell police about DNA profiles that come up during routine searches of California's offender database and closely resemble, but do not match, the DNA left at a crime scene. (Previously, the state refused to tell police about these partial matches.) When such partial matches do not surface or fail to produce a lead, a more customized familial search can be done in which computer software scans the database proactively for possible relatives. The software measures the chance of two people being related based on the rarity of the markers they share."
Re:Full bore... Into Oblivion (Score:1, Interesting)
It didn't used to be like this. Besides the obvious point of DNA analysis not being practical, we had leaders with a little more ethics, a little more respect for the Constitution, and a little more accountability.
But as crime became more of a threat, and politicians wanted more power, we now have DNA databases, printers that encode unique signatures into everything they print, and with the wholesale monitoring of the internet, a way to track whoever they want.
On the bright side, we all get ringside seats to the orchestrated fall of democracy and what used to be the American way of life.
And the sad thing is that citizens let it happen and even encouraged it to happen because they were uneducated and easily swayed by fear-mongering stooges.
Re:Full bore... Into Oblivion (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, this was the result of a referendum, so I think the "government trying to control us" is a little innacurate. It would have been more appropriate to say that the sheeps are looking forward for the opportunity to sell more of their rights to broaden the illusion of safety.
I do worry about what will happen when genomic sequencing and analysis becomes so cheap and easy that it will be standard practice to fully sequence your genome if and when you are arrested or apply for a job. DNA fingerprinting, while bad enough, does not tell the government what genes you have. If and when they get that capability, you can bet someone is going to find a set of genes that are correlated with criminal behavior.
It will be very controversial and all of course, but as long as that process doesn't highlight too many people, the public will be okay with treating those individuals as destined to be criminals. I wonder if we'll have them electronically monitored or maybe wear an identifying badge?
easy to see... (Score:3, Interesting)
Law enforcement will try to use a familial DNA match found at a crime scene as probable cause for a search warrant. It will happen. There are several scenarios. Imagine you have two brothers and you live in the same town, and brother 1 has been convicted of armed robbery. DNA at the crime scene of another robbery with a similar location to brother 1's first armed robbery is found that has a familial match to his DNA. A DA or detective would love to be able to use that as probable cause for a search warrant of your house and brother 2's house as well. Whether it would be granted depends on many factors. If you and brother 2 were suspected of being accomplices in the first armed robbery (say, letting him keep money, etc at your house) but never charged b/c of lack of evidence, you can be sure that would increase the chance of the warrant being granted.
The potential for abuse of this is off the chart.
Another question, how reliable are these markers for familial relationships in DNA anyway? Who is making sure that these DNA 'markers' are viable? Seems like the public is willing to swallow anything that involves DNA when it comes to law enforcement.
Re:You can have my DNA (Score:2, Interesting)
The most distressing part of all this is that the citizens of the United States have come to love liberty so little that when a agent of the state wants to fuck them with a sample swab, wants to remove a part of their living body, they won't fight.
Can you imaging the response of Thomas Jefferson or George Washington to the government demanding tributes of flesh from citizens?
The sovereignty of the government ends at my skin. You want a DNA sample? Get a warrant and see what you dead skin you can find in my bed (the samples with the Y chromosome are mine, guys), or arrest me and give me a bucket toilet and pull a sample out of my shit. But I will not voluntarily give up even a microgram of living flesh to the government. Yes, they'll probably get able to get a lot of samples out of my blood on the floor after they beat me, but I'll mix as much of theirs with it as I can. I will not let the government inside my body, and this is a bright and clear line I will fight for.
I'm not a Christian, but I always liked Jesus's line about the separation of church and state: render onto Caesar what is Caesar's, and onto God what is God's. My body does not belong to Caesar, and I will render no part of it onto him.
So, yes, if it comes to that: you can have my DNA when you extract it from my cold dead hand.