Yale Law Student Wants Government To Have Everybody's DNA 544
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Seringhaus, a Yale Law School student, writes in the NY Times, 'To Stop Crime, Share Your Genes.' In order to prevent discrimination when it comes to collecting DNA samples from criminals (and even people who are simply arrested), he proposes that the government collect a DNA profile from everybody, perhaps at birth (yes, you heard that right)."
Regarding the obvious issue of genetic privacy, Seringhaus makes this argument: "Your sensitive genetic information would be safe. A DNA profile distills a person’s complex genomic information down to a set of 26 numerical values, each characterizing the length of a certain repeated sequence of 'junk' DNA that differs from person to person. Although these genetic differences are biologically meaningless — they don’t correlate with any observable characteristics — tabulating the number of repeats creates a unique identifier, a DNA 'fingerprint.' The genetic privacy risk from such profiling is virtually nil, because these records include none of the health and biological data present in one’s genome as a whole."
Dear Seringhaus, see the movie Gattaca (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, and where's the gattaca tag?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, and where's the gattaca tag?
Um, its different for each person?
Re:Dear Seringhaus, see the movie Gattaca (Score:5, Insightful)
Crystal ball says:
2012 US Ratifies bill giving the FBI the authority to collect a DNA fingerprint from all citizens.
2012 Citizens sue for rights to DNA fingerprint Joe vs. USA. Judge rules fingerprint is generated from, but is not inherent to, someone's DNA; no rights exist to own your DNA fingerprint.
2013 First suspect indicted on DNA only evidence, no previous criminal record. New FBI program hailed a major success.
2016 Judge grants warrant to FBI agents to fully sequence the DNA from a federal repository of two suspects with identical DNA fingerprints.
2017 Citizens sue to deny FBI from keeping a repository of DNA Jane vs. USA. Judge rules repository is necessary to the success of the fingerprinting program, and is therefore implied in the language of the bill.
2017 DNA fingerprinting program in full force, cataloging the fingerprint of every new child.
2022 First kindergarten class taught DOE lesson 14, "How your DNA fingerprint keeps you safe."
2025 Executive order 75920; DOHHS given access to DNA repository to quantify risk of current populace to goat flu, later designated H1M1.
2026 DOHHS isn't able to identify goat flu risks, but does find an alarmingly high number of Alzheimer prone individuals.
2026 Government healthcare adjusts rates to compensate for high-risk individuals
2027 Outraged citizens sue government for rights to DNA sequences John vs. USA. Judge rules the state cannot be placed in double jeopardy citing Joe vs. USA.
2029 Legislation introduced requiring high-risk individuals pay a reproductive tax for having offspring. Legislation fails to pass.
2031 Recession strikes. Drastic new legislation is introduced giving the DOHHS the authority to mandate medical decisions for high-risk couples. This will save or create millions of new jobs. Buried in the bill is a requirement for high-risk individuals to register with their local communities as such.
2032 1419 high school sophomores are mandated an abortion for being a pregnant, high-risk individual.
2033 Investigative journalist, Todd Todsen, uncovers federal tampering of "high-risk" thresholds. Newly appointed Whitehouse Chief of Staff, Todd Todsen, journals the successes of the DNA program over the past decades.
2034 Generation DNA graduates from highschool. 64% of them are required to register with their local municipalities as gene-offenders.
And the genetic aristocracy is born.
How does he know it's unique? (Score:2)
Before we even get to the Gattaca part, how does he know that this process will result in a unique sequence for every person? Including identical twins?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Because we all know how MD5 turned out..
Re:How does he know it's unique? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yup. This guy is an idiot. How does he know government can always be trusted with the information, among other things.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How does he know it's unique? (Score:5, Interesting)
Having it be a DNA instead of a regular fingerprint isn't the problem.
Having digtalised fingerprints(actual strings of bytes) stored about me that can be legally claimed to be me, regardless of how they are gathered, transmitted, handled is.
He's looking for a technical solution to the problem that the government can't be trusted with identifying information about anyone. Bad enough when it's convicted criminals(you can say they earned some of it). But ip theft occurs, with just what amounts to near-public information. Just how bad will it get when people can just copy a string of bytes and say it's you?
He's trying to solve the wrong problem, because the right problem is NP-Hard, if not unsolvable.
How can all those clerks, police officers, etc.. have access to what amounts to identifying information, and how can we secure it, how can we make sure it's not used for police officers "fishing" for someone to convict?
Those are very hard questions, the answers haven't seen much public debate, and his solution addresses none of them, only the "if your identity leaks, you've also lost the privacy lock on your medical file".
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This is assuming, of course, that we'd be allowing a DNA match to serve as the sole means of establishing probable cause for arrest and charging. I'd argue for the ability to keep the fingerprints, but still require as much burden of proof as would have been previously required to obtain the sample independently before using a fingerprint in court.
Re:How does he know it's unique? (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone were out to get you, either for reasons that you did something, or you just happened to be there, it would become a reliable way to convict the person of choice.
"Your honor, we have on record sequence 121221212122...111. for Mr. Smythe, as stored in numerical format for his DNA. At the crime scene we also have the DNA matching 121221212122...111.
Mr. Smythe was in the country at the time. He also does not have a viable alibi, as he says he was at home, alone, sleeping at 0400 on March 15, 2010.
We have produced 4 reliable witnesses, all with the local law enforcement community, who will swear under oath that he was observed within 100 meters of the location of the crime.
And finally we have this piece of mail, with Mr. Smythe's fingerprints on it, which was found in the parking lot outside of the site of the crime."
The piece of mail? Junk mail I threw in the trash, that they moved to the crime scene.
The "reliable witnesses"? Those willing to testify to finish off the case.
And the DNA evidence? The sequence number was pulled from my record, and the "DNA expert" simply testified to the fact that it was mine.
Depending on where you are, the levels of corruption go deep. Having my DNA on file definitely doesn't make me feel very good about future legal problems that are not of my own doing.
When the defendant wins on the basis of DNA testing, it's usually that they have an unknown sample, and the defendants DNA is also an unknown sample, and then they don't match. I wouldn't want to make it easier for them, to already know what mine is, and ensure that mine will be what is found. It doesn't actually have to be mine, they just have to testify that it matched. Expert testimony is only as trustworthy as the expert.
Re:How does he know it's unique? (Score:5, Insightful)
And anyone who thinks you're being paranoid has never been part of a criminal trial.
I've fought a few simple traffic tickets and watched how everyone from the attorneys to the cops to the judge would just lie and gloss over laws. It's a joke.
People who are more afraid than the average street criminal than the government are people with a totally broken view of reality. (Especially since fear of the street criminal is a mindset pushed by the government most of the time when they want to get more funding and raise taxes.)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
>>I've fought a few simple traffic tickets and watched how everyone from the attorneys to the cops to the judge would just lie and gloss over laws. It's a joke.
Yep. The CHP officer had sword under oath two different speeds when I protested one ticket. Judge didn't care in the slightest.
On target!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Spot on, JWSmythe, spot on, citizen!
Plus, there's that privatization thing. Whenever anything becomes federalized, the next step is corporatized ("privatized"). Not only does this cede extraordinary power to the power elites, they have probable monopoly on genetic engineering knowledge, plus future tissue engineering for organ/limb replacement, etc., etc., ad infinitum. They forever work to keep their monopolies on capital, land and knowledge.
Re:How does he know it's unique? (Score:5, Insightful)
And we swear, cross our hearts and hope to die, that we won't actually keep a copy of your entire genome on file.
----Signed
--------Your Friendly Federal Agency
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Punishing those that violate the law is only possible if we have a means for determining that they violated the law. Theoretically, a genetic database containing information on all our citizens could be classified as a state secret, and anyone attempting to sue for information about it (in an attempt to determine any such wrongdoing) could be stonewalled under the same state secrets doctrine that both Bush and Obama have been using for years (specifically with regards to surveillance of US citizens).
I'm ge
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
you can't expect people from yale to always be smart. The smart ones usually don't seek publicity.
Re:How does he know it's unique? (Score:4, Informative)
The dumb ones become POTUS.
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Sorry to be OT, but it reminds me of a joke.
Q: Who did you vote for president in 2004?
A: I voted for the rich Yale graduate.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
He doesn't. He's just angling for some staffer job to get experience before being appointed(*) to legislative, executive, or in his case, judicial, office.
(*) nobody actually is elected anymore -- candidates' entrance fess are paid by either major party and their associated independent PACs in exchange for showing undying loyalty to the party machine, which is not in any way the same as
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These 26 markers are basically snippets of DNA that are cut out of a DNA sample using endonucleases. these enzymes only cut at specific sites like GATTACA but not AATTACA etc. These cuts depend on the sequence of the snippet in question. The cuts are different lengths depending on where that GATTACA site is. A mutation at the G in the example causes the enzyme not to cut where it normally does. The probability of two separate individuals sharing the same genetic fingerprint would be at the least incred
Re:How does he know it's unique? (Score:5, Insightful)
Which would be great if such fingerprints didn't run into the birthday paradox.
The chances of any 2 random individuals sharing the same profile is tiny.
The chances of getting a lot of matches in a large population are extremely high.
Also those odds are not entirely independent, second cousin has a higher chance of matching with me than a random stranger so crank up the odds a little more.
And thanks to all the CSI crap DNA evidence is like magical-never-wrong fairy dust.
-They find DNA at the scene.
-Birthday paradox comes into play
-I happen to be in the same city at about the right time.
-lazy prosecutor
-I'm fucked.
I have nothing to gain from adding my DNA to such a database and plenty to lose.
Re:How does he know it's unique? (Score:4, Insightful)
The odds of two non-identical twin individuals sharing the same 26 marker genetic fingerprint are several billion to one. THe reason it is a bad idea is that it's unconstitutional, a severe violation of privacy and certain for abuse.
Re:How does he know it's unique? (Score:5, Informative)
several billion to one?
If the chances of any 2 individuals matching is 5,000,000,000 to 1
Then in a population of 214,597 people there's a 99% chance of at least 1 pair matching.
in a population of 300,000,000 there's going to be a significant number of doubles.
Re:How does he know it's unique? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you sure about those odds? [latimes.com]
State crime lab analyst Kathryn Troyer was running tests on Arizona's DNA database when she stumbled across two felons with remarkably similar genetic profiles.
The men matched at nine of the 13 locations on chromosomes, or loci, commonly used to distinguish people.
The FBI estimated the odds of unrelated people sharing those genetic markers to be as remote as 1 in 113 billion. But the mug shots of the two felons suggested that they were not related: One was black, the other white.
You got it. (Score:5, Informative)
The birthday collision illustrated:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem [wikipedia.org]
Even with 365 days a year, there is 50% probability that two people will have the same birthday in any random group of 23 people.
Now take 300 million people right now in the USofA.
Where is the evidence that these strings of "junk" DNA really are that unique?
"incredibly rare" is not good enough. (Score:3, Interesting)
For this purpose, it has to be unique. ... of what length each (range)?
26 sequences
Even 1 in a billion means there are 6 other people out there.
Re:But every one of them is a HUMAN (Score:4, Insightful)
And add in the lab tech seeing "101000" and "010100" and deciding the test medium just wasn't aligned properly and declaring it a match anyway. Or testing a sample against itself, by accident.
Re:How does he know it's unique? (Score:5, Informative)
That's the CSI belief.
Now, for reality:
http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_10026634 [denverpost.com]
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Re:Dear Seringhaus, see the movie Gattaca (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, read the fucking article and realize that no one is storing your DNA, simply a fingerprint of the data. But nice
Re:Dear Seringhaus, see the movie Gattaca (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realise the keep the original samples right?
So they take a sample of DNA, store X points of data into a database, and then take the sample and store it in a massive warehouse. Why? According to them it is so they can re-sample it at higher detail later.
Re:Dear Seringhaus, see the movie Gattaca (Score:4, Insightful)
The government would never lie to us. It never has lied to us, has it?
Wrong Movie Reference (Score:4, Insightful)
What you were supposed to say was:
I feel a great disturbance in the force, as if the Overton Window [wikipedia.org] cried out after being shoved to the right very, very hard.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
>>>Overton Window
"Ya wants me to break some more windows and provide Job Stims to the glass makers???" - government thug. Or maybe just junk some perfectly functional cars, which passed emissions inspections flawlessly, but we have to make work for those Government Motors employees.
Re:Wrong Movie Reference (Score:5, Insightful)
So the window is being shoved, but it's not being shoved left or right, it's being shoved towards a more totalitarian government.
Re:Dear Seringhaus, see the movie Gattaca (Score:5, Funny)
Dammit... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Dammit... (Score:4, Informative)
...my fingers don't even have to be cold and dead to pry my DNA out of them.
They would if you had a gun too! :)
Re:Dammit... (Score:5, Funny)
Awwwww, hes just so cute and innocent... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I remember being 5 or 6 years old and wondering why the whole world wasn't just nice to each other and all our problems would be solved.
Unfortunately, I grew up to have to understand the real world.
This guy reminds me of a cute little 5 year old. His heart is in the right place and he just wants everything fair and nice. However, those are some BIG ASSUMPTIONS he is making:
1) A sample will be destroyed after it is used to create a DNA profile.
2) Only law enforcement will have access
3) Since more Americans are in the database there is a less likelihood of government misuse.
Actually, I am not sure we can call those assumptions. More like hypothetical requirements for an argument, like, the Sun will be Purple tomorrow.
All 3 of those assumptions have been proven to be false, time and time and time and time again. Wasn't it just recently that we found out Texas A&M was participating in collecting blood and tissue samples from newborns without the parents knowledge and consent? Were they not also used for purposes the parents were unaware of and could object to?
Are we really to believe that only law enforcement would have access when any PI with a few bucks can currently gain access to supposedly proteced information that only law enforcement officials should be accessing?
Has not the goverment been caught time and time and time again abusing databases by using them for purposes well outside of the justifications and reasons for their initial creation? Doesn't the goverment quite frequently change their minds about what they will do with resources after the fact?
Sure, if all of those assumptions are held to be true, I would agree with him about making a DNA database. However, it is not my cynicism and disillusionment in goverment that causes me to be skeptical of those assumptions. It's COLD HARD REALITY, FACTS, AND PRECENDENCE. If you want to ignore that, and let them move on with a clean slate, that's your choice. I choose to remember how often the government lies to me and abuses me.
Re:Awwwww, hes just so cute and innocent... (Score:4, Insightful)
This guy reminds me of a cute little 5 year old. His heart is in the right place and he just wants everything fair and nice. However, those are some BIG ASSUMPTIONS he is making
You could say the same thing about the American electorate. As obviously flawed as these arguments are, they are convincing to a large proportion of the population.
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Crap, everybody paint their windows yellow, quick!
And how useful would it really be? (Score:4, Insightful)
The less data you have from the DNA, the more matches you are going to find. The reason things like DNA and fingerprints work is you have a smallish possibility set. You have 10 suspects, you compare the fingerprints, one matches, nine don't well there you go. In all cases with fingerprints and DNA you are saying "This item matches 1 in X people in the population." Now that's usually pretty good, like 1 in a million or something. However not so useful if your sample size is 300,000,000 and growing.
Also there's the fact that DNA tests aren't cheap, or particularly quick. They aren't the kind of thing you can use for every criminal case, it'd be way too expensive, not to mention unnecessary. I can't see that this would get used all the time. Fingerprints are done often because they are pretty cheap to test, but DNA? Not so much at this point.
So I can't really see this of being a whole lot of use to law enforcement either.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree with your conclusion, but your arguments are fairly weak.
If the match was a probability of 1 in 1 million, and you have 300 million samples, then you would expect three hundred (300) matches. For the purpose of finding a criminal, narrowing down your list of suspects to 300 "likely" candidates based on a DNA or fingerprint match, you can very quickly narrow down you
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Awwwww, hes just so cute and innocent... (Score:5, Interesting)
Recently and ongoing, there's been work to try to discover some genetic predilection to particular behaviours. Things like a "entrepreneurial gene", a "thief gene", a "rapist gene", and so on. Wouldn't it be awkward if everyone's genetic fingerprint were encoded on the genes which encode for predilection to discover holes in crackpot genetic crime prevention theories?
At the risk of invoking Godwin, I'm going to point out that a certain party during WWII had determined - via phrenology and other pseudoscientific means - that certain classes of people were fundamentally flawed, and proposed an ultimate solution to their quality of life issues were (a) more room to live (lebensraum) and (b) removal of the people classified as defective from society.
The first step was to invade a peaceful neighboring country, the second was by systematic removal of people of certain genetic types, "geno-cide". This removal involved transporting people via rail freight cars and interring them in landfill, after removing any valuables (such as gold teeth) first.
People, classifying people in any way is dangerous. Institutionalising the classification of people is pernicious. And if that pan has a handle, people will carry with it.
If you put people in boxes, pretty soon you'll see a lot of people in boxes.
Stop this insanity now.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
We shouldn't automatically reject any proposal simply because abuse and mistakes are possible.
If I used your exact same methodology/argument to evaluate the criminal justice system, I would have to decide that it doesn't make sense to prosecute criminals because we could make a mistake and send a guilty person to jail. Society has decided that it is OK to prosecute criminals as long as the rate of false convictions is low because the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.
IF it is indeed technically possible
Re:Awwwww, hes just so cute and innocent... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, but I am not. I am rejecting the proposal because abuse and mistakes are highly highly likely because they have happened repeatedly in the past.
That's a Strawmen argument and you are not using my methodology in the first place.
That's not the issue at all. The concerns for abuse do not drop in any measurable way whatsoever. One of the issues is whether or not the government can be trusted to destroy the sample, containing the information that is supposed to be 'hashed'. I don't trust them to do so and the facts support my position of not trusting them as being reasonable and rational.
Just because the information is hashed, does not mean it cannot be abused either. Maybe not in the ways popularized by the movie Gattaca, but there are still plenty of other ways this could be abused by government, and indeed, even other entities that gain illicit access to the databases.
No it is not. There is no comparison here at all. This database would only be a small tool used in criminal investigation and does not present an alternative to intimidation, or improper interrogation, at all. That will still happen. The only difference is that the DNA database will be used as a justification to bring in a person for questioning. I don't even believe that it would be used to convict a person either. A full DNA test would be run to provide that kind of evidence.
It is perfectly reasonable to take into account government's behavior with systems such as these, and their methods of collection, when determining whether or not it would be a good idea.
Re:Awwwww, hes just so cute and innocent... (Score:4, Insightful)
The person is acting from a legal perspective and does not understand the technology. I can see many different places where the technology will change and much like the internet, people will be surprised when the first SQL injection happens or the first BOT. It is a complex technology and it is the same fricking problem that happens with everything. A linear system cannot control and manage a system which is NP hard.
I am certain from my studies that most people do not even understand what the RFLP measures. They seem to think it measures something which is related to the person, and it really doesn't. That fact really shocked me when I was in the lab.
I wonder whether the drone that bombs a city has a DNA to tell you who is the culprit? Or does the BOT net give a signature that says it is created by some unique UUID?
This is an extension of methods which worked in another world before the internet.Fingerprinting, DNA and many other forensics were great when this began, but it is a new world and the threat is not cloaked in DNA or doesn't sneak into your data base in a meat suit.
Re:Awwwww, hes just so cute and innocent... (Score:4, Insightful)
Naive indeed. You know they won't really destroy those samples (either through design, delay, or incompetence). And the thought of insurance companies one day getting hold of such a databank scares the hell out of me. And, considering that the insurance industry owns the U.S. Congress, it would be all too easy for them to quietly slip though a law giving them access.
"Sorry, Mr. Smith but we can't give you health or life insurance coverage."
"Why?"
"I'm sorry sir, but that's proprietary information."
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Yes, and as we know, we're already keeping biological samples from infants in many states indefinitely. [slashdot.org]
And yes, many states that do this claim that there are great restrictions on its use, but as we've recently seen in Texas, this system already has been abused. I simply don't understand why the government wouldn't allow parents to request that such samples be destroyed within a reasonable amount of time, if they so desire -- unless they're up to more nefarious purposes. And don't tell me it's for ove
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Actually, I would be more interested in what he plans to do after graduation and if this kind of database would be useful for him. Remember, he is a law student. Lawyers don't care about the truth. In fact, it is a part of the job description ("zealous advocacy" and all that sort of thing). He probably does not actually believe what he is writing, but if enough *other* people beli
Until... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Non-protein coding regions would be far far more accurate. Biologists have known this to be the case for quite some time yet the media just won't let the "junk DNA" term die.
ITG wants Yale Law student to go to hell (Score:2)
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If only we could figure out what random sequence of genes accounted for this kind of behavior, and we had a database to compare his DNA to, we could weed these kinds of people out before they are even born.
prevent discrimination? (Score:3, Insightful)
What... What!?! To prevent the system from singling people out for abuse we are going to abuse everybody? Only a lawyer could think this wasn't perverted logic.
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Re:prevent discrimination? (Score:4, Interesting)
For the same reasons that it is only fair to put people that have been convicted in prison, but not people who haven't been.
*Note: I don't think it is fair to do this to anyone, least of all innocent babies. I may be able to become convinced it is ok to do this to people who are convicted felons (that is a pretty unlikely 'may'), but you'll never convince me this is ok to do to people who are merely arrested.
Re:prevent discrimination? (Score:5, Informative)
Except, being convicted means that a court of law found you guilty. Being arrested means a cop didn't like you and wanted to arrest you. "Oh, yelling at a polic officer isn't disturbing the peace? Ok, you can go... but we're keeping your DNA and fingerprints on record, so you better watch yourself!"
Or worse. (Score:4, Interesting)
Once the cops have your DNA (and a dislike for you) what's to stop a bad cop from leaving your DNA at their next "unsolved" crime?
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/02/15/85118/lacking-suspects-prosecutors-now.html [mcclatchydc.com]For a truly bizarre twist on this.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I tend to think it's fair to collect it from people who are arrested, but only if it is destroyed automatically if they aren't convicted in a certain amount of time afterword. The problem is that the US government (along with state and local authorities have proven themselves incapable of deleting any data once hey have their hands on it).
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Good Lord. Please go read the Constitution.
wait a minute... (Score:3, Insightful)
Poisonous. (Score:5, Insightful)
This has so many flavors of wrong, so toxic to freedom, and so indicative of the mindset of "If you have nothing to hide..." that there's really only one response I can pull together. It's not eloquent, but it does, I feel, have a certain crude charm.
"FUCK. YOU."
Fine With Me (Score:5, Interesting)
That fucker! (Score:2, Interesting)
They'll stop looking for a match after they find one- regardless of the fact there will be hundreds to thousands of potential matches.
Dave
Paternity (Score:3, Interesting)
Someone could have a field day with this data looking for discrepancies between claimed and actual paternity. A gold-mine for the tech savvy blackmailer.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Will not work (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Will not work (Score:4, Interesting)
" the chance of two unrelated people having the same fingerprint is (and I don't know the actual number) one in ten million and if you have every American in a database then given a DNA sample you'll get thirty people, twenty nine of which will be dragged into court through no fault of their own. Put simply, this is a profoundly stupid idea.'
Wow. So you have no clue about the actual overlap rate, have no clue if the author does, and then conclude his idea is dumb.
I marvel at the logic of you and the person who modded you up.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If the false positive rate is anything greater than zero his point is still valid. Let's say there's 1,000,000 violent crimes committed in the US each year, and the odds of you being flagged falsely are one in a billion, you're betting your freedom on a 1 in 100 chance that your name won't come up in some investigation in any given year. It's the birthday paradox writ large, it doesn't matter if there's a billion DNA fingerprints or 365 days, the odds of a collision across a significant number of samples
Wikipedia is reporting the FBIs estimated numbers (Score:4, Insightful)
Wikipedia is reporting the FBIs estimated numbers
The actual numbers are much worse.
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jul/20/local/me-dna20 [latimes.com]
Among about 65,000 felons, there were 122 pairs that matched at nine of 13 loci. Twenty pairs matched at 10 loci. One matched at 11 and one at 12, though both later proved to belong to relatives.
Or just google: dna "arizona search"
Also realize that for most crime scene samples, it's generally sufficiently degraded that you are only going to get 9 loci out of it. It doesn't matter if you have 13 loci in your database, if the comparison sample only has 9 that can be amplified out using PCR.
-- Terry
Re:Will not work (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This is a well known point and one which forensic scientists are well aware of. The point is not that DNA is the whole evidence, but forms part of the evidence. Juries are supposed to take other evidence into account too:
"It seems logical therefore that DNA evidence alone cannot be a proof – some additional information is necessary. However, the amount of additional information that is necessary might be a very small amount. For example, add to the DNA matching evidence (of 7000 to one) the mere knowl
Re:Will not work (Score:4, Insightful)
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Tell that to Brandon Mayfield: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Mayfield [wikipedia.org]
The spanish police told the US that the prints were no match, and that they had other real suspects with real evidence, but the FBI chose to keep after him anyway.
In his case they're talking about real fingerprints that have been in use for about 100 years, and they still got it all wrong.
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I don't have a fucking clue,
but I am ready for Chapter 2.
What a coincidence! (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
What about parental rights? Filial rights too? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not necessarily junk (Score:2, Insightful)
"No." (Score:5, Insightful)
"Your sensitive genetic information would be safe." It won't be safe for long with databases like these around.
It's simply naïve to hope that all those in political power will follow a course of action other than acting to get more power and more control. Most people will follow the rules and take sincere interest in their fellow man, but the few who don't are those you have ward against.
Imagine the next argument about how much better the government could make life for people if "Your sensitive genetic information" were also collected. This data would help medicine a lot. As we move toward more genetic basis for defining diseases, and defining the interaction of drugs within different people based on their genetics, there is a very strong argument that scientists could make health care better with broad access to the exact genetic information of all patients. Genetics coupled with disease phenotypes, frequencies, and drug interactions with quantitative metrics of effectiveness leads to revolutionary breakthroughs in drug development.
But to get this data would eliminate all aspects of personal privacy regarding your health.
If you believe in property at any level, your own body is unequivocally the one thing you own without exception. Unless there are overriding and unequivocal public health reasons to give someone else control over your body, the only answer is simply "No."
One thing this wouldn't address... (Score:2)
Is human chimerism (induced or innate).
That is, absorbing a twin (CSI episode, I think), or from a bone marrow donor.
A mouth swab won't include blood-based DNA.
Admittedly, the odds of this actually coming up in a criminal case are pretty low... but even knowing about it was apparently enough to get me dismissed from a jury.
This is why... (Score:5, Informative)
...you shouldn't listen to student lawyers that still can't grow a mustache!
The Israelis have already shown that DNA can be replicated [politics.co.uk] and an innocent individual could be implicated in a crime without his or her knowledge.
Only an ignorant fool would advocate what this guy is advocating!
There's something seriously frightening (Score:5, Insightful)
about this steady stream of idiots who are willing to mindlessly trust the government. Have the horrible lessons [wikipedia.org] of the twentieth century [wikipedia.org] already been forgotten [wikipedia.org]?
i don't trust the government with dna information (Score:3, Interesting)
however, the most idiotic crowd i see are actually those with a pathological distrust of government
in a democracy, the government is yours, it is your representatives. all paranoid schizophrenic fantasy life and hypernegative ignorant cynicism to the contrary
as such, you afford it a certain amount of trust. too much, and you're a moron. but also true: too little, and you're also moron, to the same degree
a society with a rabid unintelligent hostility towards its own democratically elected government is just
Mission Creep (Score:4, Insightful)
The Elected Nobility won't keep their promises. "Oh it's only 26 markers... we can't predict your health from that," and then in ten or twenty years they'll want to sequence your entire genome, so they can create a society like GATTACA.
I've seen this before. The Nobles promised income tax would only affect people over $100,000 not the commoners. They said Medicare would only cost 60 billion, and that it would REDUCE healthcare costs, which of course it did the exact opposite. And they claimed the social security number would Never be used for anything else, but the SS administration.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice.....
Here's an idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't we try this only with Yale law students?
There is a law against that... (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow.
Considering with the current DNA sampling methods, my DNA will match one or two million other people on the planet, a good few thousand of them being in my own country...
No thanks, I have no desire to admit and take the blame for the crimes those other people did and were caught at.
Someone should direct this so called law student to our constitutional amendments. He only has to get through the first 5 or so :P
Political Correctness Taken Too Far (Score:3, Interesting)
His main argument against storing DNA of only convicted criminals is that there aren't enough white criminals, so the idea is racist. This entire premise makes me want to puke.
Obama likes the idea as well (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/obama-supports-dna-sampling-upon-arrest [wired.com]
At the moment it is *just* upon arrest... how's that hope and change working out for you?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
who the frack cares what a college student has to say?
Like it or not, today's kids are the ones who will be running things tomorrow. Especially the ones coming from Ivy league law schools.
Re:Good for him... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good for him... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Good for him... (Score:4, Insightful)
America is already one giant prison - you have numbers, don't you?
Now, the deal is sealed.
Signed,
-- Dead Jefferson
Re:Every baby I know of gets a prick on the heel (Score:5, Insightful)
A DNA sample is taken of every child born in the US, to test for potential genetic diseases. The original specimen is stored for a period of time, based on state laws. Here are some citations:
Genetic Screening [nih.gov]
Controversy [cnn.com]
Specimen retention by state [uthscsa.edu]