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."
Full bore.. (Score:5, Insightful)
At least that would be fair (Score:3, Insightful)
If everyone is sampled at least it's fair.
Grossly anti-civil-liberties, but fair.
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Satire filter (Score:1)
Next time, I'll be sure to add <satire></satire> as needed.
Fairly violating our civil liberties? No thanks. (Score:1, Insightful)
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The change will lead to more convictions.
The problem is that these convictions will not be equally distributed across the population.
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Unless you are a celebrity, like a former pro running back.
Criminals aren't equally distributed across the population, either.
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 uniqu
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And so it continues... (Score:5, Informative)
This means that you don't ever have to be convicted- hell, you don't even have to be charged- to have your DNA added to this database. People who are wrongly accused do NOT automatically have their DNA expunged from the database.
When do the DNA-sequence-hashed social security numbers come out again?
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Hard to say... (Score:2)
I'd say it's even a fuzzier link because you could get matches from cousins who don't even really know you.
Re:Hard to say... (Score:4, Insightful)
With DNA, you're using a DNA sample from a crime scene and matching it to a known criminals DNA to find a relative.
What you're suggesting is using a fingerprint from a crime scene, matching it to a known criminal, and then using that to find the persons relatives. That doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. If the fingerprint matches, you know your criminal. If it doesn't, you've got to keep investigating. Who they're related to isn't exactly important.
In this case we're talking about casting suspicion over people simply because their DNA is close to someone else's- that's frightening.
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Now as it turns out suspicion does not fall on family members with near matches but on untested family members. So if you are the one family member with a near match, they do not pursue you but they pursue all your untested relatives
Re:Hard to say... (Score:5, Insightful)
How would you like a detective knocking on your door and wanting to discuss your immediate relatives, looking for leads on a case he's working on?
"we have reason to believe that one of your relatives committed a crime, care to answer a few questions?"
Now lets say it was a really close match and now they would like to DNA test your kid to see if he's a 100% match? (with no other evidence than this close match) If you allow that, then where do we draw the line? Not so close? Can we DNA test all your cousins? We're sure one of them's the one we're looking for!
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
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If my county's DA did not try for such search warrants, then he would be negligent in his duties.
Re:easy to see... (Score:4, Informative)
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Hogwash.
Since I have a very common name, and have often had phone calls (including from police!) from people looking for different people with my same name, I am acutely aware of this problem. Unfortunately for your argument, this is referring to familial DNA f
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In some cases, it may actually be as absurdly broad as "same given name". No one really knows.
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Hmmm... Perhaps there's a bright side (for some)? (Score:1, Informative)
I never thought there'd be a bright side to that...
Anything the government has on record is a threat (Score:4, Insightful)
Never believe anything in the government vaults is safe because leaders change and so do laws
Slippery slope to Sippenhaft and beyond (Score:1, Insightful)
Can you be sure that in all this time there won't be another government where, say, Sippenhaft [wikipedia.org] will be considered a legitimate tool again? Or, with all your citizen's DNA in a database it'll be easier than ever before to screen for certain 'types'. NO political power can p
You can have my DNA (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, wait...
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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
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What They'll Find, What They'll Do (Score:3, Insightful)
Worse still is when the fact of "legitimacy" is then used to judge the person(s) in entirely separate venues, such as job related security background checks conducted on the otherwise innocent family members. Although society may change and the "legitimacy" question cease to matter as much as it used to, others will hang on longer and tighter, such as in this example, where the employers will view it more negatively than the population because they'll be looking for the potential problems, and pursue them on this basis "just in case".
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Worse still is when the fact of "legitimacy" is then used to judge the person(s) in entirely separate venues, such as job related security background checks conducted on the otherwise innocent family members. Although society may change and the "legitimacy" question cease to matter as much as it used to, others will hang on longer and tighter, such as in this example, where the employers will view it more negatively than the population because they'll be looking for the potential problems, and pursue them on this basis "just in case".
How about when a particularly horrible crime goes unsolved, yet the authorities say it was commited by someone with "similar" DNA to you/your family?
Im sure that will go over well with potential employers, the public, significant others, or anyone else.
Are we overlooking something here? (Score:3, Insightful)
Flawed assumption in all this...'rarity' (Score:5, Insightful)
Any sort of study to find the answer would have very loud political repercussions, thus is unlikely to ever be done (or been done - we'dve heard about it).
The odds may be millions when compared to the entire polpulation of a region, but can not be known without mapping the genetic clustering. The numbers may be much, much lower inside genetic clusters.
Without knowing how to account for genetic clustering and localized optima, the actual rarity of genetic markers in a specific case can not be known. And the difference will always favor the police by producing false positives.
After a few years of collecting DNA from the poorest, the police may be able to link any crime with someone in that community if 'familial' relationships are used as indicators. I've never seen *any* comment in articles about forensic DNA testing that discusses this. Which is why, if on a jury, I will almost certainly disregard any DNA evidence.