Your DNA Can Now Be Pulled From Thin Air (nytimes.com) 35
Environmental DNA research has aided conservation, but scientists say its ability to glean information about human populations and individuals poses dangers. From a report: David Duffy, a wildlife geneticist at the University of Florida, just wanted a better way to track disease in sea turtles. Then he started finding human DNA everywhere he looked. Over the last decade, wildlife researchers have refined techniques for recovering environmental DNA, or eDNA -- trace amounts of genetic material that all living things leave behind. A powerful and inexpensive tool for ecologists, eDNA is all over -- floating in the air, or lingering in water, snow, honey and even your cup of tea. Researchers have used the method to detect invasive species before they take over, to track vulnerable or secretive wildlife populations and even to rediscover species thought to be extinct. The eDNA technology is also used in wastewater surveillance systems to monitor Covid and other pathogens. But all along, scientists using eDNA were quietly recovering gobs and gobs of human DNA. To them, it's pollution, a sort of human genomic bycatch muddying their data. But what if someone set out to collect human eDNA on purpose?
New DNA collecting techniques are "like catnip" for law enforcement officials, says Erin Murphy, a law professor at the New York University School of Law who specializes in the use of new technologies in the criminal legal system. The police have been quick to embrace unproven tools, like using DNA to create probability-based sketches of a suspect. That could pose dilemmas for the preservation of privacy and civil liberties, especially as technological advancement allows more information to be gathered from ever smaller eDNA samples. Dr. Duffy and his colleagues used a readily available and affordable technology to see how much information they could glean from human DNA gathered from the environment in a variety of circumstances, such as from outdoor waterways and the air inside a building. The results of their research, published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, demonstrate that scientists can recover medical and ancestry information from minute fragments of human DNA lingering in the environment. Forensic ethicists and legal scholars say the Florida team's findings increase the urgency for comprehensive genetic privacy regulations.
New DNA collecting techniques are "like catnip" for law enforcement officials, says Erin Murphy, a law professor at the New York University School of Law who specializes in the use of new technologies in the criminal legal system. The police have been quick to embrace unproven tools, like using DNA to create probability-based sketches of a suspect. That could pose dilemmas for the preservation of privacy and civil liberties, especially as technological advancement allows more information to be gathered from ever smaller eDNA samples. Dr. Duffy and his colleagues used a readily available and affordable technology to see how much information they could glean from human DNA gathered from the environment in a variety of circumstances, such as from outdoor waterways and the air inside a building. The results of their research, published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, demonstrate that scientists can recover medical and ancestry information from minute fragments of human DNA lingering in the environment. Forensic ethicists and legal scholars say the Florida team's findings increase the urgency for comprehensive genetic privacy regulations.
Sure (Score:2)
Detecting byproducts of Cocaine with the attached DNA of the user in the sewers, could put millions of people in prison for sure.
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Detecting byproducts of Cocaine with the attached DNA of the user in the sewers, could put millions of people in prison for sure.
Reading the summary, it gives the impression that eDNA would not be enough to associate an individual with the cocaine; just that the individual was in a place for their eDNA to end up there. Using the example of COVID-19 tracing, eDNA can be found in the sewers of anyone who has used any toilet leading to that sewer.It might be as useful to LE as a fingerprint off a library's door (places the suspect - along with a bunch of other people - inside the library).
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Yes, millions, mostly people who have never used cocaine in their lives.
For years, police have claimed that mere presence of someone's DNA in proximity to a crime proves guilt and prosecutors have been convincing naive juries of the same.
This research shows that the mere presence of someone's DNA proves very little.
Can't wait! (Score:1)
Nothing like getting arrested because some over funded dipshit desk pig who watches too much NCIS ("too much NCIS" = any NCIS at all) decided to pull air DNA from the scene of a crime I walked past the day before.
OJ Simpson (Score:2)
Not scared in the least.
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But can it run Crysis?
Your Mom (Score:1)
I can't even count how many people's DNA can be pulled from your mom.
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I think it is spelt mum in English.
Cops (Score:3)
Re:Cops (Score:5, Insightful)
Questioning whether that happened before, during, or after the crime was committed is an exorcise in wasting everyone's time. The cops / prosecutor will always claim the evidence was left during the crime, but have no evidence beyond the DNA itself to back up that claim. It's BS, and anyone convicted over it should be freed immediately, their records wiped clean, and the prosecutor should be given their punishment as a deterrent against future BS claims like "environmental DNA."
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Only that the person has been there at some point before the cop collected their stray DNA.
Or: "I fart in your general direction."
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It's even worse, it could be that the DNA is from someone who bumped in to someone who was at the crime scene, possibly before or after the crime.
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Defense attorneys will have a field day with this. If anything it may weaken the value of DNA evidence at crime scenes.
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Which is why is should be banned as circumstantial evidence. There's no evidence that the person was there at the time the crime was committed. Only that the person has been there at some point before the cop collected their stray DNA.
How can they proof that the minute amount of DNA on the door knob was left by you at all, regardless from when? For all you know, someone happened to grab hold of a pole in the train at the exact place where you were holding the pole. And when they grabbed the doorknob a couple of hours later, bits of DNA got transfered.
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Decent legal systems have already developed a healthy suspicion of DNA evidence. As well as it not telling you when that person was there, or even if they were ever there and it's not just transfer from somewhere else, most of these new techniques require "amplifying" the sample.
They get a weak sample and process it to make it readable. The processing can corrupt it. They usually only get a partial sample as well, and it's up to the lab technician to decide how much of it is usable. The less that is usable,
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All of what you said is true of fingerprints as well, and yet the world hasn’t fallen apart because your pessimistic assumptions about how the system works writ large do not resemble reality.
Just because we can, yada yada yada (Score:2)
Fucking assholes.
Before they started studying it, they knew what they would most likely find, especially based on their previous work. And they knew it who would use it, and how.
They published a paper, to hopefully capitalize on their work.
This will be abused, immediately.
Fuck them.
Gattaca and Minority Report combined (Score:4, Informative)
New DNA collecting techniques are "like catnip" for law enforcement officials... technological advancement allows more information to be gathered from ever smaller eDNA samples... scientists can recover medical and ancestry information from minute fragments of human DNA lingering in the environment.
I expect this information to be used in an updated version of eugenics, as well as yet another way to rape and pillage privacy and autonomy. Tyrants - including far too many law enforcement officials - love this stuff because it extends their ability to exert power over others.
Forensic ethicists and legal scholars say the Florida team's findings increase the urgency for comprehensive genetic privacy regulations.
That's too narrow and specific. What we really need is broader, stringently-enforced regulations that put hard limits on all kinds of law enforcement over-reach and abuse. If we had those we wouldn't constantly playing legislative catch-up every time some major scientific or technical innovation comes along.
DNA testing is very unreliable (Score:5, Interesting)
Working for a company doing rapid PCR tests I was briefly put on a project with the FBI to speed up DNA forensics, and saw they had multiple problems with their testing. The key problems being that there were too many false negatives and too many false positives. I explained this, presented solutions, and was promptly removed from the team. Here's why DNA forensics sucks:
1) too little data: they verify ID based on matching 6-8 short segments of code, out of a massive codebase. Imagine identifying a dictionary using partial definitions of six words.
2) too many subjects: this method works 50% of the time when the database has less than 100,000 samples in it, but other times IDs 0 to 10 individuals. Put a billion samples in the database and there will be many more hits.
3) genetic drift: Our DNA evolves over time, and particular organs will re-organize so that e.g. a hair sample won't match a blood sample in the same individual. Or a hair sample 20 years later won't match the earlier one.
The above cited law-enforcement officials are basically ID-ing their target as "black man in blue car, somewhere near Detroit", and running with it..
That said, DNA/RNA is the coolest codebase I've worked with: bombproof syntax, error-correction, data-retention, execution efficiency, etc. and that's just the 1% that made sense!
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3) genetic drift: Our DNA evolves over time, and particular organs will re-organize so that e.g. a hair sample won't match a blood sample in the same individual. Or a hair sample 20 years later won't match the earlier one.
That said, DNA/RNA is the coolest codebase I've worked with: bombproof syntax, error-correction, data-retention, execution efficiency, etc.
Don't those two statements seem contradictory? If DNA is "bombproof syntax, error-correction, data-retention, execution efficiency" how does that happen if our DNA evolves and two samples 20 years apart won't match?
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PCR (Score:1)
10^13 skin cells don't lie (Score:2)