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What Will We Do With Innocent People's DNA?

Posted by timothy on from the if-you-have-nothing-to-hide dept.

NevDull writes "As creepy as it may be to deal with identity theft from corporate databases, imagine being swabbed for DNA samples as a suspect in a crime, being vindicated by that sample, and never even being told why you were suspected. This article discusses a man, Roger Valadez, who's fighting both to have his DNA sample and its profile purged from government records, and to find out why he and his DNA were searched in the BTK case. DA Nola Foulston said, 'I think some people are overwrought about their concerns.' -- convenient as she wasn't the one probed without explanation. The article then mentions that 'In California, police will be able in 2008 to take DNA samples from anyone arrested for a felony, whether the person is convicted or not, under a law approved by voters in November.' What will be the disposition of the DNA of the innocent?"

5 of 595 comments (clear)

  1. Nothing to Fear by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Insightful
    DA Nola Foulston said, 'I think some people are overwrought about their concerns.'

    In a country where the federal government has been concentrating power in the capital, I can't see where she gets such bizarre ideas.

    We're heading for a country where everyone is a potential suspect, eventually. And when the congress pulls and late nighter and the president flies back to the capital to quickly sign a bill allowing the government to barge past states rights and personal descisions it's discomforting. It would probably be a small matter to bury into a large bill some little thing that allows the transportation of all DNA evidence to be conveniently sent to the Foggy Bottom and squirreled away somewhere, where it could be called upon the next time someone needs a roundup of the usual suspects and a filing error could easily send anyone off to Gitmo.

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    1. Re:Nothing to Fear by BWJones · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You should also know that every individual that serves in the armed forces is required to submit a blood sample for DNA isolation and data warehousing. Of course these databases are supposed to be used principally for identification of remains, there are other more insidious plans that some individuals have proposed and acted upon with these data. i.e. using the data to test database systems and index them to criminal records. The problem of course like I have said before is that once these databases are created, it is very difficult to put the djinni back in the bottle. People will access them and include them in other projects.

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  2. Why not one-way hash for DNA DB? by DoctoRoR · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It seems like much of the angst over a national DNA database is the potential misuse of the sequences, e.g. raising insurance rates or selecting against carriers of X. If the goal of criminal DNA databases is to match samples from crime scenes, why not use a one-way hash of each DNA fragment? That way, the actual DNA sequence wouldn't be kept. The hash could be constructed after removing common sequences, but I'm probably missing something aside from sequencing issues (which should be more automated in future). And this doesn't address larger issues on DNA matches...

  3. Re:Been doing it for awhile by Florian+Weimer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Usually just being arrested means that you will be fingerprinted and your picture taken. Isn't this pretty much the same thing?

    It depends. A regular DNA fingerprint doesn't really reveal anything about your genetic disposition, so it's not such a big problem. However, it's not clear if DNA fingerprinting is as resistant to collisions as it is generally perceived to be. It's fine if you match one sample against a few hundred suspects connected with the case; it's very unlikely that there is a false positive. But if you match thousands of samples a day against a database of millions of completely unrelated DNA fingerprinters, the odds of a false positive increase significantly.

  4. It's going to be a long time... by Jack+Johnson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "If you're innocent, you have nothing to worry about." That line has become thouroughly entrenched in our society. Any and everything can be justified to the average american with that phrase.