Slashdot Mirror
Bioethics Group Raises DNA Database Concerns
PieGuy107 writes "In its report, The Forensic Use of DNA and Fingerprints: Ethical Issues, the council recommends that police should only be allowed to permanently store bio-information from people who are convicted of a crime.
Today, the police of England and Wales have wider sampling powers than the police force of any other country, and the UK has (proportionally, per head of population) the largest forensic database in the world.
When the police first began using DNA, consent was required before samples could be taken. A succession of Acts of Parliament and legislative amendments has increased police powers of sampling; the police can now take DNA samples from all persons arrested, without their consent, for recordable offenses (an "arbitrary" classification), and retain the samples indefinitely regardless of whether the person arrested is subsequently convicted or even charged.
In response to comments from the Home Office that retaining the DNA of people who were innocent at the time of arrest had helped to solve crimes they committed years later, the Nuffield Council stuck to its guns. "There has to be a limit to police powers," said Dr Carole McCartney, one of the report's authors. "DNA shouldn't be retained simply on the basis that it might turn out to be useful."
She added that many of the statistics from the Home Office were "inconsistent, incomplete and confusing" and that much of its evidence consisted of anecdotal accounts of "horrible men caught with DNA"."
I, for one, would be frightened if they caught a horrible man without DNA.
--
If your cousin gets arrested and take his fingerprints, they have information on him. If they sample his DNA, they have information on you.
How about storing the DNA for the length of time equal to the statute of limitations for the crime they are being charged with? If they are not formally charged, then a two- to three- year period seems fair.
"Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
and subsequently lawmakers will make it a crime to refuse to "donate" your DNA to the police database. Problem solved.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
...if one of these DNA databases gets hacked??? What if a criminal's DNA entry gets transposed with that of someone else??? I mean it's not like government agencies are known for securing their networks very well...
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
Messing with DNA and stem cells is playing God! Stop messing with God's work! It is evil! We MUST get rid of DNA because it is the product of evil science!
> police can now take DNA samples from all persons arrested, without their consent
This is only partly true, it has never so far as I'm aware been challenged. I've not been arrested since I was a youth but there's no way I'd consent. If the police chose to assault me in order to take a DNA sample, I'd see them in court. If they chose to pursue their "right" to take a persons DNA without consent through the courts, they'd likely lose.
Only here, it will be needed for all school children. They'll have to have their DNA recorded before they're allowed to enter the public school system.
It will be touted as "This is to help protect children from being kidnapped by a non-custodial parent or, God forbid, to identify a child if they have been killed.
Then if every child grows up with this being the "norm" what happens ?
UPS Sucks
I'd say the standard should be the same as all evidence. Are they allowed to keep your mug-shot forever (yes, as far as I know). If they take a handwriting sample and you are not convicted, are they allowed to keep that? The standard should be the same for DNA. They certainly get to keep your fingerprints right?
If they request and get it during the course of an investigation I think they should get to keep it. I see no reason why they shouldn't.
If they start abusing this (arresting people on provably fake charges and such) just to get DNA, they you can do a civil suit. The judge will make 'em toss it and the millions they'll have to shell out every time will help keep them honest.
But if you are at a murder scene and have knife scratches on you, the police should get to keep your DNA if they use it to rule you in or out, just like they get to keep pictures of you.
Now if you want to make it so they can keep the DNA but it can't be admitted to court (so they couldn't convict you on that alone) then I would be fine with that. That's probably a good idea, in fact.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Comrades, you need only be detained for questioning to have your DNA permanently on record.
They're going to end up just taking it a birth or while kids are in school or at hospitals. Unless there are explicit laws disallowing all evidence obtained though knowledge of such surreptitiously obtained DNA, the government will have a free hand to gather any information it wants. Without such laws, judges will cave in the face of teary eyed victims and media pressure, and if you so much as left a hair in a public place ten years ao, the police will be allowed to gather that and add you to their lists.
In case you think there's nothing wrong with this, answer me this. How many wealthy and powerful people do you think have their DNA, or will ever have their DNA, in a government database?
May the Maths Be with you!
The question of usefulness does come into play, however -- and realize that in what I am about to say, I'm not a DNA expert so I welcome further commentary from those who are. If a sibling of mine were to be the person that is guilty of a "horrible" crime, and for whatever reason my DNA profile is on record (say for a security clearance type position, etc.), would my profile be useful to the police in finding that sibling? And at what level does this come into play? If the sibling is guilty of nothing but being nearby a scene and there is DNA, or the so-called crime doesn't really rise to the level of "horrible", shouldn't my anonymity and the siblings anonymity be guaranteed up to a point?MP> What do you think?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
They only need to get a snapshot of everyone in a given population. Then when the children of anyone whose DNA is in the database are involved in a crime, they can trace them through their parents/grandparents/greatgrandparents/...
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
...the vast majority of the British public won't give a shit.
On the one hand, they're spoonfed endless pseudo-forensic schpiel that give the (false) impression of DNA being nigh-infallible. On the other hand, they're stuffed full of political propaganda telling us how DNA sampling will make $random_crime a thing of the past, how it'll mean that "paedophiles can no longer pretend to be teachers!" and on the third, weirdly mutant hand (broken index in the DNA database I think), years of being taught not to think critically and not to question authority (gubmint knows best!). All you need to do to pass a draconian law is to fawn to the Daily Mail-reading "Middle England" about paedophiles and illegal immigrants (is it rascist to say the Brits are sterotypically xeonphobic? That was certainly my impression growing up) and all of a sudden people can't vote for you quickly enough.
Disclaimer: yes, I am a British citizen. I don't believe the majority of our public could stand up to a wet paper bag. I would love to be proved wrong. UK is in a race to be the first "democratic" police state, who wants to join us and finish second?
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
Imagine the added weight of all that random DNA collection gear that police will have to carry all day. And DNA collection can be a messy business. Can't we all put our minds together to combine say, a Taser / DNA Extractomatic?
Maybe we really just need to take a broader approach: EVERYONE gets their DNA mapped and EVERYONE's DNA is made public. We should know just as much about government personel as they do about us. It's possible, and, I suppose, likely, that the information could be used for segregational purposes, but I think we should just bite the bullet and find a good way to render the information constitutionally now, instead of waiting for problems to show up. Bottom line: We're not going to be able to keep our DNA code a personal secret forever - just look what's happening to SS#'s.
Anyone know what kind of data they actually store in this kind of db? Full genomic sequencing of individuals on such a wide scale is not practical at this point so I'm assuming it's some kind of genetic marker or SNP assay?
"Avast! It cannot be Medium John Silver's DNA on that XBox 360 Special Monkey Island Edition!"
"Sir, it matches the database."
"Yarr. Caught red handed."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I for one welcome The Police's new electro album!
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
While some will dispute it (if my cousin is arrested, and you take his finger prints, you have him; if you take his DNA, you have me), the reality is that DNA is analogous to finger prints.
The issue isn't controlling the collection of DNA, I would be fine with it being collected as are finger prints as a standard and more precise identifier of individuals, but rather access to and the uses to which the information can be put.
If - and this is the big if - you required that a DNA match (vs. DNA collection) be tied to a warrant involving a crime, then you would have a comfortable balance between 4th Amendment Rights and appropriate Police Powers.
If you hold that collection of DNA requires a Court Order, then you need to face the logical conclusion that the same should apply to finger prints.
My concern with the DNA data bank is that someone - say my insurance company - will access it for non-Police purposes without my consent. I don't have a problem with the Police accessing it under the authority of a Court Order. If we had such a data bank, it would short circuit the spurious paternity claims which we have seen as of late, because we could require that a paternity claim require a DNA match to be validated vs. the under oath claim of the mother (or father).
As David Brin said, "Privacy is dead, get over it!" I think our focus should be on creating the appropriate zones of privacy which we control. We will do this best on the access vs. collection end. The data will be collected. Let's ensure that it is collected accurately and that access is protected.
Yours,
Jordan
In these modern times, people seem to lack the long range perspective needed to see consequences of eliminating basic privacy rights. Keeping an innocent person's DNA might sound like a wonderful idea when it catches a molester, rapist, or murderer. In time though, allowing the erosion of fundamental rights opens the doors to the Hitlers, Mussolinis, and Napoleons of the world. When figures like these come into power entire cultures and people are destroyed.
While I know that if I were a parent whose child was killed and/or molested and a DNA record from a formerly innocent person was used to catch the culprit, I might not be able to reject that information. Society must make that choice for me. Society must maintain a long range perspective no matter how tempting the immediate gratification of catching a criminal may be. To act in any other way is to abandon the future for the present. It is to agree to genocide, mass oppression, and hopelessness.
Orwell foresaw a future where global information systems would be used for the express purpose of oppressing a populace. Luckily for us the Internet turned out to be decentralized and therefore curtailed many of the possible abuses he feared. The application of databases is one of the challenges of our time. The best solution probably won't be one of the binary choices of allow or forbid but rather the best position will probably be between these two poles. There is no denying that biometric and DNA data in specific is a major advance for the ability of law-enforcement to solve crimes. However, in the rush to develop systems to handle the information, checks and balances are often not being considered or implemented. I believe ordering agencies should have modern tools to solve otherwise insolvable crimes but at the same time the wider social balances must be observed. Retention limits of and proper procedures to allow access to police databases I believe will be the primary issues in the immediate future. The process of defining the policies that will govern future databases should also receive widespread public scrutiny and feedback as well. Nobody has a golden-arrow to solve these issues at this time and as usual when the answer is not obvious as a society we will probably have to develop our policies in a reactive manner as situations educate us along the way.
Shh.
Every time a government agency either reads, writes or transmits any personal info on me, I want to be notified. Since it probably happens all the time, I'd settle for a monthly email notifying me of the total number of reads/writes/transmissions, with the URL of my transaction history. The history should be sortable by at least agency, case ID, type of record, and time. And of course the records should be confidential, and never sharable to private contractors without my explicit permission, even for government "outsourcing".
Since some of these transactions will be necessarily secret, those should not be included in the default report. But those should be the minimum necessary, and each secret transaction should be covered by at least a court order, ordered by a judge on evidence with accountability.
And auditability. Which is the missing link in all the government data collection and sharing, even in the EU which is generations ahead of the US.
--
make install -not war
See title.
I'd hate to go overseas and have some customs agent in Heathrow decide to take DNA, just how far off is that?
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
One step closer to the US adopting something similar to the Icelandic Medical Database.
Bury me in mashed potatoes.
ftfa:
... retaining the DNA of people who were innocent at the time of arrest had helped to solve crimes they committed years later...
Has anyone done any research to show a connection between people who have been falsely accused and arrested, and then later committing crime? Not to poison the well, but could the psychological trauma of the arrest cause latent anger, "acting out", etc??? I don't know any right now, but I've known some people, fairly well, who were falsely accused and even in some cases had to pay civil penalties & probation for things they didn't do. Don't forget- our "legal" system is NOT based on truth, but is based on $ and how you play their game. Anyway, those falsely arrested people seem to carry some deep, too-quiet anger.
Crimes can't be so sophisticated of late that we need all this DNA sequencing of every boy and child in order to solve crimes. Admittedly it can help... but why not in the case of: 1) Crime scene, collect DNA 2) Draw up possible suspects 3) Match DNA 4) Rinse 'n' repeat I'd like to know what % of crimes are unsolved or the innocent are mislabeled guilty. It's probably very few out of the total amount of crimes. I feel DNA logs of citizens (because you know where this is heading) is a privacy concern and is subject to a Statute of Limitations.
Me own me own essence.
If the scurvy dogs want to steal me helix, they'll need be a skirmish,
to prove who be a better pirate.
Arrr!!!
Explain to me why the police having your DNA is a bad thing?
Will they be able to keep track of where you are? No
Will they be able to know what you've done? No (unless you have actually been involved in a crime)
Can the information of your DNA be used to harm you? Not if its used ONLY for DNA matching against crime scenes, and kept strictly confidential
Its not like their monitoring your private life, its simply a recording of your DNA sequence that can only be used in matching to DNA found at crime scenes.
And its not like hackers can frame you by looking up your DNA from the database and replicating your DNA, were nowhere near as advanced in cloning, that we can clone off a disk. And even if we could, we can already clone fingerprints, but that doesn't invalidate the usefulness of fingerprinting
If your taking up arms against this, why aren't you taking up arms against the fact that the government KNOWS your full name?
Its effectively the same thing, an ID Tag that drastically narrows down an unknown ID to a few possible individuals. It can do NOTHING ELSE.
The biggest issues i see with such a database, is the security behind the system. And that it gets used only for criminal checking and nothing else. But all systems can be hacked, there are far more concerning files that can be hacked, then a listing of each citizens DNA.
Also that it is solely used only for matching crime scene evidence, since i don't want a society like in the movie Gattaca, but thats going off-topic by far.
So someone explain to me the big deal
How does it harm you for the government to know your DNA?
How does it effect your rights as a citizen?
I don't believe it does either, and if it makes crime solving more accurate, it can only be "A Good Thing" -tm
To avoid criticism; Say nothing, Do nothing, Be nothing.
TFA talks about England and Wales, not the United States, which is where I presume you live from the way you assert that a court "test" is relevant.
In the United States, but generally not elsewhere, you have a Fourth Amendment protecting you against "unreasonable" searches, and so while state legislatures are free to pass laws allowing the police to take your DNA against your will, you're right that the Supreme Court would have to agree such a law does not transgress the Fourth Amendment. Which is not likely for such a vague purpose as "might be useful if you commit a crime later."
However, I think you're totally wrong about the assault (non)issue. Don't you think if J. Random Citizen slapped the cuffs on you, shoved you into the backseat of a car without working door handles, put you in a cell, fingerprinted and photographed you, et cetera, they would be guilty of not only assault, but felony battery, kidnapping, et cetera and so forth? Sticking a needle into you and drawing some blood wouldn't add much to the list of crimes.
When you're in the custody of the police, they're allowed to interfere with your person in all kinds of ways ordinarily forbidden by assault and battery laws, so long as it's directly related to their job. They can restrain you if you resist, beat you with a stick if you fight, and kill you with the weapon of their choice if they reasonably think you're dangerous and there's no other way to stop you.
If taking your DNA is constitutional, which it almost certainly is, if there is reasonable cause to think you've committed a crime in which the DNA evidence is important, and not otherwise, then I think they can certainly take it by force, and your civil suit asserting the contrary would not even be heard by a jury, but tossed by the judge immediately as contrary to the principle of limited official immunity. If you really want to get anywhere, you need to raise the issue of whether it is constitutional to take your DNA in the first place, not whether it's constitutional to take it by force if you refuse.
If they example the DNA of thousands of rapists, for example, and find they all have certain genetic traits in common, will they then theorize that anybody with this genetic trait be more likely to commit rape? What would they do? The potential for "crime prevention" might be high in their eyes, maybe even to the point of pre-emptively arresting and convicting people for their genetics? Think about the potential for false positives; do you think that would stop them from trying to convict "potential" criminals?
I disagree that DNA is just like a finger-print; the amount of information they can gain, or they can speculate on, is orders of magnitude higher. Anything like this should always under-go major scrutiny, especially measuring the potential for abuse. Politicans and Police Officers CAN, HAVE and WILL abuse whatever powers they are given, history has shown very clearly to me that that will probably never change.
It's one thing to give Police tools that could be useful in finding somebody who's commited a crime, but i'm 100% against giving them anything that would allow any sort of pre-emptiveness against peopel who "might" commit a crime. Once the police get ahold of a way to do genetic profiling to try and determine potential criminals, it'll be too late.
"Someone was arrested, investigated, and when the police realized they made a mistake, released. An individual was overzealous in his assumption of guilt."
What's novel about this?
Don't break your arm patting yourself on your back. The majority of US citizens are just as apathetic. However, we do have a higher percentage, IMO, of people who aren't apathetic. My point is, we obviously still have the same genes as our "parents", they're just in a slightly different proportion.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
So the way a DNA sample is taken and stored by law enforcement, cannot tell anything about a persons medical history past present or future, it is just a more detailed fingerprint. People argued about storing fingerprints too when they where first, people react way to emotionally about this when they do not know the facts. Britain which uses the short tandem repeats (STR)Analysis cannot tell anything about you, nor is the data stored able to be recreated into something else.
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
Come on, family and social connections have been exploited from the beginning of crime and policing. If your brother is murdered, the cops are sure going to come around and talk to you and your sister, find out if there was any bad blood between you. If you're wife is killed, you better be in the next state at the time of death addressing a crowd of thousands if you don't want to be Suspect #1. Similarly, if your brother commits a crime, the police will come around and interrogate you, find out if you helped him, find out if you know where he's hiding.
Frankly, DNA evidence is a lot safer for the innocent than what usually passes for "evidence" in criminal investigation and trials, which is mostly the testimony of witnesses with grudges and agendas, faulty (or artfully reconstructed) memories, and other assorted fallible stuff.
What people don't often realize is that it's not a choice between the police using DNA evidence and the police doing without evidence at all. It's a choice between the law using DNA evidence and the law using shiftier, much more ambiguous evidence, like whether the victim picks you out of a line-up, or whether the jury thinks you look like a criminal and thinks you had a good motive. DNA evidence has generally proven to be the innocent defendant's friend. Just think about the Duke (non)rape case, for example. If it had happened twenty years ago, without DNA evidence, the defendants would now be rotting in jail for life. As it is, they're free men, and the "eyewitness" testimony of the accuser is widely believed to have been simply invented.
I wish it were only possible to convict someone with DNA evidence, and that it was collected from everybody pretty much as a matter of course. The remote fanciful possibility of some evil secret police of the future abusing the data someday worries me less than the possibility, in the here and now, of being wrongly convicted for a crime because I happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, or I look too much like someone else, or some telegenic "victim" (pretty white woman, distinguished US Senator with a wide stance, wealthy city councilman) with a grudge, hankering to be famous, or need for an excuse for their own crimes makes a false accusation. Brr.
For years, prosecutors have been fond of citing "statistics" that purportedly show that DNA matching is reliable to "1 in billions". However, this has never actually been established.
For one thing, the figures cited are founded on the assumption that the DNA sites that are being matched up are individually independent. But they have not established that beyond a reasonable doubt yet.
Here is an example of what I mean: what are the odds that a randomly-sampled American has the genes that result in curly hair? Relatively low... maybe around 0.2 or so.
On the other hand: what are the odds that the same person has the genes for curly hair... GIVEN THAT he also has the genes for sickle-cell anemia? That would be pretty high: maybe around 0.99, give or take.
Individual genes (or lots of them anyway) are NOT completely independent. They depend on others in complex ways that are not yet fully understood. And until we understand more about that, we should be very careful before making claims about the "reliability" of such tests. In certain cases (and there is no reliable way to tell which), the reliability of the test might only be 1 in 100,0000 or even less. That might still sound like a lot, but it is not. That would match 4 or 5 people just in my immediate area.
Have to smile at the lack of foresight these people exhibit, implying it's OK to dna-harvest criminals. If that's OK, then all that needs to be done to get a comprehensive database of DNA profiles is to ensure everyone gets arrested for a "crime" at some point. Doesn't need to be much of a crime, and if everyone gets the same treatment, it's just business as usual.
A good lawyer can beat DNA like OJ did.
I just love how "IT folks" forget data entry concerns! How much magic is involved in going from spit on a stick to a "database entry"? How much tax money does that cost?
All US military "warfighters" give DNA samples - so far as I know, the samples are frozen rather than analyzed. This also is not cheap, or permanent.
Is this just a red herring, or a push to get much more business for a DNA-analysis company?
They don't seem to mind all the surveillance cameras everywhere.
Besides, the police can't use your DNA against you unless you've done something wrong, right?
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
Please DNA-print this criminal.
I hope this assists in the arrest, trial, conviction, and sentencing of the world's MOST dangerous person.
PatRIOTically,
Kilgore Trout, C.E.O.
What if we start executing children because they are likely to commit crime? Are you fucking serious? Why don't we just execute poor people or inner city minorities, or people we ALREADY know are sick? What the fuck can a genetic test prove about someone's behavior twenty fucking years from now? Are you completely fucking retarded?
Keep the god damned DNA FOREVER, then decide how to use it. Why the hell do you think people just aren't capable of handling this information? We could do all your fucking retarded WHAT IFS without DNA, why the fuck would we start now?
I'm wanted in several states for milk theft!
...for people who ARE convicted, how about storing it for a period of time similar to a parole period?
I.e. instead of the current sentencing structure where there is a head sentence with eligibility for parole after a certain period, which lasts for the remainder of the head sentence, why not allow judges to also sentence someone to a period for which their DNA will be kept on file?
"I sentence you to 10 years imprisonment, with a 6 year non-parole period and a 4 year DNA retention period following the expiry of your sentence."
This would be consistent with the notion that a person pays the price for their actions, but that the penalty is proportionate to the crime.
I wrote a longer piece about it, and other recent developments regarding the UK's DNA database, here, with links to some further reading.
Read Pynchon.
It's worth noting that Lord Justice Sedley, who called for the expansion of the database, recommended that "The entire UK population and every visitor to Britain should be put on the national DNA database, a top judge said today." [emphasis mine].
Lord Sedley is said to have taken fairly liberal stands historically, so it is entirely possible that these comments were intended to raise awareness and controversy over this particular issue. I agree with him wholeheartedly that the current implementation specifically targets ethnic and social groups and that this is a grevious wrong. However the expansion of the database is a truly horrifying idea.
It is also worth noting that the groundwork for the use of DNA for and by parties unrelated to law enforcement has already been laid. This should raise serious concerns.
As has been commented earlier - it is wrong for a government to treat all its citizens as potential criminals. This broadens the scope of this wrong even further. Were these proposals to come to fruition, my government would be treating everyone in the world as a potential criminal. And I thought we were reasonably laid-back compared to the USA.
F_T