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Identifying a Culprit In a Bloodbath

Posted by timothy on from the sounds-utterly-foolproof dept.

worromot writes "A group of geneticists published a method to determine if a given individual's DNA is present in a mixture (e.g., in a pool of blood on a carpet). An individual's DNA can comprise less than 1% of the mixture. (The article is in open access on PLoS Genetics website.) While this is a potential boon for forensics, there are more immediate worries about the privacy of the participants of the genetics studies that had been under way for many years. As Science magazine writes, 'The discovery that a type of genetic data that is widely shared and often posted online can be traced back to individuals has prompted the US National Institutes of Health and the Wellcome Trust to strip some genetic data from their publicly accessible Web sites and NIH to recommend that other institutions do the same.' The gravest worry was that an individual who had someone's genetic code could determine, based on the pooled data, whether the person participated in a disease study and whether they were in the disease group, or thereby glean private health information. NIH plans to ask institutions that have posted pooled data on their own Web sites to take these down, too."

4 of 47 comments (clear)

  1. CSI trend by marco.antonio.costa · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That worries me a bit. Seems as law enforcement is nowadays putting all their chips in forensics miracle technologies and stepping back from doing their ol' homework.

    I vaguely remember a story of a case that a guy was wrongly convicted because of a cat DNA sample at the place matched a piece of fur in his jacket, but was a false match, cause cats DNA can be almost identical from time to time. Then that would be possible with humans, a la birthday paradox.

    One would imagine a bloodbath would leave other evidence, say, witnesses shocked by the gunfire and screaming. Or chainsaw noises. :P

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    1. Re:CSI trend by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Useful forensic evidence is only available in a small fraction of criminal cases, and genetic forensic evidence is even rarer.

      However, the probability of these things being useful goes up with the seriousness of the crime. If your car stereo gets stolen, the cops might not bother dusting for prints because it's just not a priority. If you have a serious crime scene, it makes sense to get as much genetic material as you can to help look at.

      The new technique of getting prints off of the micro-corrosions that skin oil leaves on bullet cartridge casings is going to help a lot more here in the U.S. where we have so much gun violence. Shooters aren't going to end up with blood in the pool as often as knife- or blunt-instrument fighters.

      law enforcement is nowadays putting all their chips in forensics miracle technologies and stepping back from doing their ol' homework.

      Homework is the only thing they got in most cases, so don't worry about them losing their elite interrogation tactics. You should be more worried about them going the way of the FBI's rapport-based interrogations than the CIA's coercive tactics which were originally designed to elicit false confessions for propaganda purposes, I shit you not.

      One would imagine a bloodbath would leave other evidence, say, witnesses shocked by the gunfire and screaming. Or chainsaw noises.

      See, the problem there is that a shocked witness is usually not the witness with the best memory, and chainsaw noises come a lot more often from law abiding citizens trying to keep their storm drains and electrical lines clear. Every little bit helps, and while a potential employer could conceivably scan scientific data to see if a potential employee has a disease, where are they going to get the DNA to match it against? It seems far-fetched and easy to deal with using existing laws saying what you can and can not ask prospective employees.

  2. fear mongering ftw by thermian · · Score: 3, Insightful

    OMG DNA!!!!!11111one

    You know what, I can pretty easily say that without a lot of expense, there's not really any real danger of your DNA's 'privacy' (whatever the fuck that is) being violated. Do you have any idea how much DNA analysis costs?

    And if it is, if someone gets hold of your DNA? Well, DNA analysis is a resource hungry affair. Without prior knowledge of a reason to try, I can't see that any analysis would be done. It takes experienced people, and there is more than enough work examining DNA from crime scenes to keep them busy, without data mining random DNA as well.

    I spent two years working on DNA analysis techniques, particularly with regard to the application of data mining (not for the kind of thing that would be a privacy issue). We, by which I mean the DNA analysis crowd, are a long way from anything which could be applied on a large enough scale to pose a genuine threat to someones 'DNA Privacy'.

    Honestly, there are big enough problems to solve without wasting time on sensationalist bullshit like this.

    --
    A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
    1. Re:fear mongering ftw by rwillard · · Score: 2, Insightful

      OMG DNA!!!!!11111one

      You know what, I can pretty easily say that without a lot of expense, there's not really any real danger of your DNA's 'privacy' (whatever the fuck that is) being violated. Do you have any idea how much DNA analysis costs?

      And if it is, if someone gets hold of your DNA? Well, DNA analysis is a resource hungry affair. Without prior knowledge of a reason to try, I can't see that any analysis would be done.

      You're right, of course. Information posted on the internet is never archived, and the barrier to doing data analysis on collected information never lowers over time.