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Searching DNA For Relatives Raises Concerns
An anonymous reader calls our attention to California's familial searching policy, which looks for genetic ties between culprits and kin. The technique has come to the fore in the last few years, after a Colorado prosecutor pushed the FBI to relax its rules on cross-state searches. "Los Angeles Police Department investigators want to search the state's DNA database again — not for exact matches but for any profiles similar enough to belong to a parent or sibling. The hope is that one of those family members might lead detectives to the killer. This strategy, pioneered in Britain, is poised to become an important crime-fighting tool in the United States. The Los Angeles case will mark the first major use of California's newly approved familial searching policy, the most far-reaching in the nation."
Looks like a double entendre tag to me.
Just callin' it like I see it.
I suppose this might be slightly off-topic, but one concern I have with the use of DNA evidence is that, now that everybody knows about DNA evidence, what's to stop someone from planting DNA evidence at a crime scene? Splash some body fluids here, drop some hair there, and smear some skin cells at a strategic location, and voila "we have DNA evidence that places the defendant at the scene of the crime."
But dress it all up as "social networking" and you'll have zillions of willing participants.
I'm not sure whether to mod you +1 funny or -1 troll.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
One of the core protections in the US legal system is that you cannot be made to testify against a close relative. That niche just got filled nicely by DNA cross matching.
I'm aging rapidly, I bought a new game and had no idea if my machine was good for it.
I dont know how the Brits let the authorities get aways with it. But relative search is routine in Scotland Yard. Also global DNA collections in local neighborhoods is routine. And keeping data forever is routine. The Brits just bend over and take it.
I can understand how convicts, felons, suspects, and arrestees get their DNA thrown into a federal database, but how do they get the DNA of their family members if crime doesn't happen to run in the family? Where are all these DNA samples coming from?
"Yes your honor, we need 45 search warrants."
"Why?"
"Well, this individual isn't the murderer, but DNA shows the murderer could be related to him so we want to search the houses of ever living relative he has.
http://www.tv.com/law-and-order-special-victims-unit/serendipity/episode/278851/recap.html?tag=overview;recap
apparently, like much of law and order, based on a real life case of a canadian doctor in 1992 implanting a blood tube in his arm to beat a dna test (and also the basis for a movie):
http://books.google.com/books?id=62uFtPQOegwC&pg=PA42&lpg=PA42&dq=law+and+order+implanted+blood&source=web&ots=tAMxawCqEz&sig=3jV_E2vL-Xe4UFhG7hH5wCkJQk8&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=8&ct=result
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Schneeberger
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm not sure whether to mod you +1 funny or -1 troll.
I lived in LA for 4 years and it seems like it should be +1 insightful to me. But 911 conspiracy theories, even in jest, raise big time hackles on /., so don't plan on seeing in good karma come out of Ethanol-fueled's post even though I'm 100% confident (s)he is kidding.
Just callin' it like I see it.
This is the thin end of the wedge. How long before the government knows everything my DNA has to tell them?
How long before it knows which diseases I'm prone to before I know it myself? How long before I lose my bodily privacy?
That didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would before law enforcement starts expanding use of their growing DNA data bank.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
How can some people be technically proficient enough to be interested in slashdot, but so gullible
That "whooshing" sound is not a patriot missile, if you know what I mean.
Just callin' it like I see it.
Seems like you run an interesting risk, doing this, of discovering fathers or are not the biological father of their children.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
And be subject to unreasonable and unwarranted search and seizure, I wouldn't have served in the Army.
And as someone with family in California, I don't see why any such use is even slightly warranted.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Hey, I live in LA as well, and yeah, the stinger about LA could be marked insightful, but I was referring to the paranoid conpsiracy theory(tm).
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
...I wonder how many parents-to-be will deliberately change some of the marker genes to flip off the authorities.
.
The same things that stopped you from planting the same sort of evidence before DNA testing:
You have to collect the samples.
You have to distribute the samples.
In ways that are safe and plausible. Getting it right means spending more time at the crime scene. This is generally considered undesirable.
Unless you are a nincompoop the frame has to fit someone you know very, very well - and who almost certainly knows you.
It had better not be the poor schnook who was struck by the crosstown bus at 5:30 on the day when your murder was committed at 9 o'clock.
"We couldn't help but notice you share critical gene sequences with you serial-killer cousin, not to mention Ted Bundy."
BANG!
Faith: n. -- That human impulse that drives them to steal appliances when the power goes out
you should encrypt your DNA using truecrypt.
Nullius in verba
anyone remember that csi episode about the chimera?
incredibly rare, but sometimes two fraternal twins will fuse while still blastocysts. so the dna of two seperate individuals form different organ lines in one individual. so your blood and kidneys and stomach might be from one person, while your brain, skin and lungs might be from another. most chimeras go through life never knowing what they are, but every once in awhile, a blood test reveals that, for example, a mother isn't even the mother of her own children (her womb is from a nonexistent twin):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydia_Fairchild
anyway, in csi, the aberation was used to good effect: the killer knew he would get away with the crimes because his dna from the crime scene would not match the dna from his lab tests. but of course, the dna would indicate the killer was a brother of the prime suspect, because half the dna would match his phantom brother (which puts a twist on the subject of this story: if relative dna banks enjoy common use, a lot more chimeras out there are going to come to light)
most of the episode the csi investigators run after one brother of the suspect after another, in a fruitless red herring chase to find the dna of a brother who did not exist, except inside that of the killer
http://www.csifiles.com/reviews/miami/bloodlines.shtml
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/UNSWLJ/2004/1.html
I was going to cite an episode of Weeds, but my l33t search was strong...
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
I wonder what happens if son/daughter is adopted and doesn't know, yet this shows DNA link to a criminal parent. That's a nasty shock to the system, I can just see it now:
Officer: Hi, can you tell us where that lowlife father of your is?
Kid: He is at work at the moment.
Officer: Yeah, drop the act kid, he ain't worked a day of his life. Now, where is he ya little lying bastard?
Kid: He will come home from work in three hours...
*three hours later*
Officer: This ain't your dad! Quit fucking with us here!
Kid: Whaaaaaaa! (Or any other such life changing crying sound when you suddenly find out you are adopted and your whole life has been a lie)
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Funny thing about matching possible Family Members.
Depending on how good of DNA profile they took a Lab can match 99.9% Match. That means 1/1000 people of the same race could be the criminal real parent or sibling. If the DNA profile is very detailed the odds are 1/100,000 people of the same race. So theyâ(TM)re going to be a-lot of innocence people harass by the police.
http://www.dna-geneticconnections.com/dna_accuracy.html
Now California police also reserve the right to take DNA from anyone they arrest for any reason. Which means if they can ever make the process an order of magnitude cheaper and faster, they could assemble a very large database very quickly with just the laws already on the books.
It seems lazy lawmaking to me that CA would put some law on the books and just wait for problems to arise.
One would have thought that with a week or two on ask slashdot, a whole bunch of the more obvious problems with this approach could have been forestalled. And with another few weeks of expert review even more simple constraints could have been devised.
It seems to me inevitable that this approach to investigation will only get more prevalent, so I don't see any reason why CA could not have spent some time to try and get some of the details right in advance.
How about introducing a law with some overly-strict limitations and then relax them over time instead of introducing an overly-loosely managed system and then going back to make it right after it's ruined a few peoples lives.
It just seems like a piss poor attitude to lawmaking to me.
Nullius in verba
1) You are identified as a near match. All of your relatives are now suspects.
2) Near match doesn't mean the perpetrator is a close relative of yours. Police waste their time on an extensive bad lead and fail to solve the crime.
The problem with these tests is that they don't identify enough of the genome to operate in this fashion. They are really only suited for conclusively ruling out a suspect, not for identifying one. The odds of a false positive are much higher than is reported, and going up all of the time as the number of people in these databases increases.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
Great points of this post's parent and grandparent; especially relative to descendants.
Any questions involving genetic information should be examined with a long-term view. Perhaps not now, but think of future Clones. Should a cloned human pay the price of his/her predecessors genetic information? The mistakes they made in their previous life may affect their future life as a new individual. Communities of people, not just atomic families, may be singled out or "behaviorally predetermined" to commit crime simply on genetic heritage, of which they have no control. Perhaps that genetic heritage is combined with economic, credit, health and lifestyle information?
It is only a matter of time until the cost of mapping 'enough'* of every living human's genome will be 'worth it'*. Shortly after, the cost of genome-mapping all available deceased humans will be negligible. The field of medicine will flourish with this information. (You may even gain heath insurance discounts with a year's proof of purchase at the grocery store -- you are rewarded for eating relative to your pre-determined health risks.)
Yet every individual's privacy will diminish with access (any access) to a history of humanity's genetic information. Thus, thinking about DNA databases must be done with a long-term perspective.
* = Where the information's value to society --be it a friendly or otherwise group of people-- outweighs the cost of gathering it. Perhaps the equivalent cost of fingerprinting every newborn baby equals the cost of genome mapping every newborn baby.
http://www.prx.org/pieces/30720
I think this is the same show i listened to this past weekend on NPR/RadioLab/...
It is very interesting. Ran about an hour.
Also, the stuff in our guts can identify each and every one of us probably as much as DNA does:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97303406
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Why not store DNA records for everyone? It would help cops zero in on all kinds of criminals. The goal is to catch every criminal for every crime.
People who felt DNA had been planted could still offer a defense. Also people trying to plant false DNA samples would be quite likely to leave their own DNA while doing the planting.
It would be interesting to live in a society with zero lies and zero crimes. Keep in mind that popularity would not matter much at all as things like discrimination in employment and health care would be under the same intense spot light as major crimes. Perhaps the truth shall set us free.
The "illegally obtained evidence" laws generally pertain only to police. In some states, evidence obtained illegally by a private citizen might be perfectly admissible. Though I do not agree with that policy, nevertheless it is up to the individual states.
The private investigator, while finding evidence that might convict, could find himself up for criminal charges regardless of whether the evidence he found were admissible. It is a pretty big risk. Private investigators are not allowed to break into cars any more than anyone else.
... because I would SHOOT a cop who tried to force me to give a DNA sample just because somebody in my neighborhood committed a crime.
Seriously. That is something that they had better not try where I live.
In lower socio-economic classes (the kind over-represented in prison) estimates place up to 30% of children as not fathered by the mothers' husband.
How does this figure in to the mix?
cool captcha word: inhuman
IIRC, DNA matching is done based on 'junk' DNA. Assuming the particular markers used actually don't do anything, I'd be the first to sign up for an injection of a virus that will randomly change those markers around. Let them find me by my DNA when every cell has a different sequence.
Serial rapist + obstruction of justice = Minimum sentence? WTF?
The man should have been castrated and sentenced to at least 20 years in prison.
Cop shows up at workplace.
Cop: is John Stevens here?
John's co-worker: um, no, he's out sick today, what's up?
Cop: Oh, well, we're investigating a crime, and his DNA came up in our database as a close match with the suspect.
John's co-worker: Oh really? What crime, exactly?
Cop: well, I'm not really supposed to tell you this, but -- basically it's a murder-kidnapping.
John's co-worker: Good lord! And you're saying John has DNA similar to this... this... murderer?
Cop: yes, well, we're not saying he's a murderer, or anything like that -- he may be a perfectly fine citizen. We're just trying to get information about this case.
John's co-worker: but... he's related to this murderer...
Cop: well, he may be related, or he may just have similar DNA.
John's co-worker: SIMILAR to a murderer?
in the "advanced" parts of the west, a criminal has more rights than the victim, and the criminal must be empathized with and coddled for being a victim too. awww
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm from Kentucky and everyone's DNA matches!
Have gnu, will travel.
That's just Giuliani's rule, since the primaries there has been a lack of mentioning 9/11, Ethanol-fueled is just trying to fill the quota.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Law & Fiction and The Writer's Medical and Forensics Lab, are two very interesting and unusual sites, and, if you are into this stuff, both well worth your time.
The privilege takes strange twists and turns in real life:
The police recorded a telephone conversation between defendant and his wife in which he admitted to having oral sex with the wife's daughter. This recording was admitted into evidence. The defendant claimed that the communication was protected by the marital privilege.
The Court rejected the defendant's argument and affirmed his conviction stating: "no such privilege exists where the communication arises out of the abuse of a spouse's child upon the theory that the wrong to the child is equally a wrong to the . . . spouse and that the performance of the injury is equally as destructive of the marriage"
Thus, the Court found that the marital privilege, whose purpose is to protect the marriage, cannot be used to conceal acts which are themselves destructive to the marriage. Marital Privilege Does Not Protect Conversation Between Defendant And Wife That Defendant Had Oral Sex With Wife's Child
If you take this argument to its logical conclusion, I am not sure what, if anything, is left of the privilege.
As a teacher and former foster parent, I have been thoroughly background-checked with multiple levels of law enforcement, both my home and person inspected for fitness, and my fingerprints taken and cataloged, twice. But no DNA was taken. Yet. But maybe Tennessee is behind in that.
We could also screen the kids and tag them for genetic markers that indicate them to be likely potential criminals in the future. I think I saw this in a movie or TV-series once, Total Recall 2020, I think. Also GATTACA shows some excellent examples how we can weed out the workers who are likely slackers based on their genetic imprints.
The police force should definitely have this tool together with insurance agencies and employers. We all know an apple does not fall far from the tree.
http://www.ahealthyme.com/topic/pipes
Decades ago, doctors began to notice high rates of tongue cancer in pipe smokers. Since then, pipe smoking has been shown to cause cancer of the mouth, lip, tongue, throat, larynx, and lung, Thun says. According to Thun, pipe smokers may also increase their risk of contracting other cancers that plague cigarette smokers: cancer of the pancreas, kidney, bladder, colon, and cervix as well as leukemia and diseases such as chronic obstructive lung disease, stroke, and coronary heart disease.
http://davesboat.blogspot.com/
I don't know why geeks equate DNA = No privacy and yet go around signing up for everything on the internet.
Heroes die once, cowards live longer.
There was a similar issue in Italy. If you are a foreigner (from some non-EU country) legally working in Italy, and you want your family to join you, you can apply for them to get a visa. Since some of the countries these people come from have very poor records on this type of stuff, there was a proposal to verify this (no idea if it was accepted) with a DNA test, to see if those you claim are your children really are.
Big brother issues aside, the problem is that some children may be adopted, and that the issue of parenthood is not as clear-cut as we would like to think. As well as the old latin saying:
Mater semper certa est, pater numquam.
are'nt we talking about data bases of crininals here, i see no problems here.
After reading some of the comments here, I think it should be made clear that the DNA database ALREADY exists, right now there are rules on its use, I think its state only, and you have to have a 100% match (or the theoretical "perfect" DNA match) Effectively what they want to do now is open the search criteria up, search the entire country and for 98% matches, its not directly looking for cousins or brothers, they just want to find leads to criminals. Its seems to me like the media spin would rather use the word relative vs. 98% match, which is most likely a relative but.. the idea is less loaded. (this kinda reminds me with what I have to do with google, I'm a developer and 99.9% of my searches are python,php,bash,perl,linux etc.. well .. I wanted tips on rolling hash and .. all I got were MD5 algorithms, log out and search again opens your criteria up.)
DNA relative matching was used to close a 20-year-old unsolved rape case in the midwest recently. Police had a guess but nothing to justify a search warrant. The suspect had married and settled down after committing the crime. The suspect's daughter was a college student and had gotten a Pap smear. The lab kept the samples for 5 years for legal reasons. The police got her DNA sample from the lab w/o a search warrant and matched it to the rape victim. That gave them grounds for a warrant. The search found evidence, and they got a conviction.
Random factlets:
Approx 10% of people don't have the parents they think they do.
Even w/o a match, DNA can strongly suggest the suspect's race. Is it ok to hassle all young men of the same race as the suspect? There was a case at SUNY New Paltz some years ago where someone was attacked by a young black man. The police interviewed all male black students.
Physical evidence is not always as solid as people assume. Apart from the recent scandals at the FBI crime lab, here are 2 other cases.
Many years ago, two NYS state troopers from the Binghampton troop were convicted and jailed for fabricating fingerprints. I think it involved scotch tape.
In DC some years ago, an innocent man was jailed because an ATM surveillance video was wrongly correlated with the transactions. He was wrongly thought to have used a victim's ATM card, and his protestations about having an alibi were ignored.
In the United States, even if the search is legal (based on a search warrant), if they find something illegal that is not mentioned in the warrant, they can't use it as evidence.
The framers of the US Constitution included that provision (what is being searched for has to be specified) because they had direct experience of abuse by the occupying British authorities.
Is there a genetic watermark that is passed down? Otherwise, and this might be totally ignorant, my genetic code is a by-product of two genetic pools? Wouldn't there be other people I am more similar too coincidentally because I am only, ignorance again, 50% made up of either parent?
and you wasted it with dribble
no matter how good it is, it is human nature always wants to make things better
that is just a different case. I am aware of this exception, but I thought it was pretty clear that I was referring to warrant-based searches.
IANAL (and I am proud of that fact), but I do try to keep up with things. And frankly, I have NEVER in my life heard of any principle stating that anything "immediately apparent" as illegal may be seized and used as evidence, if it has no relevance to anything mentioned in the warrant that authorized the search. In fact, at University I was taught exactly the opposite.
Investigators learned the man had a brother who had lived near the crime scene. They obtained DNA surreptitiously through a discarded cigarette. When tests linked the brother to the crime scene evidence, he confessed.
A person who had spent 18 years behind bars for the crime was freed.
Err, um, they had someone in prison for this, were sufficiently convinced they had the wrong guy (based on DNA) to expend considerable effort investigating a 'closed' case, yet KEPT him in prison until they found the right guy? Do they feel no obligation to correct such grievous errors immediately? Or perhaps they consider life in jail to be a pleasant thing? Perhaps they should try it themselves?
Or perhaps the innocent man was already freed and the article confused the timeline trying to tie all of this with freeing the innocent even though it does no such thing? (His DNA not matching is good enough for that)
How long will it be until they make a mistake and doggedly pursue a known innocent person for information that they simply don't have to offer? Will they leave it alone then or become convinced that the supposed 'family member' is withholding evidence and so cross the line to harassment? Will an over eager prosecutor who is politically embarrassed by the continued freedom of a killer decide to prosecute the supposed family member for obstruction of justice?
It's funny how the argument that if you have nothing to hide (that is, if you commit no crime) you have nothing to fear from DNA sampling now stands ready to have innocent people's lives turned upside down because they might be related to someone who might have committed a crime. OK, so you may have one or two things to fear...