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."

Comments

Re:DNA evidence 'planting'?

[RiotingPacifist]

Its OK im white though.

Re:DNA evidence 'planting'?

[techno-vampire]

us like me who smoke leaving our butts in a public ashtray

I'm a smoker too, but that's one thing I'll never have to worry about. When I'm done, I empty out the bowl of my pipe, slip the pipe into my shirt pocket and leave nothing but ash and old tobacco behind. And, since you don't inhale a pipe, there's no nagging worry about lung cancer.

Re:Seriously though, what about adopted kids?

[daem0n1x]

I wonder if the kid's biological father is a Martian hermaphrodite alien, with only one leg and 3 eyes, and the kid was adopted by a lesbian aunt that lives with a man pretending to be a woman, but he doesn't know.

Oh, the horror! Just imagine. Millions of people will be in trouble! Let's ban these evil searches right away!