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

Big Brother?

[LaskoVortex]

Looks like a double entendre tag to me.

DNA evidence 'planting'?

[JSBiff]

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."

Re:DNA evidence 'planting'?

[hairyfeet]

Well, as someone who used to live a truck stop I can tell you that many hookers are junkies and will be happy to sell you ANYTHING for cash. So I doubt it would be real hard to wave a twenty in front of a hooker and get anything you wanted, especially something she wouldn't be able to normally sell like a used condom.

Of course this gets even worse if you think about it. How many times have YOU left DNA that could be recovered by anyone in a public place? A coke can, those of us like me who smoke leaving our butts in a public ashtray, etc. And as DNA gets used more and more it will be in a criminals best interest to pick up something like that, if for no other reason that it adds to the chance that you could throw them off the trail. And with WAY too many jurors watching CSI all the will have to say is "DNA evidence" and you ass is toast.

Re:DNA evidence 'planting'?

[QuantumG]

if somebody that hates you that much has access to your DNA samples, you've already got some serious problems!

Never been divorced have you?

Re:DNA evidence 'planting'?

[Binty]

Remember that law enforcement agencies keep the raw blood/hair/whatever sample. So, suppose you've got a guy who has been in and out of prison a few times and now is being investigated for another crime. The authorities are pretty sure he did it, but don't quite have the evidence for a conviction. It would be pretty convenient just to splash some of that previously collected sample around and guarantee a conviction. I think that is the parent's concern here.

Re:DNA evidence 'planting'?

[Bob The Cowboy]

I've heard that prostitutes sell used condoms for this very reason. I can't find any links on the web to this effect so maybe its simply a urban legend.

Dear God. I shudder to think of the context ads you'll be getting in the near future.

Privacy concerns, yes

[Anonymous Coward]

But dress it all up as "social networking" and you'll have zillions of willing participants.

There goes the 5th again

[mapsjanhere]

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.

Re:There goes the 5th again

[Lloyd_Bryant]

IANAL either, but the 5th amendment only protects against self-incrimination. Anyone else, even your SO, you can be ordered to testify against.

IANAL either, but IIRC, a wife/husband can *not* testify (voluntarily or otherwise) against his/her spouse and relate information told to him/her "in confidence" by the spouse. Information given to a spouse is deems "privileged", the same as information a person gives to an attorney or therapist. I *think* that evidence can be suppressed if it was obtained in violation of "spousal privilege" (for instance, if a husband tells his wife where he hid the gun, and she tells the police, the gun may be deemed inadmissible as evidence).

The spouse *can* testify (voluntarily or otherwise), but only regarding things that he/she witnessed. For instance, a spouse can be forced to answer the question "Did you see your spouse hit the neighbor with a baseball bat?".

as seen on law and order svu

[circletimessquare]

While performing the autopsy on Newlands' body, Warner finds a plastic tube of blood in his upper arm. He was the father of Morris' baby, but he wasn't the Honey Rapist. He put the tube with someone else's blood in his arm to beat the paternity test. Unfortunately for him, that someone else was a previously unidentified child rapist.

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

Rape case
On the night of 31 October 1992, Schneeberger sedated his 23-year-old patient, Candice, and raped her. While Versed -- the anesthetic he used -- has strong amnesiac effect, Candice was still able to remember the rape. She reported the crime to the police.

Schneeberger's blood sample was, however, found not to match the samples of the alleged rapist's semen, thus clearing him of suspicion. In 1993, at the victim's request, the test was repeated, but the result was negative, as well. In 1994, the case was closed.

Candice, still convinced that her reminiscences were true, hired Larry O'Brien, a private detective, to investigate the case. He broke into Schneeberger's car and obtained another DNA sample, which, this time, matched the semen on victim's panties and pants. As a result, a third official test was organized. The obtained blood sample was, however, found to be too small and of too poor quality to be useful for analysis.

In 1997, Lisa Schneeberger found out that her husband had repeatedly drugged and raped her 15-year-old daughter from her first marriage. She reported him to the police, which ordered a fourth DNA test. This time, multiple samples were taken: blood, mouth swab, and hair follicle. All three matched the rapist's semen.

[edit] Conviction
During his 1999 trial, Schneeberger revealed the method he used to foil the DNA tests. He implanted a 15 cm Penrose drain filled with another man's blood and anticoagulants in his arm. During tests, he tricked the laboratory technician to obtain blood sample from the place the tube was planted.

He was found guilty of sexual assault, of administering a noxious substance, and of obstruction of justice, and received a six-year prison sentence.

tangent

[circletimessquare]

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

Lydia Fairchild was pregnant with her third child, when she and the father of her children, Jamie Townsend, separated. When Fairchild applied for welfare support in 2002, she was requested to provide DNA evidence that Townsend was the father of her children. While the results showed Townsend was certainly the father of the children, the DNA tests indicated that she was not their mother.

This resulted in Fairchild being taken to court for fraud for claiming benefit for other people's children or taking part in a surrogacy scam. Hospital records of her prior births were disregarded. Prosecutors called for her two children to be taken into care. As time came for her to give birth to her third child, the judge ordered a witness be present at the birth. This witness was to ensure that blood samples were immediately taken from both the child and Fairchild. Two weeks later, DNA tests indicated that she was not the mother of that child either.

A breakthrough came when a lawyer for the prosecution found an article[2] in the New England Journal of Medicine about a similar case that had happened in Boston, and realised that Fairchild's case might also be caused by chimerism. In 1998, 52-year old Boston teacher Karen Keegan was in need of a kidney transplant. When her three adult sons were tested for suitability as donors, it was discovered that two of them did not match her DNA to the extent that her biological children should. Later testing showed that Keegan was a chimera, a combination of two separate sets of cell lines with two separate sets of chromosomes, when a second set of DNA was found in other tissues[3] This DNA presumably came from a different embryo from the one that gave rise to the rest of her tissues.

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

Todd has four living brothers, and one who died, named Joss. Sara questions fraternal twins Larry and Roger Coombs, who own a car repair shop together. Brass talks to one of the brothers who is a police officer, but the CSIs are unable to locate Kevin Coombs, another brother. ...

Sara locates Kevin living on the edge of town in a trailer. He is called in for questioning, but the CSIs attention again alights on Todd. A strand of hair was found on Lindley's jacket, and the DNA is an exact match for Todd. When Grissom examines him, he notices some odd markings on his back.

Grissom hits the books and reads up on fraternal twins and Chimeras. He brings Todd into the interrogation room: he's cracked the case. Todd is a Chimera. He should have had

Seriously though, what about adopted kids?

[Fluffeh]

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)

Re:Seriously though, what about adopted kids?

[Xiroth]

Good point. Or consider problems that could come up if the kid's biological father was an anonymous sperm donor - could be bad if either the kid or the biological father got into trouble.

Re:Seriously though, what about adopted kids?

[sillybilly]

Or imagine a tool like this in the hands of Hitler. That's what's most wrong with this whole thing, the power it gives to someone over other people. Anonymity and privacy, being shielded and safe from some paternalistic overseeing power entity should be a right. Power should be given to government only as much as necessary. Such databases should be in the private sphere, held by someone like the clergy with the "seal of the confessional", or by attorneys in a fashion similar to attorney-client privilege. We need a system of internetized public notaries/attorneys holding confidential private information, regarding issues of identity, privacy, will/testament etc. Some kind of distributed database with confidentiality barriers. Queries run against it, and people having to give consent before answers are released. Government access to it should be absolutely limited, with very strict rights and needing a warrant. In fact no central databases should exist, but some kind of public key/private key system published by many attorneys, or public notaries, from which matches can be found, such as relatives, or criminals, without revealing identity. To a posted public key search the other local small databases should react, and if they find themselves to be a match to a request, they should ask the owner of that DNA whether he would like to reveal his identity to the query. Of course you would find no criminals this way, because who would confess, yes, I'm the one. But that's exactly what the 5th amendment is about, it's not about making law enforcement easy, to the contrary, protecting individual liberty at the price of "security", or "ease of law enforcement." Compiling databases about everybody in the name of security - well, you know what the founding fathers said: those who sacrifice liberty for security will get neither. A social security number databases tagging everyone for tax collection purposes should suffice. Fingerprint databases feel already too private, but all they reveal is your physical presence at a location, if you didn't wear gloves. And they are harder to plant than dna samples of hair, blood, etc. Fingerprints in the name of law enforcement, I can agree to that, because they don't contain much else about you. DNA, that's a whole other beast than a fingerprint. Occasional DNA tests by police, comparing suspects to locally found evidence could be OK, with the data returned to the owners, or owner's assigned attorney/public notary after the completion of the trial. It should not be allowed to be archived, even if it means a whole lot of wasted work, and having to redo everything over and over. Or who do you trust? You should not feel more secure because of the databases compiled in the name of security, if anything, fear some coup, some power takeover at the top by some mad men. Then imagine what power they will have over you to deride you and ride you to hell and back, simply because they feel like it. And you're at fault, who previously sacrificed your privacy and anonymity in the name of security. What security? If you have many small localized/secret databases exchanging information only as needed, in case of a power coup at the top, well, my neighborhood notary public might be willing to hide my DNA from the new government, just like some people were willing to hide jews during the Nazi regime. People being able to disobey laws is a prerequisite of liberty. Where is the guarantee that we will never have another criminal regime like that in power, coming up with laws that are criminal. The time to defend is now. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Law enforcement is important, but so is the 5th amendment, which is more important than law enforcement itself. So how can you hide your DNA, how can you stay anonymous, retain your privacy in this world? Is that even possible? No. But at least we could have a makebelieve, pretend to respect each others rights to privacy world. Anytime you give blood, or a hair sample, for a simple thing as a drug test, others have your DNA, if that sample is tied to you in

Re:Seriously though, what about adopted kids?

[dwarg]

Paragraphs man, paragraphs! It's a wall of bloody text up there. Not to mention a premature and gratuitous execution of Godwin's Law That said:

Power should be given to government only as much as necessary. Such databases should be in the private sphere, held by someone like the clergy with the "seal of the confessional", or by attorneys in a fashion similar to attorney-client privilege. We need a system of internetized public notaries/attorneys holding confidential private information, regarding issues of identity, privacy, will/testament etc.

So, government bad, but combining the clergy and attorneys "in the private sector" WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong?!? Or in other words, what we need to do is create another quasi-governmental agency (that answers to whom?) to entrust this super secret information to, but since it isn't called "government" it's somehow better than what it really is?

You then go on to say that this entire mythical structure you've created would be useless because they wouldn't actually give out the information law enforcement is looking for. So why the hell are you suggesting we create it in the first place?

You're entire post can be reduced to, "No! The gub'mint can't have my bodily fluid data." Saving you time you could use to add another layer to your tinfoil hat and haul a few more wheelbarrows of dirt out of your survivalist's bunker.

Re:sauce

[vux984]

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?

• Sperm/Blood donors?
• People crossing the border? (ok... currently just being photographed and fingerprinted afaik... but DNA is next...)
• People subjected to drug tests?
• People subjected to 'reference/elimination samples'? ... (ie you were attacked, and now we need your blood sample, so know which blood is the attackers and which is yours...)
• Medical teststing? Bloodwork?
• Screening tests for sensitive jobs (law enforcement, military, medicine, security...)
• Parents volunteering their children's DNA for use if they are kidnapped, etc

And remember, the moment this becomes legal, they will start begging/demanding/legislating that DNA from any source they can get their hands on be added to the database.

Just a reminder...

[Ghostworks]

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.