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Yale Law Student Wants Government To Have Everybody's DNA
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Seringhaus, a Yale Law School student, writes in the NY Times, 'To Stop Crime, Share Your Genes.' In order to prevent discrimination when it comes to collecting DNA samples from criminals (and even people who are simply arrested), he proposes that the government collect a DNA profile from everybody, perhaps at birth (yes, you heard that right)."
Regarding the obvious issue of genetic privacy, Seringhaus makes this argument: "Your sensitive genetic information would be safe. A DNA profile distills a person’s complex genomic information down to a set of 26 numerical values, each characterizing the length of a certain repeated sequence of 'junk' DNA that differs from person to person. Although these genetic differences are biologically meaningless — they don’t correlate with any observable characteristics — tabulating the number of repeats creates a unique identifier, a DNA 'fingerprint.' The genetic privacy risk from such profiling is virtually nil, because these records include none of the health and biological data present in one’s genome as a whole."
I'd for everyone to have a million dollars.
Then feel free to post a retraction to your very naive statement.
...my fingers don't even have to be cold and dead to pry my DNA out of them.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Yeah, I remember being 5 or 6 years old and wondering why the whole world wasn't just nice to each other and all our problems would be solved.
Unfortunately, I grew up to have to understand the real world.
This guy reminds me of a cute little 5 year old. His heart is in the right place and he just wants everything fair and nice. However, those are some BIG ASSUMPTIONS he is making:
1) A sample will be destroyed after it is used to create a DNA profile.
2) Only law enforcement will have access
3) Since more Americans are in the database there is a less likelihood of government misuse.
Actually, I am not sure we can call those assumptions. More like hypothetical requirements for an argument, like, the Sun will be Purple tomorrow.
All 3 of those assumptions have been proven to be false, time and time and time and time again. Wasn't it just recently that we found out Texas A&M was participating in collecting blood and tissue samples from newborns without the parents knowledge and consent? Were they not also used for purposes the parents were unaware of and could object to?
Are we really to believe that only law enforcement would have access when any PI with a few bucks can currently gain access to supposedly proteced information that only law enforcement officials should be accessing?
Has not the goverment been caught time and time and time again abusing databases by using them for purposes well outside of the justifications and reasons for their initial creation? Doesn't the goverment quite frequently change their minds about what they will do with resources after the fact?
Sure, if all of those assumptions are held to be true, I would agree with him about making a DNA database. However, it is not my cynicism and disillusionment in goverment that causes me to be skeptical of those assumptions. It's COLD HARD REALITY, FACTS, AND PRECENDENCE. If you want to ignore that, and let them move on with a clean slate, that's your choice. I choose to remember how often the government lies to me and abuses me.
Until someone eventually find a use for that so-called "junk" DNA.
I feel the above statement that came to me in a moment was just about as well thought out as this students proposal.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
What... What!?! To prevent the system from singling people out for abuse we are going to abuse everybody? Only a lawyer could think this wasn't perverted logic.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
I'm not as interested in keeping my genetic medical profile secret as in preventing EXACTLY THIS.
Personally, I'm in favor of this. Vast numbers of sex offenders and other criminals would be swiftly caught and punished. Oh wait, this is America - well, they'd be caught anyway. It's a privacy-vs-justice tradeoff I'm willing to make.
However, there is a much larger question here...who the frack cares what a college student has to say?
In other news, my barber thinks 9/11 was a conspiracy by the Bush administration. New York Times, I expect to see an editorial written by him published soon.
BTW, what's with the editorial "yes, you heard that right" - as if this is a completely shocking idea that hasn't been proposed about a hundred times.
Advice: on VPS providers
This has so many flavors of wrong, so toxic to freedom, and so indicative of the mindset of "If you have nothing to hide..." that there's really only one response I can pull together. It's not eloquent, but it does, I feel, have a certain crude charm.
"FUCK. YOU."
Gimme your /etc/shadow too. What's the problem? It's encrypted.
Haida Manga
Fuck off, Seringhaus. Your idea stinks, and should have absolutely no place in the United States, or any other first-world nation that considers freedom to be of even the slightest importance.
They'll stop looking for a match after they find one- regardless of the fact there will be hundreds to thousands of potential matches.
Dave
They can pry my xy chromosomes from my cold dead body
Seems to me the elites are getting worried that the middle class is about to start an uprising.
The best way to stop crime is to also add a DNA kill-switch on everyone. Stop behaving in a manner that enriches the elites of our society, and poof you're a goner.
So how do we stop the elites the crimes of robbing a plundering our hard work?
Someone could have a field day with this data looking for discrepancies between claimed and actual paternity. A gold-mine for the tech savvy blackmailer.
Stick to law, not biology Mr. Seringhaus (and honestly, I'm not too hot on you entering law). The genetic fingerprint works OK for identifying the guilty person out of several suspects, but it does not work if you have everyone on a database. If the chance of two unrelated people having the same fingerprint is (and I don't know the actual number) one in ten million and if you have every American in a database then given a DNA sample you'll get thirty people, twenty nine of which will be dragged into court through no fault of their own. Put simply, this is a profoundly stupid idea.
I just watched 1984 last night. Freedom is Slavery!
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
It's basically like my DNAs MD5 hash?
This student is the kind of larval shyster whose contempt for the bill of rights should exclude him from ever being allowed to practice law in the United States. Kick him out of law school.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
See The dark side of DNA
Short summary: crime labs make a lot of errors.
Can a parent provide a DNA sample to some collection agency for money or for few? Can a child sue his/her parents, when he/she turns 18 if his/her parents have compromised his/her privacy?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Before we even get to the Gattaca part, how does he know that this process will result in a unique sequence for every person? Including identical twins?
Aside from the obvious arguments on the complete invasion of privacy, junk DNA is just DNA that we /think/ does not actually express itself with any observable or measurable trait. However, it's quite possible that how a gene expresses may be discovered at a later date. Imagine it's discovered that certain thinking patterns or genetic disease with high cost of treatment have a correlation to certain sequences of formerly junk DNA. In insurance company or government hands, I don't see how that information would be used in anything but an oppressive manner.
And of course, the particular set of digits which result from one's DNA profile is condition of the enzyme used to slice up the DNA sample. With that large of a sample space false positives are all but assured.
"Your sensitive genetic information would be safe." It won't be safe for long with databases like these around.
It's simply naïve to hope that all those in political power will follow a course of action other than acting to get more power and more control. Most people will follow the rules and take sincere interest in their fellow man, but the few who don't are those you have ward against.
Imagine the next argument about how much better the government could make life for people if "Your sensitive genetic information" were also collected. This data would help medicine a lot. As we move toward more genetic basis for defining diseases, and defining the interaction of drugs within different people based on their genetics, there is a very strong argument that scientists could make health care better with broad access to the exact genetic information of all patients. Genetics coupled with disease phenotypes, frequencies, and drug interactions with quantitative metrics of effectiveness leads to revolutionary breakthroughs in drug development.
But to get this data would eliminate all aspects of personal privacy regarding your health.
If you believe in property at any level, your own body is unequivocally the one thing you own without exception. Unless there are overriding and unequivocal public health reasons to give someone else control over your body, the only answer is simply "No."
What you were supposed to say was:
I feel a great disturbance in the force, as if the Overton Window cried out after being shoved to the right very, very hard.
Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com
It is possible to create a matching genetic sample from arbitrary DNA given only those 26 numeric values. With genetic samples of everyone, even if only those 26 values, anyone can be framed for any crime. And thanks to CSI genetic evidence is taken almost unquestionably as proof of guilt.
if that ever happens then we will all have to protect our DNA (Hair, skin, spit, etc.) because loss of control of your DNA to a criminal spells guilty in court.
Is human chimerism (induced or innate).
That is, absorbing a twin (CSI episode, I think), or from a bone marrow donor.
A mouth swab won't include blood-based DNA.
Admittedly, the odds of this actually coming up in a criminal case are pretty low... but even knowing about it was apparently enough to get me dismissed from a jury.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
How about just storing a hash of the DNA sequence?
...you shouldn't listen to student lawyers that still can't grow a mustache!
The Israelis have already shown that DNA can be replicated and an innocent individual could be implicated in a crime without his or her knowledge.
Only an ignorant fool would advocate what this guy is advocating!
about this steady stream of idiots who are willing to mindlessly trust the government. Have the horrible lessons of the twentieth century already been forgotten?
Any information you share to others can be used against you. I bet that Jewish didn't guess that by getting your name in the temple papers would work against them when the Nazis were searching for them.
The Elected Nobility won't keep their promises. "Oh it's only 26 markers... we can't predict your health from that," and then in ten or twenty years they'll want to sequence your entire genome, so they can create a society like GATTACA.
I've seen this before. The Nobles promised income tax would only affect people over $100,000 not the commoners. They said Medicare would only cost 60 billion, and that it would REDUCE healthcare costs, which of course it did the exact opposite. And they claimed the social security number would Never be used for anything else, but the SS administration.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice.....
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Is there some kind of strange black oil rolling around on the surface of his eyeballs?
The less data you have from the DNA, the more matches you are going to find. The reason things like DNA and fingerprints work is you have a smallish possibility set. You have 10 suspects, you compare the fingerprints, one matches, nine don't well there you go. In all cases with fingerprints and DNA you are saying "This item matches 1 in X people in the population." Now that's usually pretty good, like 1 in a million or something. However not so useful if your sample size is 300,000,000 and growing.
Also there's the fact that DNA tests aren't cheap, or particularly quick. They aren't the kind of thing you can use for every criminal case, it'd be way too expensive, not to mention unnecessary. I can't see that this would get used all the time. Fingerprints are done often because they are pretty cheap to test, but DNA? Not so much at this point.
So I can't really see this of being a whole lot of use to law enforcement either.
Come on, where is the tag? You all know this one deserves it.
Why don't we try this only with Yale law students?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
... that we know of at this time.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Terms never associated with the government.
I am sure we can surely trust them with our DNA.
It will turn out just fine.....
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
As soon as politicians and the people around them start carrying 24x7 mikes.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Seriously, I do. In an attempt to create a safer society while preventing attempts at "Pre-Crime" and not further taxing our "post-crime" response paradigm, I focus all my attention at education and mentoring students. Instill an appreciation for knowledge of history (and the mistakes of other people), logic (and thus decision-making), and give the kids the tools they need to reject marketing (which tells them they need things they don't... which leads them to be victims of strain).
The best way to reduce crime? Be better people.
So if everyone shared their DNA, all crimes would be solved...
Maybe this kid is watching to much CSI.
" .... and I will move the Earth", said archimede, in regard to levers.
the correct application of this as a metaphor for this situation would be, "Give me 1000 fools like this to put in charge, and they will destroy Earth" i think.
Read radical news here
Newborn babies in the United States are routinely screened for a panel of genetic diseases. Since the testing is mandated by the government, it's often done without the parents' consent, according to the National Newborn Screening & Genetics Resource Center. In many states, newborn, babies' DNA is stored indefinitely, according to the resource center. In New Jersey, newborn babies' DNA is stored for 23 years. In 2008 alone over 125,000 samples of newborn's DNA was collected and stored in a government or state run lab in New Jersey. While I do not think that parents should forego such genetic screening, I think they should have the right to have the screening done privately and with their complete consent. While we know the law (GINA) signed by then President George W. Bush is supposed to protect future generations from discrimination based on their genetic profiles, even the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children suggests that only parents or legal guardians should have access to a child's genetic profile. Many parents don't realize their baby's DNA is being stored in a government lab, but when they find out, as this couple did, they take action. Parents in Texas, and Minnesota have filed lawsuits, and these parents' concerns are sparking a new debate about whether it's appropriate for a baby's genetic blueprint to be in the government's possession.
Reference: http://www.amaware.net/blog/dnalady/2010/02/federal-dna-collections-at-bir.html
Wow.
Considering with the current DNA sampling methods, my DNA will match one or two million other people on the planet, a good few thousand of them being in my own country...
No thanks, I have no desire to admit and take the blame for the crimes those other people did and were caught at.
Someone should direct this so called law student to our constitutional amendments. He only has to get through the first 5 or so :P
The way the DNA samples are represented and compared is far from perfect. Evidence-samples are often incomplete or polluted. False positives occur and will occur increasingly as the number of samples grows. DNA profiling is NOT flawless, but you cannot defend yourself against the presumption that it is. Collecting everybody's DNA wil inevitably result in quite a few innocent people ending up in jail.
Random link about the subject: http://dna-view.com/profile.htm
0x or or snor perron?!
That is until the pharm and insurance companies decide it would be beneficial for their businesses if the government collected this information, processed the full sequence and then shared it with them for free.
A few well placed political donations (thanks supreme court for dropping the caps!) and it is a done deal.
Average Intelligence is a Scary Thing
As I see it, this violates at least one Amendment (#4, right against search and seizure without warrant) and maybe more (I can probably make a case against #6 as a violation of the fact there's no act or cause of accusation and maybe #5 as a violation of my right to not self-incriminate). This is sick. This kid should be drummed out of Yale due to his gross misunderstanding of the fundamental tenants of criminal law in the United States.
What joy it would be to live in a world where the slightest breach of the law would be 100% certain to be punished by the state ... How safe we would be under the benevolent watch of our governments ... We can only dream about it.
I think this student (why the hell is his opinion posted on /. by the way?) should study some more.
..this law-abiding citizen wants that Yale law student to kiss my ass.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And where does the blood from that go?
Where does the blood drawn from the heel of every newborn go? We're already there people, might as well make a DNA database out of it.
TFA is dead wrong. While DNA evidence can prove that a person didn't commit a crime, a false positive is still possible. If we collect DNA from everyone in the country as suggested, the odds of a false positive will increase accordingly. With the odds of a false positive are about 1:1 Billion (Google it if you don't believe this number), that means that about 300 people in the United States alone will match your DNA fingerprint. And that's just the ones who are currently alive.
His main argument against storing DNA of only convicted criminals is that there aren't enough white criminals, so the idea is racist. This entire premise makes me want to puke.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
"The genetic privacy risk from such profiling is virtually nil, because as yet these records include none of the health and biological data present in one’s genome as a whole."
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Quick, what's the constitutional problem with the government forcing an individual to provide evidence that could be used to convict that same individual of a crime?
just because junk dna doesn't play a major or obvious role in human biology doesn't mean it should not be private information. The fact is science has not determined what this dna is for. Assuming it does not contain any private information is premature. Maybe once we know more about the human genome we can identify certain base positions that do not contain any private information but that could be used to uniquely identify a person. I would gladly submit this portion of my genome to the government, much in the same way I gave them a photograph of myself.
I'm just waiting for someone to hack his gmail account, facebook, yale computer accounts, bank account information and post it publicly.
That is the only counter you need to disabuse him of his ignorance.
I think they should take your genetic identity and use it as the bottom 64 bits of your 128 bit IPV6 address whenever you access the internet. They can even program it in into a tamper-proof RFID chip implanted under your skin, so that when you access the internet all you have to do is scan your chip! Think of the genetic segmentation we could do in online marketing!!! We could tie this to a facial identification database and your cell phone and then you could rent time on homeland security predator drones to see what your friends are up to in real-time!!! Wow.. We have such an absolutely wonderful future ahead of us!
This student from Yale (I don't even see why that matters, does it give him some sort of credibility? You know, like John Kerry and George Bush) has really only focused on the application of a DNA profile to criminal investigations. He makes some poor argument about how the DNA profile can't be used to glean physical characteristics, etc. To build a DNA profile, they use an actual DNA sample, which does contain that information. What happens to all the blood and saliva samples used to collect DNA? Does he think that those samples will be disposed of, and that's that? Guess again.
He also seems to think that the only privacy exposure is what your genes represent (i.e. blue or green eyes, or a disposition to diabetes). The government doesn't care about any of that. They care about tracking people and finding out what they are doing, regardless of any criminal intent. That's what DNA will be used for.
Tell me who you want to frame for the crime you are about to commit (actually don't tell me the details - I'll assume you have a legit reason :) I'll follow them around until they discard tissues or a cup or whatever. You can leave the evidence at the scene and the police won't need to spend weeks or months collecting other evidence since they've got all they need. At the very least they'll spend some effort tracking down someone other than you.
I assume this "law student" hasn't had the class where they discuss the constitution yet. At least I hope Yale isn't teaching that this is an appropriate use of government power.
For this purpose, it has to be unique. ... of what length each (range)?
26 sequences
Even 1 in a billion means there are 6 other people out there.
To be free you have to be free to commit crime. This idea isn't making it impossible to commit crime, but you are giving up too much in the hopes of finding more criminals, and turning people into being afraid to commit crime so they stop. That seems to be the goal of this, make detection so perfect that criminals know they will get caught. Sounds like DRM, and we know that has worked perfectly. Why not spend money on reducing the incentive for crime rather than battling criminals. The theory of taking away the incentive (make sure people have access to jobs and homes if they want them) is just as sound as the theory all criminals can be found with a DNA database.
1 in 1 billion means only about 7 people in the world would match. The US has a population of 310 million, not 300 billion.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
go and ask the survivors of the holocaust, why this is a fucking bad idea!
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
...by legalizing prostitution stipulating mandatory [female] condom control. Registered prostitutes are to mail dilapidated paraphernalia directly to the Department of Health and Sex Services.
If we're going to have this, this "26 marker" stuff isn't good enough. Commercially available systems can do over a million markers per sample. "23andMe" uses those. There have been false matches with only 26 markers, but the modern systems that use tens of thousands shouldn't have that problem.
But every one of them is a HUMAN. Who are you going to most likely share a lot of genes with? Your family. Most families live somewhat together.
See a problem here?
Add into that that the sequencing of gene data at a crimescene is not a pristine sequencing lab, you have yet more problems.
Here is a link to his personal web page:
http://seringhaus.net/bio.html
http://www.seringhaus.net/
I don't understand why a government, any government, would want information on the unique aspects of an acid that is found in my every cell... Why the fuck does the government -- an imperfect organization which by definition rules by force -- explicitly deserve an in-depth profile of my biologic basis? Even if it were voluntary -- imagine how easy it would be to pressure organizations into making it mandatory (raise the overall tax, give organizations which only employ Gene-mapped employees a tax break). I don't care what this student thinks is best, I DO care that the president of the USA agrees to no small degree.
The birthday collision illustrated:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem
Even with 365 days a year, there is 50% probability that two people will have the same birthday in any random group of 23 people.
Now take 300 million people right now in the USofA.
Where is the evidence that these strings of "junk" DNA really are that unique?
What makes him think that they don't already do this.
Once the cops have your DNA (and a dislike for you) what's to stop a bad cop from leaving your DNA at their next "unsolved" crime?
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/02/15/85118/lacking-suspects-prosecutors-now.htmlFor a truly bizarre twist on this.
do it. now! nothing could possibly go wrong.
Because the government has been so successful at preventing identity theft with the 9 digit social security numbers.
Putting aside the liberties and constitution protections this would stomp on, how many cases actually have DNA evidence left? All I see this doing is making criminals work harder to not to leave DNA.
with good scientific ideas, promise of more efficient justice and care for all. Of course, its unsavory sides arise due to human abuses and infighting of the reformers for the tremendous power accumulated for all the good reasons. "Totalitarian" originally meant "care for all".
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/obama-supports-dna-sampling-upon-arrest
At the moment it is *just* upon arrest... how's that hope and change working out for you?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Yale Law Student Wants Government To Have Everybody's DNA
Alaska Network Admin doesn't.
Regarding the obvious issue of genetic privacy, Seringhaus makes this argument: "Your sensitive genetic information would be safe...these records include none of the health and biological data present in one’s genome as a whole."
The only information that is "safe" is information that isn't known and isn't recorded anywhere. Isn't /. the site where people keep repeating "information wants to be free!"? Ben Franklin had it right: "Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead."
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Even if you somehow manage to avoid giving out your DNA, eventually the DNA database is going to be so vast they can identify your family line by using supercomputers to compare you against the database. So someday instead of seeing "Unknown male wanted in the rape of Jane Doe" we'll see "Unknown male known to be from X bloodline, and have X alleles in common with the following individuals:" etc. They'll be able to pinpoint you even more accurately as the database grows. So the only thing to do is scrub the shit out of yourself every day so you shed less epithelials, shave yourself bare of hair, and wear a condom. But still things like the particles released from your mouth when talking or even just breathing could bag you; the sample size just keeps getting smaller.
And thus it is only a teeny, tiny procedural step to going from that signature to getting the entire thing, including the "sensitive genetic information" he's apparently still concerned about. I'm not saying you can derive the whole of your DNA from that signature (obviously not), but you have to turn over your entire DNA sample to the government or agents of the government to get that signature. What, exactly, is keeping the government or some commercial entity doing the job from retaining and storing a small sample that they could subsequently analyze in greater detail? Law? What prevents the law from being changed? Or from people doing it anyway and retroactively changing the law after it is found out it has been done illegally for years (plenty of prior art there)?
It's a stupid idea.
Let me put it another way. The only way I'd ever consider turning over a sample of my DNA to determine that unique signature would be if I turned over the sample, they did the analysis right there in my presence, such that I could see where the sample went and that the result coming out was valid, and then they handed back the remaining sample they did not need so that I could destroy it myself.
So a DB full of DNA signatures that would be used to link someone to a crime if one is committed?
You can buy DNA of arbitrary sequences for a rather paltry amount. (http://tools.invitrogen.com/content.cfm?pageid=9716)
Now, just who do I want to frame?
Before any further consideration of this dude's merits, take a look at this epic gem from his personal website:
Lyse Lyse Baby
I have a feeling that alone will discredit anything further from Mr. Seringhaus. Thanks for playing.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
I don't even need a DNA sample from him to know that.
If 100% of society were scientists, maybe this would work. If 100% of laws were just, maybe this would even result in justice. Neither of these things is true, though.
If this database existed, cops would simply arrest whoever's DNA they could find at a crime scene. Job done. No messy investigation required. Criminals would frame people by leaving their DNA at crime scenes. Society at large would believe you were guilty because DNA is science. DNA is easier to fake than fingerprints. It's easier to break into your house and collect some hairs than lift your fingerprints. Easier to drop them at a scene.
Junk sociolgy.
Working in audit there is a great deal of importance in the approach you take to testing. Do you take an invoice and check it exists on the ledger, or check the ledger and then see if the invoice exists? One tells you something completely different to the other.
Sure, with stored profiles testing can still be done the right way (getting the profile from the scene and then comparing to the alleged perp). But what assurance is there? How certain can you be that they did not take your profile and then "find" it at the scene? Yes, by getting the profile afterwards it still could be faked, but the controls are inherently stronger when they did not already have the profile. Administrative controls such as time stamps for example, and it would require more people to collude.
More importantly perhaps, if they have to first find someone to test in order to match the DNA, they have to do some police work - they need other evidence. With stored profiles there is a strong risk the police could decide they have their perp based soley on the DNA and then limit all other investigations into proving that guy is their man. The result is DNA becomes nothing more than a police tool for finding suspects and its true value as evidence is compromised. True, more perps are likely to be caught, and more quickly, but there will also be more miscarriages of justice. Juries already convict too easily due to DNA evidence (who says that strand of my hair didn't just blow there in the wind?).
Any doubters consider fingerprinting and Shirley McKie.
1. Make dozens of clones of a few black ops soldiers.
2. ???
3. Profit.
Maybe he wants to follow in the illustrious path of this former alumnus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Yoo#Regarding_torture_of_detainees_and_children_of_detainees
Besides all the other obvious problems with this idea, the author seems to assume that DNA profiles are unique. While duplicates ARE exceedingly rare, the birthday paradox ensures that you DO get lots of false positive matches if everyone in the US is indexed. Juries already assume DNA matches are 100%, and since there is no chance they understand statistics, they are going to put a lot of innocent people in jail if a scheme like this goes through.
Now all I need to do to get away with an illegal act is plant someone else's DNA at the crime scene! Thanks!
however, the most idiotic crowd i see are actually those with a pathological distrust of government
in a democracy, the government is yours, it is your representatives. all paranoid schizophrenic fantasy life and hypernegative ignorant cynicism to the contrary
as such, you afford it a certain amount of trust. too much, and you're a moron. but also true: too little, and you're also moron, to the same degree
a society with a rabid unintelligent hostility towards its own democratically elected government is just as stupid, useless, and, most importantly, POOR, as a society of blindly trusting fools
trust is a funny thing in life: you can trust too much, and you can trust too little. its a highly sensitive balance. to a large degree in life, the amount of trust you ascribe to certain entities: your family, your spouse, your friends, your government, and even yourself, largely determines how successful you will be in life, and i don't mean just financially. the amount of trust you give each of these entities is determined by your character, and the exact amount to give is always changing, depending upon new info
but in addition to those broadly overarching trust issues, you also see in some people either a constant overabundance of trust, and, also, a constant low ball amount of trust. the people who pathologically distrust have replaced intelligence with a sort of hypernegative ignorant cynicism. and the result is they lead impoverished lives. and i don't necessarily mean financially impoverished, although that also figures, but also impoverished in term of their happiness, and in terms of the richness and strength of their social bonds. such people, when they whine about the evil gubmint, are speaking more of their own failed pathology and bad character, not any intelligence on the matter
i see no lessons learned from history in their deep distrust, i only see a pathological type of character who works hard to redefine the trust threshold of our government unintelligently downward. if we let such inevitably loudmouth people hold sway, then the entirety of society is impoverished for the sake of their mental errors, not because of any higher grasp on truth
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Let's get this straight once and for all...
In the U.S., we are supposed to be protected from unnecessary search and seizure, the Fourth Amendment to our Constitution grants us this right. Generally, this implies that the prosecution, usually the Government, must have reasonable (or probable) cause to accuse us of a crime. Taking my DNA for an identification database SEEMS, to me, to violate this right, as it takes identifying information primarily for the potential future use in prosecution. I need not even be suspected of a crime to do this. It SEEMS to be a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
The Fifth Amendment guarantees us the right to not be compelled to be a witness against ourselves. This is regularly overriden by fingerprinting suspects as they are processed in jail, under the assumption that merely knowing your identity is not a violation of the Fifth Amendment. Fair enough. DNA is excessive for this purpose.
The idea of creating a national DNA database and fingerprinting all of us as soon as possible in our lives smacks of unconstitutional excess. While there are fingerprint clinics for children offered sometimes to 'aid in recovery of missing children', these are not mandatory. Yet. A mandatory DNA database is unconstitutional, IMHO.
And I fear this is not enough to stop such a project.
We just don't live in a nation that permits this by law. Changing the law to allow this will change our nation.
Choose carefully.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
State governments already collect DNA from baby births.
Yours In Perm,
K. Trout
Yay. Now I have to explain to my wife why my kids are dead in a shoot out with the SWAT team due to the fact my DNA had a hash collision with a terrorist half a world away.
Thanks America.
This is a great way to further put the wealthy in a winning position in our courts. Obviously, once the DNA is collected, it will become as restricted in it's use as our social security numbers. Well, for us regular folks, the chance of a collision is 1 in a million, and to counter that, a jury will have to be convinced through math that this doesn't really prove what the prosecution says it does. Where as the wealthy will just hire a PI to find a half dozen other people with the same sequence. They will then subpoena them into the court, and present real physical people who also match the same DNA.
Poor person: There are at least 100 other people with the same DNA sequence.
Prosecutor: 100 people? In what geographical area?
Poor person: Well... The world...
Prosecutor: What are the chances that a match is living in this city?
Poor person: 1 in 1 billion...
Rich person: There are tons of other people with the same DNA sequence.
Prosecutor: Tones huh? In what geographical area?
Rich person: Near by.
Prosecutor: What are the chances that a match is living in this city?
Rich person: I don't know, but half that front row in over there matches my DNA sequence! There everywhere!
The government has my name. They took my footprints at birth, but who checks that? They issued me an ID card that tied me to a number, which was asking for others to claim it. They keep a photo of me with my driver's license since I was 15. In my case they also have fingerprints.
So what I have is a bunch of differnt things taken at different times (SSN, name, picture, birth certificate, etc): few of which can be concretely tied to a body (IOW: are easy to steal). We have people getting arrested because their are warrants on others with the same name.
And don't get me started on the credit reporting industry.
The privacy cat is out of the bad. DNA from birth just makes it far more accurate: and I believe that's a good thing. I'd love anonymity: but I can't have it. At least let my ID be something I can prove is (or isn't) me.
You forget, some people WANT the outcome most of us are trying to avoid. And those people DO learn from history, and human nature..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Have you looked at the average age of congress, the supreme court, or the only people with enough clout to get social healthcare (retirees)? He may run the country: but not before I'm gone, and not if he keeps expousing unpopular ideas for foolish reasons like "beleives they are right".
It is obvious that he missed the class(es) on the Fourth Amendment. The government, be it Federal, state, or local, cannot require a person or persons to relinquish possessions without probable cause. There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that says any person has to give us their genetic code for "the greater good". The stance this asshole is taking is just one of the many tenants of the "big government" crowd. I believe he needs to keep his mouth shut and quit attempting to interfere with U.S. citizen's privacy.
In short, Michael Seringhaus, you can go fuck yourself.
Who do you think would best evade being added to a database? Lawful citizens or criminals?
This just in: Michael Seringhaus has had his grade in Constitutional Law retroactively changed from a B- to an F because of an Opinion Piece he wrote in The New York Times last Sunday. When contacted, his former teacher called him a complete idiot and thinks he probably cheated on his final exam. Mr. Seringhaus was not available for comment.
...have the boorish manners of a Yaley!
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
Wikipedia is reporting the FBIs estimated numbers
The actual numbers are much worse.
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jul/20/local/me-dna20
Among about 65,000 felons, there were 122 pairs that matched at nine of 13 loci. Twenty pairs matched at 10 loci. One matched at 11 and one at 12, though both later proved to belong to relatives.
Or just google: dna "arizona search"
Also realize that for most crime scene samples, it's generally sufficiently degraded that you are only going to get 9 loci out of it. It doesn't matter if you have 13 loci in your database, if the comparison sample only has 9 that can be amplified out using PCR.
-- Terry
Has anyone considered that this is a reductio ad absurdum like Jonathan Swift's "Modest Proposal"?
It always boils down on whether you want to live in a police state or not.
Of course, if everyone was tracked all the time, their DNA registered (cf big brother et al), then we'd catch most wrongdoers.
Are you ready to trade your private life, for that ?
Seriously.
Anyone that takes this kind of stuff seriously is also missing some fundamental basics in human rights.... and WHY they're rights.
Michael Seringhaus can share his own DNA. He can go fuck himself.
DNA samples are currently collected at birth. Look it up.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
Your DNA will be assimilated into the collective. Your life as you know it has ended. From now on, you will service us.
But you do get to wear a really cool monocle.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
First off, his technical points are correct. The fingerprints cannot be used to discover anything specific about you by themselves.
The second point is more complicated. Are we comfortable with being compelled by the government to carry around with us material that they can identify, correlate to discover where we travel, and then use to build a profile of our activities?
I'd say the second point is a duh. We already are. I have on me now a government ID, which I scan to get into a bunch of bars. Which I'm compelled to show on demand to a cop when driving. My car's license plate correlates to me, and lets any camera anywhere identify where I am. I guess I'd wonder how much easier could it get to them? I guess if every hair I dropped could identify me, that'd be a bit worse. But certainly not much.
If we care about the second point, we should really start showing it. You know. Stop driving. Ride a bike. Don't carry ID with you. Since I doubt we're going to do that, they've already won. We should just give them the DNA fingerprints so they stop wasting our tax dollars on doing it the more difficult way. :)
History is littered with the remains of societies that tried to use extreme measures to wipe out human characteristics that are inherent in our nature. The simple fact is that there will always be crime. Period. Criminal behavior is wired into our genome and is amplified depending on what type of society we live in. We can act to create a society that minimizes criminal behavior, implementing penalties while at the same time addressing inequities that increase criminal behavior. However, no measure can ever truly eliminate crime. We could become a totalitarian society, where big brother watches our every move, and still we would have crime. Less crime, possibly. But would the reduction in crime be worth the loss of freedom?
To me, taking a DNA sample for each citizen would be a step towards America becoming a totalitarian society, and a significant one at that. The potential for abuse would be huge, and we would still be unable to wipe out criminal behavior. This law student obviously doesn't have a good sense of history and of the abuses that are possible when citizens give up their rights in a Quixotic quest to wipe out traits inherent in human nature.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
That is all...
Mr. Seringhaus should EABOD and then DIAF. The government has too much information on the sheeple as it is.
First off this is a law student and one that I hope never graduates. The NYTimes published his article which shows an obvious angle of intent. Only our representatives should be speaking publicly on this sort of issue. That way we can at least vote them out or impeach them for incompetence for supporting such eugenic prone laws. It seems as if all of you haven't even considered that this guy does not and should not speak for society as a whole. That's what we have representatives for. It's bad enough we're all branded with numbers and forced to into financial servitude but to have some newbie wanna-be lawyer become a proponent of a system which will only lead to future genetic discrimination is beyond ridiculous.
Tbh my life is perfectly fine security-wise. I will most likely die a natural death, maybe die in a car accident, but that doesn't keep me from driving, the chance that I get murdered is neglible, so I feel safe. I'm not willing to take the risk that comes with storing all that data about people and blindly trusting in the result of DNA tests etc. People should stop going crazy.
"Aside from the ability in some cases to determine whether two individuals are closely related, DNA profiles have nothing sensitive to disclose."
Uh, isn't this a pretty big deal? I mean, a simple query of the database could find John McCain's illegitimate black baby...
It's like a bank which tells your neighbor how much is in your account and whom you paid by check: If banks were like that, people would keep their money at home or look for foreign banks who protect their privacy. If people feel that their government becomes too intrusive in their lives, they will become hostile towards government in general. Good government is government you can trust, not because you believe the government consists of trustworthy people, but because the government is limited in its powers and can only get the information it strictly needs for a narrowly defined set of purposes. Government must not have total control over its citizens. Total control is unstable.
... my DNA. They're just not going to get a reach-around while I'm delivering it.
Have gnu, will travel.
Here's an article on the drawbacks of current uses of DNA databases: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1003.bobelian.html.
An advocate who doesn't understand Capability Creep.
Can we start calling those guys Capability Creeps?
They can have my DNA when they pry it from my cold bloody dead hands ! LOL.
How long until someone comes up with a retrovirus that will change the length of your "random strings" without significantly altering the function of your genome?
Spot on, JWSmythe, spot on, citizen!
Plus, there's that privatization thing. Whenever anything becomes federalized, the next step is corporatized ("privatized"). Not only does this cede extraordinary power to the power elites, they have probable monopoly on genetic engineering knowledge, plus future tissue engineering for organ/limb replacement, etc., etc., ad infinitum. They forever work to keep their monopolies on capital, land and knowledge.
Harvard, YALE, Princeton, bullets, bombs and banks.
didnt obama go to yale? is it something in the water there or just communal sutpidity or complete disregard for the constitution? I can well imagine a world where DNA is taken at birth and used to convict criminals. what i can't imagine is how the government, so good at keeping all the other government programs working so well and of course, protected completely (do state department laptops, social security laptops/cds, va privacy data screwups come to mind for anyone?). yeah, please, just try to take my childs dna without my permission.
..who wear those super-expensive Burberry trench coats. Mofos.....
It isn't a simple "when the load factor reaches 6%, collisions become likely."
At 1000, the threshold is 38 (3.8% of output space)
At 10000, the threshold is 118 (1.2%)
If you'd like to claim that a given output space is unlikely to have any collisions, post some real calculations.
. . . in a bioinformatics lab, and I'll wager that he knows far more about biology (and, specifically, genomics) than most Slashdot readers. Search for his name on PubMed and you'll find a decent number of peer-reviewed articles (although more letters and opinion pieces - I got the impression that he was more interested in policy issues than research). I'm pretty sure he ended up receiving a PhD in biochemistry from Yale, although I left long before he would have finished.
That said, he's also Canadian, which may explain his relaxed attitude towards the privacy implications of an omniscient, paternalistic government. (He's not the only Canadian I've met with this attitude.) Those of us living in the US, where the partisans of the last administration continue to defend - no, demand - the torture and/or indefinite detention of terrorism suspects, may be more suspicious. I certainly don't think much of this idea. Hopefully this is one of the rare cases where libertarian-leaning individuals on both the left and right can cooperate enough to overcome the reflexive authoritarianism of most of the rest of the country, especially the law-and-order conservatives. (In fairness to conservatives, the last time I read about a similar proposal, it was being pushed by Tony Blair.)
You are wearing you "tech-hat" when you should be wearing your "law-hat".
300 instant possible suspects means that every case will get instantly thrown out - as soon as suspect's lawyer proves reasonable doubt.
300 suspects for every crime is pretty darn reasonable.
AAAH! But we can avoid that with better tech and more precise tests, you must think right about now - because you are still wearing your tech-hat.
And there we get to the issue of COST.
Sure, you can do cheap tests for everyone once, keep results in the database and then do cheap tests for the evidence at the scene.
But what happens when suspect's lawyer demands another test to be done, and this time you must do it with best tech available?
Hey! Their defendant may be going to the electric gas chamber! Don't you go cheap just because it may be taxpayer's money that is paying for the testing.
So what happens now?
Bingo! Now you must do at least 300 very expensive tests to prove that none of the other "possible suspects" matches the "main suspect's" DNA close enough.
But that is just peanuts compared to the legwork you now must do.
Cause to prove "beyond reasonable doubt" that the "main suspect" did do it - you now must also prove "beyond reasonable doubt" that 300 other people DIDN'T DO IT.
That is 300 parallel investigations. Loooong after the fact. You are now chasing 300 ghosts across the country, possibly even across the planet.
And unless you somehow had all those 300 people tied up in the basement with 24/7 surveillance, WHILE on the other side of the country you had someone do the crime under the same "24/7 surveillance" conditions - you can't really prove they DIDN'T do something.
Even then... since DNA can be planted MUCH EASIER than fingerprints - one or more of those 300 might still be connected with the crime in some way.
Maybe they've hired the "main suspect" to commit the crime for them. Gave him the tools/weapons.
"Everyone in the database" just means that lawyers would start getting criminals back out to the street using only a pocket calculator.
Hypothetical: Serial rapist is terrorizing New York City. Police have a DNA sample. With a database like this, they could pull a list of 300 people "who might be the serial rapist." They can rapidly go through that list and say "okay, in that 300 people, 50 of them live within 300 miles of New York City. Let's start interviewing those people, and see what turns up." If the matches are *accurate* (and this is the point you must really attack if you want to argue against this sort of a database), then it's overwhelmingly likely that one of those 50 people would turn out to be your criminal.
Except police doesn't send people to jail - lawyers and judges do. Police just investigates and makes arrests according to the accusation and the results of the investigation.
And we are back to prosecution trying to prove, in court, that 300 people couldn't ever do it.
Not even if they used cloning and teleportation and time travel.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
You are seriously naive...
Bad guys can fingerprint your junk mail, copy your fingerprint, use a copper "circuit board" etching kit from Radio Shack ($10) to build a fingerprint-stamp, and then paste your fingerprint wherever they want. Say in the victim's blood on some incriminating documents that show motive.
They can copy your signature onto such documents with the GIMP or Photoshop. When printed on a laser printer it'll look just like a legitimate photocopy. Bonus points if the documents hint at some deeper conspiracy cover-up that affects the innocent such as water/food/air contamination, lead paint, asbestos, etc. But porn or blackmail are always good too.
DNA is similarly trivially copied. Grab a cup, a fork, or perhaps hair from your shower. Once the bad guys have a sample, copying DNA is hardly difficult. Kids science kits let 'em do it in the kitchen for just a couple of bucks. Or just order the right compounds and build yourself an incubator.
Right now, without the master databases, there's no point to anyone trying something this evil. With a master database of fingerprints/DNA... Framing someone just got real easy...
it hardly matters at this point. obama has kept a huge # of bush laws in tact and is backing the riaa mpaa and acta, they allowed the patriot act to be renewed, etc.
i am neither a democan nor a republicrat. what is the difference between the two again? why are there only two in a supposedly open democracy/republic? i agree, the us is already a police state, they're just turning the screws now to finish locking everything in place, making it harder to leave (TSA harassment/longer more involved processes for getting a passport).
there are some really scary stories out there, check out the fema camps.
i'm very anti dna storage, obviously this data will become available to corporate wolves with insurance companies leading the pack.
Film at 11.
Seriously, who is this guy and why do I care what he says? Because he's at a prestigious university? Wooo, so was I, whoopy-fucking-doo.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
The simple reason is that the government already has trouble finding people when they have 1) a picture, 2) a last known address, and 3) their DNA on file from previous crimes. You know that whole FBI most wanted list? That would still be around if every one of the people on it had their DNA fingerprinted when they were born.
Expect to routinely get pricked at every security checkpoint or if you're declared a "person of interest", because the only way that DNA fingerprints help law enforcement identify fugitives is if they randomly sample anyone who might be a fugitive.
Why not just have everybody log in via a genetic print to web sites and so on? Then I would be able to know if you are the one that is questioning the ways of the government.
Just the Programmer P.O.V.
This ex-Yale medical school staff member proposes instead that Michael Seringhaus, Yale Law School student, attempt to collect samples from those who disagree with his proposal. Personally. By hand. And no, those of us who don't want this done will not have our arms tied down. Right about the time he gets in phlebotomy range he'll also be in manua-cranial impact range. I want to go first.
I'm making book on how many he'll attempt before he changes his mind. My money is in "one".
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Even if the odds of a match being 5 billion to 1 in a population of 214,597 there is a 99% chance that one person will have a match with another person.
See the wikipedia article on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem Birthday problem to check the math.
Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation!
There is simply no reason for genetic privacy except for fraud and deception of others. Yes. some people are born with defective genes but that does not imply that they are inferior in any way. They have no reason to be ashamed simply because their genetic conditions may lead to an early death or lack of function in life.
The catch is that people want to fool that insurance company, that potential employer, that future wife or husband. And why should they get away with that? If a person is doomed to fall apart at a young age then employers should not be tricked into training them to make them valuable in the future. Insurance companies should not be screwed. And potential mates should darned well know the health outlook of a mate and the implications it might have for children produced in such a union. Social justice and the right to know can not be trashed over some peoples' notions of privacy.
First, a few strands of junk DNA. Then, a few more, for verification. Until they work up to getting the whole thing - "for your convenience". As with babies' blood, in Texas, recently. Which they didn't care to mention they were doing, apparently.
I, of course, think it's a great idea - if applied to really big criminals. The ones who actually gleefully cooperate and contribute to wholesale collective mayhem, murder and destruction : corporate assets, big lawyers, bankers, financiers, lobbyists, etc.
Once caught, we discover that most of them studied at Yale, Harvard, and other institutions of similar standing. And exibit similarities in associations and activities there. Ergo, knowing that many of them shall be instrumental or cumplicit in mass crimes against people's rights and well-being, and against nature itself - they should all, upon entering those institutions, be thoroughly recorded - for future use in judicial proceedings in national or world courts.
And, when the database leaks, their mini-mes can be ... ah, never mind.
A DNA sample is taken of every child born globally, to test for potential genetic diseases.
This will happen. Don't pretend it won't. Eventually genome analysis will be reduced to a chip.
Regarding the obvious issue of genetic privacy, Seringhaus makes this argument: "Your sensitive genetic information would be safe.
Hahahahahaha.
First lesson of security, when it comes to computer databases: There is always someone out there smart enough to crack your security, and given sufficient profit motive, they will.
No matter how smart you are, there is, or will be, someone smarter. It's a basic lesson of history. If it weren't true, we wouldn't have computers.
I am NOT saying we should stop scientific process (as if "we-globally" could!) - but our society needs to evolve to realize it's potential. It will. Whether we survive it as a species, is another question entirely.
In the meantime...
sb
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Seriously -- have there been any proven instances where fingerprints have been used, maliciously, to frame an innocent person for a crime? I've seen it on television episodes. I've heard of corrupt forensic investigators framing people for murder and subjecting them to the death penalty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Gilchrist), but this has been through falsification of lab reports -- purported evidence that, had it been checked by others, would have been found lacking: IOW, instances where people abused trust, authority, and reputations to pin the crime on the wrong person.
Yet despite being around since Mark Twain first wrote about using fingerprints for crime solving, I haven't heard of a single instance where fingerprint evidence was used to *frame* an innocent person. The closest I've heard is about exonerating fingerprint evidence being intentionally withheld. (Gilchrist sent Curtis McCarthy to death row for 20 years; there was a bloody footprint on the victim's body and a full set of fingerprints on the victim's broken & entered window that matched the actual perp and would have exonerated McCarthy.)
Of course there are obvious and glaring problems with the Yale kid's idea. Yes I heard what happened in the UK, and was not at all surprised by it. But knee jerk OMG GATTACA!!! rejections tend to overlook the non-malicious and possibly beneficial uses of such technology and preclude possible approaches that might reconcile both kinds of concerns. Yes it would present considerable and very troubling privacy risks. Yes of course it would be a valuable target for misappropriation. However the usefulness of such a collection would truly be quite useful for crime investigations -- specifically in instances where unmatched DNA evidence is available. There are a number of unsolved murders and rapes that are currently at exactly that place. The best we can do at this point is hope that these people kill or rape again, but manage to get caught the next time.
The cons might outweigh the pros here, but they do not neutralize them.
The 'Scientific American' Amateur Scientist CDROM released a few years back has as one of the experiments how to multiply DNA from a sample, using some biotech solutions available by mail-order. It wasn't that difficult for them to do.
Now just imagine if there was someone who wanted to frame you for a crime, they would obtain some of your DNA (hair sample etc), amplify, put it in a spray bottle and go around spraying door handles, coffee cups and the like. Try explaining your way out of that one.
He thinks the people who break laws are more dangerous than the people who write them.
I went to a statistical genetics talk by a Yale postdoc and it was almost completely lies about the state-of-the-art, invented to prop up his trivial result.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
wow, this is insane; what AILS people these days... like I TRUST THE GOVERNMENT with my PERSONAL information?!?
Who gives a shit about some douche nobody talking out of his ass? (Especially a law student. You know: The new blood of RIAA lawyers and politicians...)
First build a reputation, then you can say something.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
That Yale student needs to retake high school math. No story here, move on please. He absolutely clueless as to how many matches there are expected to be in the U.S. population alone, never mind if the geni.., ahem, idiots in Europe picked up on that great idea. The extraditions would be endless. The airlines would need to schedule extra flights.
People watch too much junk TV shows and think whatever they see there is real. Just today on the news I saw some idiot at the grocery store hitting kids at random. The surveillance video was so low resolution and artifact laden to the point where you could hardly tell the "person" was in fact a human -- you couldn't even tell whether he was black or white! Yet the dickheads speaking Queen's very own think putting cameras on the street solves the crime problem.
You ain't gonna see shit by looking at the street with PAL/NTSC cameras. To get anything like a recognizable face when you have a single camera looking down at a length of public street/sidewalk, you need a 4K digital cinema camera. If those were ordered in batches of 1000, we're talking $10k for one camera+optics. Or $100M for one order. Apparently they need tens of thousands of those -- yeah right.
So, if government people in charge can't figure something as comparatively simple as a surveillance camera system requirements, you think there's ANYONE in ANY position of power who has enough clue to even BEGIN to understand the implications of using DNA fingerprinting? Sorry Winnetou, this requires some solid, science-based common sense. People who have it are nowhere near politics (with scant exceptions). And for a good reason.
At least with cameras, any politician dickhead can do an experiment: go to the store, fetch a $1k HD camera, see how much of a picture you get. So you'd think it's easy enough not to be fooled by the vendors, right?
Now somehow you can't get a DNA fingerprinter at Costco just yet and run a bunch of tests on a 100M population, just to be sure. Thus such things are absolutely out of reach of common sense of politicians, and most -- like 99.99% of voting public.
You have every reason to be scared, especially since that Yale student just proved my point: his genious idea was picked up by the NYT hook, line and sinker. And some people on /. argue it's somehow good? WHAT THE FUCK happened to you people. It's not all that hard to imagine what's wrong with the idea. Just don't read what the media publish about it, do some goddamned research yourself. Jeez.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
You don't need any skin cells. It's fairly easy to sequence artificial, synthetic mRNA or such that would completely drown out anything present at the crime scene, and have any fingerprint you desire.
The problem is that we're not dealing with a real hash function here.
The procedure used to extract genetic markers in one way in the sense that you cannot reproduce your whole genome from those markers.
But it's absolutely trivial to come up with synthetic genetic material that will yield the same "hash".
The use of the word hash here is very misleading. Genetic markers are NOT hashes. They are croppings. Imagine you have a 1000 megabit image, and you cut a few short line segments out of it. That's what a genetic fingerprint is. It's rather easy to come up with another image that will provide the same fingerprint.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Absolutely nothing in this article is new. Not the analysis, not the ideas, not anything (maybe the timeliness of the intro is 'new', or more accurately, 'news').
But if you're at law school at Yale, and you're involved in some on-campus bio-informatics group, then you get to have your name put in the Times?
This is something that's always bugged me about the Times quite a bit. Neither WSJ nor WaPo are as clearly enamored with Ivy elitism.
...If your government is trustworthy, which is why it should never happen.
*runs*
Yeah, barring a few crazies, the average street criminal just wants your wallet and other valuables you happen to be carrying (he may rough you up a bit, but cops here might beat you up too if they suspect you of stuff).
I'm not sure about how it is for the rest of you elsewhere, but my corrupt government (Malaysia) has misspent far more of my tax money than the average street criminal has robbed from me.
Just look at various bank robbery stats too for perspective. Compare how many bank robbers take per year with a bunch of wallstreet bonuses.
And how many do robbers kill? "don't drive while on the phone" and better driver training might save far more lives.
Seriously - why isn't the header for this story "Some Guy says something outrageous".
Since this guy is no-one in any position to implement this sort of policy, leave him to his distasteful opinion.
SofaMan -- Occasionally Battling Evil With His Mighty Powers Of Indolence.
Genetic information is just a number and a number never prevented crime. It may help solve it, sure. But it will never prevent crime, never, ever, ever. Social, moral, ethical and ecomonic understanding and change will be the only thing that lowers or stamps out crime as you know it, but it will never remove crime 90% or even 80%. The crime you see and the crime reported is a far lower value of the actual crime that is commited.
When you and the general population understand this, then you will have a better understanding on how to deal with it. I'm sorry Yale-guy, but your theory is bunk junk!
Huh? People are saying this is a bad idea without knowing this has been happening for years?! Most people in the know already ugh.. "know" this, but we don't say anything because we're kooks and conspiracy theorists. DNA Deception
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
After less than 15 decades, all crime would disappear. Guaranteed.
Does every idiot deserve mention on Slashdot?
Regarding the obvious issue of genetic privacy, Seringhaus makes this argument: "Your sensitive genetic information would be safe. A DNA profile distills a person’s complex genomic information down to a set of 26 numerical values, each characterizing the length of a certain repeated sequence of 'junk' DNA that differs from person to person. Although these genetic differences are biologically meaningless — they don’t correlate with any observable characteristics
...as far as we know today.
The obvious question is if we will imprison everyone to end the discrimination against people who were found guilty in a court of law.
And what about people who we discriminate against breaking bones by making them wear a cast?
It's becoming increasingly evident that the teaching of History has been discarded in America's centers of "higher" learning.
Orwell was an amateur.
Regards;
After the grilling here on Slashdot and all of the bad press, this guy might as well write "I'm an Idiot" in red crayon on the top of his resume. The lack of judgment demonstrated by Michael Seringhaus really is appalling; I don't see how any law firm would want to hire him after this.
A YLS Constitutional Law Professor argued the very same thing in the NYT.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/07/opinion/a-search-for-justice-in-our-genes.html
They've been doing this to American citizens for years. If you were born in a US hospital, or went in for tests, they probably already have your DNA on file. Of course, the government will never abuse the power they have. Thrust them. Hard.
Yale has Skull & Bones Society right?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Agreed, trust is a quantitative grant based in part on the probability of betrayal. My point is that the probability of betrayal is high, easily high enough that I don't want to surrender my God-given right to privacy, my genetic information, or be imaged nude when I travel.
Even in the United States of America, given our track record.
Anyone who believes that this is the land of the free, or the home of the brave, is a fool.