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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."
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.
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."
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 think you a word.
Which would be great if such fingerprints didn't run into the birthday paradox.
The chances of any 2 random individuals sharing the same profile is tiny.
The chances of getting a lot of matches in a large population are extremely high.
Also those odds are not entirely independent, second cousin has a higher chance of matching with me than a random stranger so crank up the odds a little more.
And thanks to all the CSI crap DNA evidence is like magical-never-wrong fairy dust.
-They find DNA at the scene.
-Birthday paradox comes into play
-I happen to be in the same city at about the right time.
-lazy prosecutor
-I'm fucked.
I have nothing to gain from adding my DNA to such a database and plenty to lose.
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?
several billion to one?
If the chances of any 2 individuals matching is 5,000,000,000 to 1
Then in a population of 214,597 people there's a 99% chance of at least 1 pair matching.
in a population of 300,000,000 there's going to be a significant number of doubles.
Having it be a DNA instead of a regular fingerprint isn't the problem.
Having digtalised fingerprints(actual strings of bytes) stored about me that can be legally claimed to be me, regardless of how they are gathered, transmitted, handled is.
He's looking for a technical solution to the problem that the government can't be trusted with identifying information about anyone. Bad enough when it's convicted criminals(you can say they earned some of it). But ip theft occurs, with just what amounts to near-public information. Just how bad will it get when people can just copy a string of bytes and say it's you?
He's trying to solve the wrong problem, because the right problem is NP-Hard, if not unsolvable.
How can all those clerks, police officers, etc.. have access to what amounts to identifying information, and how can we secure it, how can we make sure it's not used for police officers "fishing" for someone to convict?
Those are very hard questions, the answers haven't seen much public debate, and his solution addresses none of them, only the "if your identity leaks, you've also lost the privacy lock on your medical file".
If someone were out to get you, either for reasons that you did something, or you just happened to be there, it would become a reliable way to convict the person of choice.
"Your honor, we have on record sequence 121221212122...111. for Mr. Smythe, as stored in numerical format for his DNA. At the crime scene we also have the DNA matching 121221212122...111.
Mr. Smythe was in the country at the time. He also does not have a viable alibi, as he says he was at home, alone, sleeping at 0400 on March 15, 2010.
We have produced 4 reliable witnesses, all with the local law enforcement community, who will swear under oath that he was observed within 100 meters of the location of the crime.
And finally we have this piece of mail, with Mr. Smythe's fingerprints on it, which was found in the parking lot outside of the site of the crime."
The piece of mail? Junk mail I threw in the trash, that they moved to the crime scene.
The "reliable witnesses"? Those willing to testify to finish off the case.
And the DNA evidence? The sequence number was pulled from my record, and the "DNA expert" simply testified to the fact that it was mine.
Depending on where you are, the levels of corruption go deep. Having my DNA on file definitely doesn't make me feel very good about future legal problems that are not of my own doing.
When the defendant wins on the basis of DNA testing, it's usually that they have an unknown sample, and the defendants DNA is also an unknown sample, and then they don't match. I wouldn't want to make it easier for them, to already know what mine is, and ensure that mine will be what is found. It doesn't actually have to be mine, they just have to testify that it matched. Expert testimony is only as trustworthy as the expert.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.