Slashdot Mirror
Things You Drink Can Be Used To Track You
sciencehabit writes with an intriguing story about the potential of figuring out where people have been by examining their hair: "That's because water molecules differ slightly in their isotope ratios depending on the minerals at their source. Researchers found that water samples from 33 cities across the United State could be reliably traced back to their origin based on their isotope ratios. And because the human body breaks down water's constituent atoms of hydrogen and oxygen to construct the proteins that make hair cells, those cells can preserve the record of a person's travels. Such information could help prosecutors place a suspect at the scene of a crime, or prove the innocence of the accused." Or frame someone by slipping them water from every country on the terrorist watchlist.
That's tough to swallow...
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
Such information could help prosecutors place a suspect at the scene of a crime, or prove the innocence of the accused.
How could you possibly prove someone's innocence this way? You could only be sure that the person in question had not drank any tap water from that city.
coffee and other bean-based-products in the office.
I've got a big collection of bottled water from a lot of different countries because I like the labels on them. I see a potential use for them now.
the human body breaks down water's constituent atoms of hydrogen and oxygen to construct the proteins that make hair cells
You're saying that walking out in the rain makes my hair grow??? WOW
Let's hope there aren't any murders near the Coca-cola bottling plant!
My toilet telling asking me... "How was your trip to Tokyo?"
or the next version that checks the stool... "Rosanna the cow hopes that she was a tasty treat!"
So what's to stop you from carrying around water from New York to thwart anyone from trying to identify you via this method. Or drinking bottled water for that matter.
so we now have the time to concentrate on tracking people by the water they drink.
This is so super awesome, I'm going to move to a 3rd word slave state to ensure I get the most oppressive experience possible.
If this method could tell us if it rained on your wedding day?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
That's why I only drink liquid tin foil.
Who's laughing now?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/england/bristol/10332975.stm
Basically some bones from a German cathedral could be places as having lived in England due to isotopes in the teeth.
This helped confirm the bones were of a 10th century English princess.
This may be forensically useful, but don't think of it like a fingerprint or a DNA match. There's only one degree of freedom here -- whether the water is isotopically "heavy" or "light". All of a person's water co9nsumption history is mixed up into one number.
So you won't be able to tell the difference between, say, a person who lived all year in Illinois (with a moderate isotope ratio) and a person who flies back and forth between Montana and Florida (who'd have a mix of "heavy" and "light" water in their system.)
This has been done before: in the investigation of the poisoning of Alexander Livinenko, the traces of Polonium 210 left wherever the poisoner(s) went gave the UK authorities a very detailed trail to work with - one that not only showed the exact teapot used for the poisoning, but also provides a fingerprint of where the Po-210 was produced and at what date.
It's quite a fascinating story:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Litvinenko_poisoning#Polonium_trails
Simply substitute Po-210 for something not deadly and you have a wonderful tracking mechanism.
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
bottle of spiked evian, 4chan's /b anons go from sending justin bieber to North Korea, to sending justin bieber to Cuba.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I can see this science being abused. Whether your body contains a certain chemical signature or not is still circumstantial evidence, but increasingly our justice system (like many countries) are using it to give carte blanche access to a person's private information and life. Worse, if the request is later determined to have been falsified or exaggerated, the evidence gathered as a result of that request is still considered valid for the persecution of not just the original crime, but anything else uncovered as a result.
Thanks to shows like CSI and confidence in science, we want DNA samples, hair, urine, and a billion other things -- and believe that their presence somehow proves or disproves guilt. This is despite the fact that such evidence can be manufactured with ease -- the prime example being Photoshop for photographs, but virtually every technology you have around you can be used against you in some fashion or manipulated to imply or explicitly state something that is not true. Yet the courts rarely ask that samples be tested for contamination, or refuse to re-hear cases where the lab clearly and undeniably compromised the results.
It used to be that testimony was the primary vehicle in obtaining a conviction. Now we're increasingly using evidence that neither the judge, jury, defense, or even prosecution fully understands to take away other people's freedoms, sometimes under false pretext. While this particular technology is neither good nor bad, the system that will incorporate its use may be fundamentally flawed.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
will never hold up in court.
"Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without your accordion." ~General Norman Schwarzkopf
considered minerals?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
General Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, have you ever seen a Commie drink a glass of water?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Well, no, I can't say I have.
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
Abby already used it to locate Agent Lee's 'daughter' - old news..
And what if the minerals at the source of the water are appreciably the same? Reliably being tracked back to a handful of collection sites across the US doesn't exactly equate to "placing someone at the scene of a crime".
If you look at the heat map included with the article, the entirety of Florida is indicated as having the same expected water composition. Similarly for most of Texas, and wide swaths of the Midwest / Central US.
So if someone commits a crime in Tallahassee, and I buy bottled water at Disney World, I must have done it. The same goes for proving of innocence. If I drink only bottled water that comes from a neighboring state, because it tastes better, is that sufficient evidence that I didn't murder the guy, because I was obviously in Minnesota at the time?
I'd be interested in knowing the rate at which the water is added to the hair, and how finely it can be read. Can we tell if someone drinks water with different compositions each day for a month? Can we tell what water he drank last week?
I'm just going to put on my tinfoil hat and start shaving my head...then no one will be able to tell what kind of water I drink.
Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
"There a murder in Atlanta, and I can prove from your hair sample and this expensive test that you were in Atlanta at some point!"
"Or you proved that I drank a bunch of Coke bottled in Atlanta, and that you like to waste tax payer dollars on silly tests which prove nothing."
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
And because the human body breaks down water's constituent atoms of hydrogen and oxygen to construct the proteins that make hair cells, those cells can preserve the record of a person's the travels of things people drink.
Fixed that for you. This would work if we didn't ship products throughout the country. Get pulled over for a DUI, "Couldn't have been me, check my hair! I've been in Fort Collins!"
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
considering that many people dont drink tap water, one can easily have been "in florida" by drinking a bottle of zephyrhills water...
i wonder how drinking soda would affect this
researchers have used this technique to uncover the shocking truth that a small hamlet in southern maine is actually the residence of tens of millions of people
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=poland%20spring
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Baldness FTW
... a water bottling plant that bottles water from every major municipalty and mixes them together.
I mean, sure, the bottled water will have the same signatures, but what is to say you didn't drink your own bottled water wherever you went? Or things like bottle sodas, and drinks. The best you might be able to do is say that they had drink which used water from XYZ location. It is a far stretch to say that they were in XYZ when they drank it. Heck, there are stores around me which sell bottled water from around the world, and I know I have even tried a few, but I never left my home town, yet it according to this "evidence" I have been to Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Ukraine, Ireland, and Poland...
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Some bottled water is tap water, I wonder if that could confuse the method.
That is quite unnecessary; the officials in all Western states are working hard to bring the 3rd world here. All we have to do is lose a few more jobs and repeal minimum wage laws and I think we're all set.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Hair grows at a rate of about a couple millimeters per week. Your frequent flier would have striped hair.
I don't know what's the minimum amount of hair needed for this test, but it's certainly possible to cut hair samples smaller than what it grows during an airplane trip from Montana to Florida.
What a bunch of crap science, how many people in the real world drink enough "water" (pop, juice, etc) from a specific source to leave a protein imprint large enough to be reliable. Throw in bottled water, bottled/canned pop, canned soups/foods (mostly water), varying metabolisms, etc and this "technology" quickly loses all credibility in my opinion. Looks like just another faulty "anti criminal/terrorist" technology meant to make its creators a hefty crate of cash at taxpayer expense.
so getting a haircut before a trial is now considered destroying evidence
The airport variaty: Has someone else given you water to drink?
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head
I spend quite a bit of time in Jalisco, Mexico.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
We are approaching maximum bogosity.
History is so yesterday!
Thank you precious years of whiskey & Guiness. I can write this trip off my bucket list and they'll have a hard time disproving it.
So, if I drink Fiji Water consistently, they will never be able to prove that I was anywhere near the crime scene?
COOL!
Yet one more thing to fear.
At least now it makes sense why we're not allowed to bring liquids on planes.
Report your neighbor to the local homeland security office if you suspect he may be drinking unpatriotic isotopes.
I only drink bottled water. Ha ha ha!
I've never left the US, Canada and Mexico, but my hair would say I spend a little time each year in Speyside, Scotland drinking water that is anywhere from 12-18 years old, usually Macallan.
To be fair, they do attempt to address that, though they do so only in the average case. Actually a big part of the paper is exactly that: an attempt "to assess the links between purchase location and the isotopic composition of beverages" and given that purchase location may not be the same as bottling location, whether or not "these beverages could have a confounding impact on the overall isotopic composition of a consumer’s fluid intake".
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
They can install sensors that can collect samples from the bathrooms at airports (or onboard airplanes themselves) as everyone needs to go. They can gather the location data and attach it to video showing who went into the bathroom during that time possibly detecting hostiles... If they really wanted to track specific regions, I wonder if they could they add something to the local water supply to give it a very specific isotope ratio?
OK, so all you need is an identical twin gullible enough to drink water given to him by you during a trip you bought for him in NYC.... then you go and assassinate the president after having given your twin Washington DC water to drink while you guzzle NYC water at the scene of the crime. Do a quick getaway and finger your twin. The jury will convict in a new york minute.
0.05% of the atoms in my body are replaced by water I drank at the scene of a crime, and the CSIs think they're going to ignore the other 99.95%?
There is such a thing as contempt of court, you know.
Your honor, this person's isotope levels prove conclusively that he has actually lived in Scotland for the past 5 years....
If you only drink mainstream bottled beverages, wouldn't that rule out any local factor in what you are drinking? "Well, he looks like he was drinking some beer brewed in Ireland..." Similarly, Dasani/Sparkletts/Arrowhead all have relatively large sales areas, don't they?
This is already done with birds. I worked at a bird observatory for a little while. We could catch birds in nets, clip a small feather from their wing, and send the samples off to be analyzed. We were able to tell a lot about the travels of our birds based on isotope ratios in their feathers.
Imported, domestic, bottled somewhere across the continent, Rocky Mountain Spring Water, whatever.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Congratulations for coming up with the same obvious problem everyone else did. Did you, by any chance, read the part of the paper where they discuss this problem and its ramifications and then test how well the isotope ratios in tap water function as a proxy for the isotope ratios in purchased bottled beverages?
I'd say the "identifying where a bottle of water is from" part may have some scientific validity. Assuming that the isotope ratios in the oxygen molecules in your blood match the water you're drinking is more dubious - you're also breathing air, which may have different ratios, plus your body would also be exchanging liquids between cells and bloodstream, so there's a long slow storage period. How that relates by the time the stuff gets out to your hair is even more speculative. The real question is how much was speculation by the scientists, and how much by the reporter.
But yeah, terrorists are going to start drinking bottled water, and the real trick is that you'll be able to identify terrorists by all the water bottles in the trash. Or, wait, was that terrorists or tourists? Hard to tell the difference sometimes...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
...provide evidence that I've been living in Ireland all these years?
Well, one of Polish kings, Leszek Bialy, sent the pope an opinion of his medics that claimed that he suffers from an allergy to water, and, because during a campaign in Palestine an uninterrupted supply of beer or wine would be hard to assure, he can't go to the crusade there.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
... I only drink distilled water.
(Yes, I really do. I don't like the taste of mineralized "drinking" or tap water, and contrary to marketing the mineralization has no health benefits.)
As long as I order Saratoga water when I'm out of town, I would appear to forensics as having never left home. And I'll shave my head for good measure.
The human body does *not* "[break] down water's constituent atoms of hydrogen and oxygen to construct the proteins ..."
Not, that is, unless I misunderstood the definition of "nuclear biology".
Or frame someone by slipping them water from every country on the terrorist watchlist.
Small detail, but it still peeves me:
Countries aren't on the terrorist watch list, people are.
Countries are on the State Sponsors of Terror list.
Fixed that for you.
You not only fixed it, you also exploded the heads of at least a dozen grammar nazis.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
For obvious reasons bald is the next rebellious hair style.
I find being offended by me offensive.
Drink only bottled water, what are you hiding?
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
When I was on a ship in the USMC back in '77, an officer told me that the Pepsi cans I was throwing overboard could float indefinitely, allowing the Russkies to track us via radar. I was shown how to rip the can in the middle to guarantee it sank.
Yea, it was supposed to have strikethrough, but I stubmitted before preview.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Neutron Water! For that fresh-from-the-powerplant glow!
huh. I gotta stop drinking this bottled water. I reside in Colorado but could get tied to activities "deep" in Southern California.
Keep Doing Good.
He leadeth me past the distilled waters.
--
Doctor to patient with carboy on lap: When I said I wanted a sample of your water, I did not mean tap water.
and no one will want to follow you.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Isotope-tracing methods have been existing for a long time. My thesis work (1987) concerned the development of an isotope-sensitive analytical method. We used it for analyzing fly ashes dispersed in the atmosphere by power plants. I remember that by looking at the isotope fingerprints of the dust found in a few cubic meters of air we could pinpoint which plant in Europe was emitting it.
that poland spring is on top of a dump?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland_spring#Controversies
that's one of those factoids that is either a 100% true hilarious joke on us all or a massively bold faced smear, i can't decide which
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Having actually worked in next door to a oxygen isotope lab, and having seen just how painstakingly difficult it is to do Oxygen mass spectrometry correctly...
I'm not worried about this getting abused any time soon.
Unless you're drinking from a well this can't place you at an exact location. And it certainly won't place you there at a precise time.
The original paper hardly discusses the hair-tracking aspect (concentrates on describing how different cities are indeed "separable"), but it refers to an earlier paper, http://www.pnas.org/content/105/8/2788.full , where actually there is a time diagram extracted from one single hair.
The diagram shows the isotopic signature along the hair, checked at 4-weeks intervals, for a guy which went from China to the US: there is a clear break in the curve at the time of the moving.
But the timescale is also clearly at least one month (below, you just stay within the noise).
So, if you cross the States one single day to kill him, and have a drink at the airport before flying back, this will definitely not be detected ;-)
OTOH this may help you proof you definitely came to visit me a full month last year...
Herve S.