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Dutch Police Ask 8000+ Citizens To Provide Their DNA
sciencewatcher writes "In an attempt to solve a rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl, the Dutch police have asked 8080 men to provide their DNA. All these people lived 5 km or less from the crime scene at the time of the murder. This reopened cold case is the first large-scale attempt not to hunt the rapist and killer but to locate his close or distant male relatives. All data gathered will be destroyed after the match with this particular murder. There seems to be great public support for this attempt." Shades of The Blooding.
It's clearly for the children.
That is what this boils down to. There is no "right" answer, but citizens of each country answer the question diferently.
"We'll destroy the DNA afterwards, we PROMISE...."
I don't generally like the idea of giving DNA samples to anyone. However, if the authorities are very direct and up-front about it, and provide me with a signed statement that the records will be destroyed after each sample is "cleared", then I'd do it in this case.
I'll always trust the entity who asks for something over the entity which does the same thing in secret without permission.
Even so, I sincerely doubt that this will lead to the perpetrator, for obvious reasons.
...but only if it was a legitimate rape and murder.
I can only see this as a slippery slope.
why not 6km away, 10km, etc? That is not that large of an area all things considered. It would be roughly the size of a small town. Who is to say the perp didn't live the next town over or was a nomad of sorts. Yes I know they say it is to possibly locate relatives, but how often would close enough match cause them to accuse said match.
Also who would trust their government to "destroy" the data when they are done with it. Yes they may very well destroy the samples but you can bet your next paycheck that it will stay stored on some backup somewhere for future use.
Fortunately, I'm a 6502 man, not an 8080 man. (But then I'm not Dutch either.)
Convince people they are being attacked, and they'll give you anything you want. Happens every day. Textbook case, ripped right out of that book written by the little general.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
All data gathered will be destroyed after the match with this particular murder.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
bullshit.
As I understand it, the phrase "legitimate rape" was intended to refer to forcible sexual assault, as opposed to making a rape claim on the basis of having retroactively withdrawn consent for a previous sexual contact. Sure, a rape-and-murder like this is obviously forcible, but for claims of rape without murder or other bodily harm, what's the best way to distinguish forcible rape from "oh wait, that wasn't really consent"?
Do you trust the organization which is founded on a special "right" to employ physical force against you (or threat thereof) as their means?
Common sense tells me that any person who initiates physical force against me is doing it for his own benefit, rather than mine. That's just plain human nature. What makes government so different? What makes them exempt from the laws of human nature? Certainly a man cannot volunteer to be subject to coercion, any more than he can coerce another man to volunteer. The two modes of human interaction, voluntary association and coercion, are polar opposite and mutually exclusive. That is what gives them meaning.
This is a good article on the problems with fishing expeditions like this. Basically, the farther you cast the net, the greater the chance of false positives. What's worse, if there's just one false positive, it becomes next to impossible to argue your innocence because people look at the improbability of a single person being a false positive instead of the probability that there are false positives.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
DNA screening only looks at a few characteristics. Take two random people, and there is about a 1-in-7000 chance that their DNA profiles will match. If you take the DNA profiles of 8000 people, it is quite likely that one of them will match the criminals profile. Meanwhile, the criminal will almost certainly find some way to avoid giving a sample. So you get to put some innocent person through hell, and for what?
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
>> Dutch police have asked 8080 men to provide their DNA
Are the police two blondes in very short uniforms? I've seen that video, and it needs to be marked NSFW.
"All data gathered will be destroyed after the match with this particular murder." Governments are notorious for not destroying the data they are suppose to destroy like this. The only way I would believe it is
1) there was a law of some sorts that forces them to
2) a penalty if they dont.
3) a law that it cant ever be used against you except for this specific crime
Colin Pitchfork was the first person ever to be convicted on DNA evidence. That was as a result of voluntary mass-screening and suppose it's natural for the Dutch police to follow suit especially if they have no leads.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
I wouldn't provide my DNA for any reason, period. Government have proven that they can't be trusted to do what they say. There is no reason to believe that they will change now or ever.
Scientists know -- and have been saying -- that DNA is far weaker evidence than prosecutors have tried to paint for the last few decades. But really more to the point: even if a conviction were made, it is not worth the loss of freedom and potential abuse this procedure involves.
"That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved." -- Benjamin Franklin, letter to Benjamin Vaughan, March 14, 1785.
First, announcing this pretty much ensures the guilty party is never found. It would be like going on Twitter and saying "Hey Mr./Mrs. (Name of criminal), the police are going to #raid your house tomorrow."
Second, you only THOUGHT you had the right to privacy.
sudo make me a sandwich
Indeed, the Americans beat the Dutch to it -- we need only look back a few years at the Christa Worthington murder at Cape Cod, MA (which some of you may not consider part of the USA) where the whole population of Truro was subject to DNA testing.
This reopened cold case is the first large-scale attempt not to hunt the rapist and killer but to locate his close or distant male relatives.
If they just want to find close or distant relatives of the rapist, why not ask women to do so? 23andMe does a spit test, so it's not like you need to ask for semen. Or are they looking for something in particular on the Y-chromosome?
The only way I can ensure I'm not falsely accused because of the non-zero possibility of a false match due to error or due to coincidence (it *is* statistically possible for the markers that are typically used) is to ensure that I don't have a sample in the pool being considered in the first place.
I sympathize with the desire to solve the crime, but this is an error-prone way to do things.
If the purpose is "to locate his close or distant male relatives" just create a take-home "red light/yellow light/green light" does-it-match kit and invite those who score "yellow or red" to call the police.
There, now only my wife will know I'm as red as red can be. Darn, one more body to get rid of....
Of course several men will decline these tests.
captcha: gardened
If you're checking for close relatives, testing women is just as valid and will give you a larger set of samples.
The crime described in this story is truly horrific, bu as a supporter of personal rights I would only submit such evidence in one form and it would involve me standing up, the officers on their knees, and would require at least four tissues to wipe away the excess.
So the moral of the story is - if you are going to kill someone in the Netherlands, kill someone at least 10 km away from you.
"But this one goes to 11!"
No-one will be forced to comply, the department said.
So if the actual perp were one of the men asked to provide evidence, then he need only say no, and meanwhile 8000 others have to submit to DNA testing.
Im sorry but you will have to qualify for our Platinum Club to even see those odds (aka the Whales Club).
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
If they are truly using this to find relatives of the killer and not the killer himself, why are they only asking for DNA of males in the area? Admittedly I know nothing about tracing relatives through DNA samples so maybe there's a logical reason.
I read this "All data gathered will be destroyed after the match with this particular murder" and immediately think bullshit.
As a rule, once they have this, it never seem to go away.
I would never submit to this unless I was required to -- this is a fishing expedition. Anybody who submits is probably innocent, and anybody who refuses is going to be treated as if they're guilty with something to hide.
Yes, this is terrible. But asking everyone to submit exclusionary DNA because they've ran out of places to look ... well, I find that to be a really scary precedent.
The next step of course would be to just simply have everyone's DNA on file just in case they ever needed it.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Too many laws are written without stated punishments, which means that the government breaks the law without any consequences.
If they explicitly stated that if they failed to destroy my DNA records within 3 months, they would pay me me cash, I would do it. Probably for a minimum payment of $1,000 dollars.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Fourth amendment, protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Although if you're asked and not required to provide a sample, I suppose it's not technically a violation.
Oh, and the shooting and suing part. That's just for fun.
We already know who did it
Sure, the cops will throw your DNA away. After you've been framed for the next crime they're too stupid to actually solve.
Bonus: refusing no doubt will put you on a permanent 'Persons of Interest' list.
Um, no. This in America is unreasonable search and seizure, and people have a presumption of innocence.
In Canada there's a reasonable expectation we don't get searched for no good reason, and that comes from British common law.
This is intended to keep the government a little further away and not be able to crap all over you.
Do you really believe that this wouldn't be infringing on your rights for the police to make you submit a DNA sample to prove you didn't commit a crime? Governments tend to collect for one purpose, and then retain indefinitely and use for any other purpose they see fit.
Unless you have evidence to suggest I did this, I'm sure as hell not going to voluntarily submit to this kind of testing without being compelled. And, quite frankly, "because we've ran out of places to look" isn't going to be a good enough reason and will get you told to piss off.
So maybe you think it wouldn't violate your rights to have your DNA on file just because they ran out of places to look. But I wouldn't give it to them voluntarily.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
So now that the police have openly asked for this the criminal would have to be brain dead stupid to stick around.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
And it's illegal. It even says so in very beginning of our Grundgesetz (basically the part that is equivalent to your constitution).
Didn't stop Stasi 2.0 professional asshole Schäuble from suggesting and partially implementing such Nazi schemes. Oh well, if he weren't already beaten into a wheelchair, somebody would pretty much guarantee that nowadays. Him an his Feminazi (Not in the Limbaugh "sense". In the sense that she acts like a woman brought up by the Nazi youth movements.) sidekick "Von der Leyen".
riiiiiiight.
The police dont expect the perp to provide DNA - they hope the father/brother etc will provide theirs, as they are innocent, but the DNA match will be close enough to take a hard look at the extended family......
You are going to get fucked. It's a very simple thing: they have your DNA, all they need now is to place it somewhere later on to link you to another unsolved mystery and then somebody gets a bonus and a medal and you get to spend many years in a comfortable jail cell.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
There is not great public support for this. Outside of that podunk village there's plenty of people, me included, who would go tell the authorities to go fuck themselves. Slippery slope this is. Destroy data? yeah right. They've also said, only after the case has been solved. What if its not solved? And is data ever really destroyed?
On the radio and in the media they're just not playing the sound bites of people who refuse, they're only playing clips of people who say "what's the big deal if you have nothing to hide". The old line secret police everywhere like to use.
I for one will tell the justice department to shove it if they ask me for this.
Read what I mean, not what I wrote.
So are they going to check all people who moved between 1999 and now also? People who emigrated?
The Dutch MPS is relatively powerless and the current one hasn't done a lot to impress. Sure, compared to such wonders of freedom like the former USSR, the former GDR or the current USA, Dutch politicians may appear almost saint-like, but they were in fact in favor of ACTA, the second Gulf War and plenty of other things that /. was outraged about in the recent past. If anything, proving loyalty to the EU and the NATO allies seems to be more important than a lot of the public news stories teh goggles come up with. I guess that's what you get with politicians, no matter where you live.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Someday very soon it will be required for all of us....for our own protection you see. And we will all be required to have transponders in our cars and carry GPS-equipped cell phones.
This in America is unreasonable search and seizure, and people have a presumption of innocence.
And similar tactics have been viewed as legal by the Supreme Court in the US too. Police are allowed to ask for you to volunteer information. There are far shadier cases that are considered legal, where the police haven't made it clear it was a voluntary thing. It would violate unreasonable search if they forced you to do it when you declined, but otherwise, they can ask nicely (or rudely) and it is up to you to decide which route is best for you.
Suddenly the USA seems more sane than Europe or Canada.
People shrug it of where I live.
"...the Dutch police have asked 8080 men to provide their DNA..." These 8080 men should all line up and rain their DNA in the form of a giant golden shower.
You must gather your party before venturing forth.
All data gathered will be destroyed after the match with this particular murder.
Here is what Data thinks of that statement.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Maybe you can believe the promises of the Dutch police, but if this were in the USA, I would say there was not a chance in HELL the data would really be destroyed.
I suspect it would not only be kept locally, but probably snarfed by the state police, FBI, DHS, CIA, and/or whatever.
Sorry to sound so jaded.
You are guilty until proven innocent. The entire mandate of every police force is to bring arrest and deal with anyone not following the law, and it is much easier to catch criminals when we just go ahead and let the police harass, beat, abuse, and/or threaten the citizens to be compliant little subjects.
As a fellow Dutchman, I am honestly not surprised they're trying this. And I actually have enough trust in my government that I don't believe they'll abuse this in some scary giant database. For one, they are too inept to keep it a secret. But on the other hand, having the reputation of being inept at anything would be great. What spy wouldn't dream of hearing "Him? He's too dumb to be a spy". I keep going around in circles.
The original plan was to make those men drop trouser to see who painted their yoohoos Goooooold! Isn't that veerd?
Cops come to my door, I have nothing to say to them unless they have a warrant, and not even then.
No, you can't come in—in fact I'm coming outside and closing the door behind me. No, I'm not answering any questions (other than my name, as required by law).
Yeah, right.
In 2006 Swedish police in Örebro took a brute force approach in the hunt for a rapist known as 'Hagamannen' and *forcefully* tested 777 men before they finally found him. It was quite the circus and became something of a witch-hunt type affair where any tip from the public resulted in a summons for DNA testing.
We need to get together and have everyone give samples of bodily fluids, containing our DNA, mix them together thoroughly, and spray the stuff EVERYWHERE, so that we can get our fucking privacy back by making it impossible to determine absolutely using our DNA whether or not any one of us has been somewhere, or anywhere, so we can once more be free from the prying, spying eyes of the sick voyeurs who make our laws.
Kind of like how at the end of Spartacus, everyone started exclaiming that each one of them was Spartacus, shouting "I am Spartacus!"
My response to this Gatacoid civilization we're developing.
Taxi drivers were targeted after a few girls went missing after going for a night out in one Suburb. From memory it was voluntary, I'm not sure if the samples were destroyed (or they even promised to destroy them). Most drivers were happy to give samples as they wanted the killer caught (girls were avoiding taxi's). They never caught the guy and only ever found two of the three bodies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claremont_serial_murders
Why? Surely they will have other crimes in future and DNA information is critical.
"That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved." -- Benjamin Franklin, letter to Benjamin Vaughan, March 14, 1785.
This maxim is fine as far as it goes, but ignores consequences. If 100 guilty persons go free, high recidivism rates means more than one innocent person will suffer. If we were actually to use science in criminal law (we don't, with a few exceptions), we would try to figure out the local minimum of harm to innocent persons that is at least loosely consistent with our notions of due process.
I'd sure hate to be that false positive. But after they deduce that because of my 31337 computer sk1llz I must have hacked slashdot at the time of a post that was supposed to prove I was innocent and the fact that because of HRT I doublt I could rape anybody and I get convicted of both rape and a computer crime because DNA "evidence" giving a false positive in unpossible, well..
I suppose when I got out, I might just rape a nice looking girl so that I at least committed the crime I did the time for. And I mean, come on. Of course I'd do it so I wouldn't get caught.
I guess problem is for the guy they accuse of doing my crime because I planted his DNA evidence. Don't ask how I collected the semen..... see my other posts for how I might do that.
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Holland is just a shitty country these days.
The royal family act like a feudal Saudi monarchs and put you in jail if you tweet negatively about lovely Ms. Queen Beatrix - and they will also forcibly medicate you because you are' insane' if you dislike the lovely Queen.
The politicans are sellout traitors and pathetic stooges to the EU and don't have any real power - their number one response to everything is - 'let's go into killer austerity- let's slash and cut budgets everywhere'. It's basically like if Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan came together and acted out their worst economic genocidal Austrian economic tendencies.
Also - the 'drug policy' was too 'liberal' so they had to kill that too - now tourists don't get to buy anymore drugs and citizens have to be 'registered' into a database in order to buy drugs.
Just forget about Holland - it's a few steps removed from England in terms of it being a complete police state and it's just a shitty country in general - heading for the dustbin.
..then when the national DNA register was found and survey done, they found they'd accidentally FILED it and refused to delete it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_National_DNA_Database
People sued, the European Court of Human Rights case said you can't build a massive database of innocent peoples DNA, so the UK Labour party then 'announced a study', basically ignoring the court and refusing to delete the DNA pending the outcome of the study, which was designed to approve the DNA database.
The database was transferred to a private police company too, which lets the police avoid things like freedom of information requests too. This is the same police force, that sells data to Murdoch's newspapers. I wonder how much DNA data they sold.
Given the reliability of DNA tests, I can bet they are going to find a lot of people matching the murderer.
Why did this case turn cold?
Why can't police solve this case, without having more than 8,000 men to give their dna samples?
This and similar cases, - including the recent case in France where a 4 year old kid had to hide under her mother's dead body for over 8 hours while the French police was guarding the car which the kid's family members were murdered - give us a clear indication that there are too many incompetent cops
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
We had a murder case in Perth and the suspect was thought to be a taxi driver. All taxi drivers willingly gave their DNA so it could be excluded and thought their samples would be destroyed after testing. A few years later a taxi driver was investigated when his (supposedly destroyed) DNA matched for an unrelated crime. His alibi was cast iron so luckily nothing happened. When asked the police told the taxi drivers that their DNA would be destroyed WHEN the murder was solved (8 years and counting) and it was TOO hard to exclude the taxi DNA from scans. Gotcha!!!
I would never submit to this unless I was required to -- this is a fishing expedition. Anybody who submits is probably innocent, and anybody who refuses is going to be treated as if they're guilty with something to hide. Yes, this is terrible. But asking everyone to submit exclusionary DNA because they've ran out of places to look ... well, I find that to be a really scary precedent.
The next step of course would be to just simply have everyone's DNA on file just in case they ever needed it.
http://www.bollywudfunda.com/2012/08/athletics-mens-200m-final-jamaica-gold.html
What the dutch need now is Dr. Tony Frudakis from the USA, who has the knowledge and tech to determine exact race, skin color and hair color from criminal DNA samples. He is the prof whose efforts put that afro-caribbean serial rapist-murderer Derrick Todd Lee on death row, after police sought a white madman in vain for many months. That negro had a whole nine yard list of crime history and a garden full buried of lady corpses, but police refused to look at him, because confused eye witnesses claimed seeing white.
Dr. Frudakis would tell the dutch how exactly the rapist of that teenage girl looked like based on DNA sample, skin color, hair color, body build and expected body height if he was raised under average welfare conditions. Regrettably, after the Toff Lee case, the negro-loving, pro-crime libertines of USA made sure Frudakis' lab went out of business due to political-economic pressure. Maybe he could found a new lab in Europe, say Switzerland, where political correctness is nil. The swiss are advanced and rich and they dare say openly that coloureds are lesser humans and not worth ever granting citizenship to them immigrants.
After all, wouldn't it be easier to use the "think of the children" method on the women rather than the men?
A friend of mine once provided his DNA as part of something similar.
He has since FOUR times been called in for questioning because of a semi-match with DNA found on new crime scenes, and it's the kind of questioning where it seems you're guilty until proven innocent. The full profile of the crime scene DNA always clears him later but as it takes quite a bit longer than the initial profile, and the police doesn't wait until they are sure and start questioning all the semi-matches right away.
That's too much of a hassle but it's hard to argue that the police shouldn't try to run an early comparison and see if something 'pops'.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
this scale of DNA research is unique for the Netherlands.
It is a "DNA-verantwantschap onderzoek", so they are aiming to find the killer/raper via his family member. They believe probably that the killer has moved a way.
It happened in an area were murders are not so comman. The police suspects the killer knew the girl. It is an old case dating from 1999. I think it is good that they don't give up and try new methods. The area is not very densly populated, but some in media even ask for a larger circle then 5 km. Now it means 8000 men are asked to give DNA. 91% is oke with that if we believe the polls.
At first 2 asilumseeckers were suspected but they were ruled out after DNA research. Nearby was at the time an asilum center. In total 10 people were investigated in this case. And 1000 already gave their DNA. In 2007 a letter appeared in which the writer talks about a man (a suspect) in the asilum center, shortly after the murder the man was evicted out of the center and moved ot another country. The writer claims that this man did rape several women already in this home country and killed a woman. De writer of the letter thinks he is the murderer. The letter was very detailed. And the anonimeous writer thinks that the man could not be arrested because that would have damaged the support for the many asilum centers at the time in the Netherlands.
But there are so many articles written about this case, that it is hard to believe what is true or not to be honest. http://www.elsevier.nl/web/Nieuws/Nederland/126718/Opmerkelijke-brief-aan-ouders-Marianne-Vaatstra.htm
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moord_op_Marianne_Vaatstra
OF COURSE they'll delete the data... only problem is that the person needing to do so is quite forgetful of doing so.
The Dutch government has a tendency to let data on people wonder around. Remember that giving fingerprints for the passport would not be used for judicial purposes, well when the justice department became desperate enough, they used that detabase... quite a few times already.
So, all those males responding: I pitty you, your DNA will be kept around anyway. Oh, and when they need it it'll turn up anyway.
We pay for a police force but then computers/gene analysis machines do all the work.
So why are paying a police force?
Or is that just the fallacy of thinking the government should *earn* what it takes?
Quit donating and tell them why.
You should demand that the document they sign, makes government or some official to pay you, if you find out that they have failed to obey the contract. Promise without any penalties is quite useless. But I have really strong feeling that they are not willing to sighn that kind of contracts with you...
I think that the third condition should be extended by prohibiting also the use of the sample against your relatives, except in this specific crime.
Who knows what happens in future. I or some of my relatives might send money in envelope to help Assange. If the wich hunt gets tougher, the donaters might also be in risk of getting shipped to Guantanamo to enjoy torture for the rest of their lifes. And even if you don't put your name on the envelope or letter, your DNA might be found on it.