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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.
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!”
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.
"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
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
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!"
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.
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.
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......
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.
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.
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.
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.
The french police was right though: they didn't know a child was missing, and it was clear this had been a professional assassination. Fortunately a policeman in the countryside does not encounter such murders regularly enough to warrant the technical knowledge to research the murder scene. Therefor a specialised time from Paris was called in, who gave specific instructions *not to touch* the crime scene.
Moreover, they had flown a heli with a heatseaking camera to find additional victims, and as soon as they received information that the child was missing they did search the car.
So no incompetent cops there, just a very sad story.