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DNA Fog Helps Identify Trespassers, Thieves, and Brigands
Zothecula writes "Applied DNA Sciences (ADNAS) has developed a new approach to solve crimes using DNA tagging. The difference is that instead of tagging the objects being stolen, the company's system tags the perpetrator with DNA. While this has been tried before by applying the DNA to a fleeing criminal with a gun, ADNAS has adopted a more subtle approach."
...really? That's the word we're using today?
Why not fog the warehouse with cold viruses that give you flourescent green boogers?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
...that's a spray, and the smell is fairly easy to follow.
Seriously, this sounds pretty interesting, and scary all at the same time. It has the potential to last years, but it appears that a Police swab would be necessary. Why not make it so it's luminescent thus allowing a special light to be used to detect the DNA? This would prevent the need of the swab and the refusal of a perpetrator from providing the sample.
Just a thought.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
Because this could NEVER-EVER be misused.
go wrong?
"Everything was going great, until the bank manager sprayed me in the face with his DNA!"
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Gah, so they spray soylent green poop into the air and it sticks to everybody and everything. What could possibly go wrong.
I've never heard of applying DNA to a fleeing criminal with a gun. Sampling, yes, but not applying. A 9MM provides sufficient DNA samples.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Do you stick your hand over the barrel before shooting at your target?
Aaaaaaaaaaagh. I did anyway.
Well, one is arguably assault in defense of property (okay in some but not all jurisdictions), and the other is unarguably attempted murder in defense of property (only Texas devalues human life enough to permit that, and even there only when the person reasonably believes there's no other way to prevent the theft), so they're in the same broad category but not really the same at all.
... So... you couldn't just take a dip in a swimming pool?
It goes without saying that once it becomes common knowledge that these things are being used thieves are going to burn their clothing after the heist. What then? Swab their bodies? Their lungs? The whole diver mask thing seemed to imply the air had to be filtered.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
From the cited article:
DNA Fog is an airborne suspension of artificial DNA molecules with a known but biologically inert sequence
[emphasis mine]
Because DNA is such a simple and easy to understand structure, spoke the head growing from ADNAS's ass.
Wow, I can see thieves and trespassers but for brigands you typically need to make a perception or arcane check roll to identify them.
Here's a scenario for ya. You're on the scene on day ten of the latest round of anti-capitalist protests in Zucotti Park, New York city. The crowd gets a little unruly and a full-scale riot breaks out. A cop gets his head caved in with a brick, a couple people get trampled, and the tear gas and truncheon work gets underway. The crowd scatters and disperses, and you go home and wash the tear gas out of your eyes.
Two days later, the cops show up at your apartment. It turns out they mixed a little DNA taggant into the tear gas grenades. They're going door to door throughout antiestablishment hot-spots in the city, asking for people to let them take a swab off their skin, so they can find the bastards who started the deadly riot. If you refuse, they apologize politely, and then swab your door handle on their way out.
Better than a DNA tagged sock joke
DNA fog sounds like it would be movie title for a movie directed by John Carpenter.
I can see the plot now:
The fog rolls in a changes your DNA and you go from being a person to a thing while you try escape the L.A pretty people.
penismanship?
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
In order to fight back for crime we will be offering a spray that contains cloned DNA from millions upon millions of people. That way DNA evidence will become worthless as it will appear that the population of large nations was in the room not to mention the expense of sorting all the DNA samples. Due to the tiny nature of DNA a handy one ounce spray bottle could fit in pocket. Keep in mind that if your thing is rape you will need to spray this stuff where the sun doesn't shine in order to confuse the issue. The woman would appear to have slept with 23 million people the day of the attack.
Didn't I see something like this on an episode of Burn Notice a couple of years back?
Tagging some one DNA is calling them the incrimanate themself. It is unconstitutianel.
roman_mir
well, they are talking about indiscriminately spraying DNA around all over the place...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Now B&E experts will start wearing latex gimp suits...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
old stuff these sprays are already hanging in some jewellers and other muggin prone bussineses in the netherlands
I'm cool with dye packs. They're immediate, short-range, they make it very visible that you're the bad-guy or were at least near the money at some point. In the days / hours following the heist there's a chance someone saw a fluorescent blue guy running around. Maybe you were part of the crime or maybe you were near a discarded pack when it went off. In either case, it's a visibly obvious way to at least track where the money was going.
So: short range, easy to notice (and complain about) accidental exposure, etc.
This... I don't know. What happens if you were exposed by accident; via a leak or rub-off from someone else. You won't know, in which case if it gets "found" then you have a big hassle of explaining your alibi. IE: they find out you were there around that day, check you out, and zap you have the DNA residue.
And of course, some a$$hats will just assume it's fool-proof and that you're involved. Some people really gobble this stuff up; every new thing is infallible and the best thing since sliced bread.
So they take it a step farther and instead of passively spraying someone when an exhibit case opens, they spray it on unsuspecting crowds during a riot / protest while you're buying some street hotdog. And going along with the a$$hat argument, they try to say "Well you were there so you must have been a trouble maker"
Pretty common in Europe. Slashdot should have stories about new things, not just things which are new to America.
It seems like you and your poster children have missed the "swab the door handle" comment. The police are allowed to knock on your door and politely ask you for something. IANAL, but I'm sure they're also allowed to swab your door handle as it's on the OUTSIDE of your house. If they find the DNA on the door handle, it would be easy to get a warrant based on that evidence.
www.clarke.ca
You forgot to mention the undercover police or agents hidden among the people who were intentionally arousing tensions to provide the excuse for a crack-down.
You could just use a fog consisting of microscopic grains of whatever with the name of the place on them.
You could maybe combine that with a substance that colors a particular non-water liquid if mixed with it. That way the detective could swab the suspect, immediately see if he has been exposed to microdots, and if he has, then investigate them further.
I spray you with guilty DNA. Stage a robbery. Call the cops.
just replace "I" with whoever it is you least trust.. the government, the government when dealing with Julian Assange or like case, businesses dealing with employees they think might become whistleblowers ... just use you imagination. We all know what people are capable of...
It's time for us all to become a lot more skeptical of the seemingly "definitive" information made available to us via technology. Basically, be highly skeptical of any technology used to convict that seems iron clad IF ONLY everyone is being truthful. You don't need proof to suspect manipulation, it should be the default assumption which needs to be overcome.
Only in this way will society develop systems that don't rely for their veracity on the presence of zero people of ill will somewhere in the chain of events.
Wasn't this already tried and patented by Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky? I do remember something about DNA spraying....
It is this very reason that I and so many others are so guarded on our personal information.
Imagine going to the bank, only when you get there you discover the door is locked. You lean up against the window to look inside, and see nothing so you leave. A little while later, somebody throws a rock through the window, and police identify YOUR DNA on the glass.
I can come up with lots of other situations, just like this one.
I can see a movie based on this being made. The burglars will be some scantily clad female co-eds.
I can't imagine what the reason is for using DNA rather than some other substance, other than to say in court "The DNA matches!" in order to get the automatic guilty verdict that comes with a DNA match.
To play devil's advocate I can see one logical reason
By using the x-million (or whatever) combinations of the DNA sequence it acts like a barcode. So just because you have some random DNA sludge on you from one place doesn't mean you have it from the place they're looking at.
With chemicals you're limited in the combinations. Sure you can have chemical markers like most of the chemical products out there have (this % of inert compound is batch A, % of that inert compound is batch B%). But if you're talking about a thin film of chemicals surviving on a person for a few days... who's to say the Mass Spec readings won't be tainted by exposure to every day stuff (soaps, detergents, cooking ingredients, fertilizer, etc).
So with the chemicals, a few days later you find a guy and can say in the report: he has enough of the "base" on him to say he was exposed to BrandX chemical marker, unfortunately we can't say with enough certainty that it was from BuildingY because the mass spec is getting lots of different readings
With DNA, you can say "OK, we found a fair amount of this DNA marker from sweat-swabs, and said marker does not appear to exist in nature. So he was at least in BuildingY and got hit with the BrandX chemical marker at some point.
I'm not saying I agree with DNA-laced film vs compound, or even this whole "fog" concept in general. Just saying, there's at least one valid reason.
Just splendid -- giant mutant criminals. What say we just pelt them with radioactive spiders and have done with it?
Yes, I am very lucky to be hung like a #2 pencil.....
Rottweiler DNA in the bite marks in burglars' asses.
Have gnu, will travel.
Invoking Rule 34 on this story.
do your sperm travel in single file?
do your sperm travel in single file?
Only when sufficiently beaten into submission.
Couldnt this be accomplished with Glitter? It sticks to everything, it can be uniquely identified by color.
you'd have to be a very skillful penisman indeed to write your name legibly at any size!
Seriously, UV dye taggants have been around for decades. You sprinkle fairy dust on the stuff you don't want touched, then UV shine the people who might have touched it. If their fingers glow, they're a suspect; you have probable cause to check them for stolen property. But if they go home and wash their hands, that means you failed to catch them in the act and you suck at your job as a security person.
Being near the ventilation system outlets, or washing the clothes of a warehouse employee, or of sitting next to him on the bus, or standing in line at McDonalds when he sneezes, all those sound like ways to spread the DNA tags. It'll be meaningless fast, if it can prove nothing conclusively.
John
What about people that have been in contact with the tagged person? I guess they will carry some tagged DNA as well. How false postiive are avoided?
The US Army had the "Trace Metal Detector" kit in Vietnam which was used to illuminate the hands of suspected enemy soldiers and which would detect traces of metals and powders. Of course, it also detected anyone who had recently used a water buffalo to pull a metal plow. Go figure. The "Fairy Dust" idea was developed at the US Army's Night Vision Labs at Ft. Belvoir years ago. I opine that the next step is going to be a unique nano material cloud. Meanwhile the DNA cloud is working pretty well in a number of places. The entire idea of developing an infallible identification system is a chimera ... fingerprints are a good example, particularly when the fingerprint examiners fudge the figures on a 3-point or 4-point "identification", with 10-points being the gold standard. NCIC doesn't even try for 10-point anymore ... 5 points and you are taken into custody as a "person of interest". Using a unique DNA substance seems prone to fail, particularly if you are able to wear a hazmat suit when you dismember your mother-in-law.
"SmartWater" I thought, but with a considerably larger potential range of "bits" to set and so a larger address-space.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"