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Police Use DNA To Generate a Suspect's Face
An anonymous reader writes: The NY Times has a pair of articles about a technology now being used in police investigations: computer generation of a suspect's face from only their DNA. Law enforcement in South Carolina had no pictures or descriptions of a man who murdered a mother and her daughter, but they had some of his DNA. From this, a company named Parabon NanoLabs used a technique called DNA phenotyping to create a rough portrait of the suspect's facial features, which the police then shared with the public.
The accuracy of these portraits is still an area of hot debate — most of them look rather generic. The NY Times staff tested it with a couple of their employees, circulating the DNA-inspired portraits and seeing if people could guess who it was supposed to be. None of the ~50 employees were able to identify reporter John Markoff, and only about 10 were able to identify video journalist Catherine Spangler. But even though the accuracy for a person's entire face is low, techniques for specific attributes, like eye color, have improved greatly. Of course, the whole situation raises a slew of civil liberties questions: "What traits are off limits? Should the authorities be able to test whether a suspect has a medical condition or is prone to violence should such testing be possible?"
The accuracy of these portraits is still an area of hot debate — most of them look rather generic. The NY Times staff tested it with a couple of their employees, circulating the DNA-inspired portraits and seeing if people could guess who it was supposed to be. None of the ~50 employees were able to identify reporter John Markoff, and only about 10 were able to identify video journalist Catherine Spangler. But even though the accuracy for a person's entire face is low, techniques for specific attributes, like eye color, have improved greatly. Of course, the whole situation raises a slew of civil liberties questions: "What traits are off limits? Should the authorities be able to test whether a suspect has a medical condition or is prone to violence should such testing be possible?"
DNA says that the suspect is an African-American male, with brown eyes, dark hair, and dark skin. Anyone with any information on anyone matching the description, please contact the authorities.
When that technology will have evolved enough, it'll be able to show what you were supposed to be from your DNA, compared to what you actually are. How your body and face have changed due to your family, education, school, company etc... That technology will contribute to settle the debate "genetics vs environment".
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
The most murderous people sit behind podiums. The next most murderous sit in labs. Then you have those who quietly and with great discipline aim the weapon or prepare the poison.
The least dangerous murderers are those who lost their shit in the heat of the moment. Which isn't to say they're not dangerous, but there are a lot of people who could reach this state of mind, given sufficient provocation. Perhaps most people?
Sounds more like a case of Parallel_construction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... to me. Its not like the technique is unknown to law enforcement. With all the additional pressure around Stingray (cell site simulator) use, I fully expect these types of techniques to proliferate.