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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?"
I think the point is if they take a suspect's DNA and show that he's prone to violence, and use that as evidence he committed the crime, rather than taking DNA from a violent crime scene.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Why is privacy so important? Because you don't know what creepy things governments will do with it in the future. All the condition under which you gave away some of your personal information might not apply in the future. And getting your information back at that time will very likely be no option.
What if your face ends up with this new creepy technology. How can you even possibly defend your self against it? Some, for normal people, impossible to comprehent scientific research apoints you as a suspect. What can you do? This is creepy and scary and not something we should want.
It doesn't have to be like this. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
Because it searches for correlation between faces and DNA, and it's getting arguably discernible results already. I'm expecting it to improve as it gets more sample data, more processing power, and more researchers identifying distinguishing facial characteristics for it to attempt a DNA correlation to. Further, when they find out how to show examples at different milestone ages, then that would lead to even more interesting applications. Imagine knowing what your baby will look like before they are born... and the societal questions that that brings.
Even very weak evidence is useful, even if it would be too weak for court. If you know* the perp is African-American, you can't go around suspecting everyone who's African American, but you most certainly can eliminate all your white/asian/hispanic suspects.
*Sadly/amusingly, eyewitness accounts are not sufficient for this.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Sounds a lot like snake oil to me. They have cloned domestic cats and found that the identical DNA used in the cloning produces totally different fur patterns. Here's an explanation why [[www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101215082939.htm]]. While human beings are not cats, it explains that when cells differentiate, random groups of cells become different things (legs, lungs, heart, etc.). Some things (like eye color) may be fixed, but everything else is negotiable. External considerations can also apply, a person who's mother drinks alcohol or takes certain prescription drugs (Thalidomide) can directly affect the appearance of their children, despite what genetics says.