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On the Dangers and Potential Abuses of DNA Familial Searching
Advocatus Diaboli sends a story of how a high tech forensic procedure almost led investigators to the wrong person. In 1996, a young woman named Angie Dodge was assaulted and murdered in Idaho Falls, Idaho. There was a conviction in the case, but later reports claimed the wrong man was in prison, and police thought there were more than one attacker anyway. This eventually led to the re-opening of the investigation. Using DNA evidence that had been preserved from the crime scene, police used a controversial technique called familial searching to try to find a lead. This method is used when there is no direct DNA match within the available databases. Instead, it tries to identify family members of the suspect. Police found a partial match, which eventually led them to Michael Usry, a New Orleans filmmaker. They convinced a judge to provide a search warrant to extract Usry's DNA and test it against the sample. It wasn't until a month after the extraction that they told him he'd been cleared.
So, they got a warrant like they're supposed to.
Then they executed the warrant, gathered a DNA sample, and tested it.
Sample came back as not matching, so they removed the suspect from their list of suspects.
So, what's the problem here? They checked out a lead (using legal methods, like a warrant), found it went nowhere, and continued the investigation into other possible leads....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
At least at common law assault is the "putting in of fear", and battery has "physical contact" so if you killed them without scaring or physically touching them it would be possible.
For example if you crawled under their car at night and partially loosed the bleed screws on their breaks, and cut the line on the mechanical break; knowing they would porbably have enough fluid to get onto the interstate in heavy traffic for their morning commute before discovering anything was wrong. If they do get killed, I can see that leading to murder conviction without assault or battery.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
No mistake was made. The police checked a potential suspect and cleared him.
Well, this should cause anyone using a DNA service or donating their DNA to science to think twice:
The elder Usry, who lives outside Jackson, Mississippi, said his DNA entered the equation through a project, sponsored years ago by the Mormon church, in which members gave DNA samples to the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, a nonprofit whose forensic assets have been acquired by Ancestry.com, the world’s largest for-profit genealogy company.
What the actual fuck?
It depends on the delivery method.
If it's, for example, cyanide in your coffee, it wouldn't.
On the other hand, if it's a large barrel of cyanide catapulted in your general direction, it's assault. (It you fail your dodge roll, it's also battery)
Came here to say the same thing. If I had mod points, I'd mod you up.
I would also add, that now we know how powerful wide collection nets of metadata can be (eg, NSA surveillance), I wonder if other types of donation, such as bone marrow registries, are going to be subpoenaed and how that will affect donations.
Just because someones DNA was found at a crime scene doesn't mean they were there at the time of the crime or even that they were ever there. There have been enough cases forensics Labs accidentally contaminating evidence never mind the fact that even today DNA finger prints aren't that unique. Basically it should only ever be used as corroborating evidence.
They identified a suspect based on evidence and eliminated him using evidence.
How is that abuse?
Because they used one piece of "evidence" (very tenuous at best) and just cast out a wide net to suspect someone from half the country away. It's the same as if a witness of a crime in New York said the suspect was 6'2" and blond so the police start interviewing 6'2" blond people living in Utah. Partial DNA matches should not be enough to get a warrant for someone who lives 1700 miles from where the crime occurred, especially if there is no other corroborating evidence.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Nevermind, it seems like it is open and searchable. So yeah, maybe you don't want to give them your DNA.
Ah yes, the classic "one crime deserves another" argument.
No, it is the classic "one crime deserves citizens who provide reasonable assistance to pursue justice." If I find a murdered body while jogging, I am probably going to be one of the initial suspects. I will be questioned by officers, and possibly even called back to the precinct if they have further questions. This would absolutely inconvenience me, but I would be a real jackass if I put up a stink about it. Someone was just murdered, which would be a much bigger problem than me losing a couple afternoons.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
If I find a murdered body while jogging, I am probably going to be one of the initial suspects. I will be questioned by officers, and possibly even called back to the precinct if they have further questions. This would absolutely inconvenience me, but I would be a real jackass if I put up a stink about it. Someone was just murdered, which would be a much bigger problem than me losing a couple afternoons.
And it is of the outmost importance that you keep the freedom to make that choice.
The public is increasingly fearful of the police. And it's THEIR FAULT.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Forth amendment?
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,[a] against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized".
emt 377 emt 4
If the governments had the courage to do it, every citizen or resident of the country should be compelled to give DNA samples. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for any ordinary citizen to protest or oppose this. Indeed any opposition should be viewed as a reason for suspicion.
Because of course there is absolutely no chance for abuse, such as DNA planting, or error, such as cross-contamination.
The "(un)reasonable" standard is so vague, almost anything can be argued in and out of it.
The anonymous grandparent is right in that DNA-samples (and fingerprints) could be collected from everyone, and it would help police immensely.
The question then boils down to whether we want the police helped so much. More generally, do we want 100% of crimes to be reliably solvable, or would we rather some criminals remained able to escape today in exchange for it being possible (however remotely) for some future subversives to succeed against some hypothetically oppressive government, which would have already illegalized all ordinary methods of opposition?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Well, this is one of those questions that has a few big fat "depends" attached to the answer.
If they were just going to throw away that information, I unqualifiedly agree with you. No reasonable person would refuse to give their DNA if it would be thrown away as soon as it had exonerated them.
But what if they intend to *keep* that information and use it to match against future crimes? Then a reasonable person might well pause. One obvious uncertainty is what future versions of the government considers a "crime". Even if I have total trust in the "deep state" under President Obama, I should recognize others might reasonably feel differently, and nobody should feel such a level of trust for future administrations yet to be determined.
Possibly a more serious issue is our assumptions about the perfection of matching DNA samples against vast archives of DNA data. The FBI likes to claim literally astronomical chances like "113 billion to 1" against a false positive DNA match, but they're not exactly disinterested. Furthermore such figures are based on long strings of untested assumptions about things being statistically independent of each other. While it's manifestly clear that false matches are unlikely, we cannot really know whether they are sufficiently likely to treat as positive proof when we're talking about matching against potentially millions of samples.
So while it's quite reasonable not to be worried about what happens with your biometric data today, it's maybe not so reasonable to be so casual about having it retained and aggregated for decades to come. Keeping data without really testing it's future utility (or even disutility) is something bureaucracies do by habit and instinct, and people with the skepticism and mathematical knowledge to be entrusted with such a decision are few and far between.
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My point is this: how do we *know* the odds against a perfect false match are as high as we think they are?
I know the way people do these calculations, which is they take p(x1) * p(x2) *... p(xn) as the probability. But note that the validity of this calculation is dependent upon the assumption that the events x1, x2 ... xn are all independent of each other, which if you think about what DNA is is bound not to be true. So I guess you choose x1 ... xn so that they are independent-ish -- that is to say they are correlated to only a negligible degree.
But how do you know that? Well, you look through some existing databases that is representative enough of the population at large to choose which points of comparison to use.
But how do you know that database is sufficiently representative?
The problem is, you don't. It's just an unfounded assumption.
I have no doubt that you'd have sufficient Bayesian basis for a high degree of belief in a match once you've narrowed your pool of suspects to a group of otherwise likely suspects. But I'm not nearly so confident in a so-called "perfect match" (which is really misleading terminology by the way) when the pool of suspects is *everybody*.
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Well, that's essentially wordplay: technically, you ARE legally obliged to comply with the judicial system.
However, is the judicial system morally fair?
If you ever travel to Saudi Arabia with your wife, do you consider it fair to physically beat her because she may disagree with you?
Do you consider it morally right that a 12 year old girl can be married off?
Do you think the Patriot Act is morally right?
What about when US telco's broke the law and were granted retroactive immunity by the President, making it legal. Is that morally right?
Do you think racial segregation was right? Women not allowed to vote? Slaves in ancient times?!
Just because something is LAW doesn't make it RIGHT.