Data From Open-Source Ancestry Site Leads to More Arrests (fastcompany.com)

schwit1 tipped us off to new arrests made with genealogical evidence -- and growing interest in open source genealogy databases. Fast Company reports: In the last week, police have arrested two suspects in unrelated cold cases thanks to data gleaned from open-source ancestry site GEDMatch, reports the New York Times. That's the same open-source ancestry site that was used to track down the alleged Golden State Killer earlier this year. One of the arrests this week was of a 66-year-old nurse who is suspected of killing a 12-year-old girl in 1986. The other arrest is of a 49-year-old DJ who strangled a schoolteacher in 1992. Thanks to data from GEDMatch, Texas law enforcement also thinks that a man who was executed in 1999 for killing a 9-year-old girl was now also behind the murder of a 40-year-old realtor in 1981.
It all reminds me of that scene in "The Circle" where they demo technology that finds "a randomly-selected fugitive from justice -- a proven menace to our global community" -- within 20 minutes.

Last month DNA-based investigations also led to the arrest of the suspected murderer of two vacationers in 1987, and helped identify a suicide cold case from 2001.

Now an Ohio newspaper reports: Emboldened by that breakthrough, a number of private investigators are spearheading a call for amateur genealogists to help solve other cold cases by contributing their own genetic information to the same public database. They say a larger array of genetic information would widen the pool to find criminals who have eluded capture. The idea is to get people to transfer profiles compiled by commercial genealogy sites such as Ancestry.com and 23andMe onto the smaller, public open-source database created in 2010, called GEDmatch. The commercial sites require authorities to obtain search warrants for the information; the public site does not.

But the push is running up against privacy concerns.

Comments

Beware Leaky DNA

[rtb61]

The threat of excess reliance on DNA evidence, remains the same, it can always be obtained from you and then planted where ever they want it, https://www.quora.com/How-many.... You leak DNA where ever you go, that is what they are relying on to prosecute you but you loose it where ever you go and they want to prosecute your for that. Drop a hair on the actual criminal and they drop it at the scene of the crime, you are fucked. The criminal collects it before hand and leaves it too obscure the crime trail. Use a hooker to collect an undeniable sample. Yeah over reliance on DNA is extremely dangerous to the enemies of a corrupt state. You can be any where they want you to be, well, at least your DNA can.

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[Anonymous Coward]

There's also another problem. DNA matching is only about 50% accurate.

It's accurate enough to match someone who is a direct parent, sibling or offspring, but after that point, accuracy goes down the toilet pretty quickly.

This is why when you see ads for the DNA sites, telling you about being related to presidents or royalty, that's basically garbage. Yes, you might have the same X-mitochondria or Y-linked DNA, but we're talking about one small fragment out of millions. It doesn't mean you're related to that specific person at all, it just means that your great-great, 10 times removed maternal grandmother, or paternal grandfather were related to those. It doesn't mean anyone else never was.

At best, for the topic at hand, criminal matching, cold cases, and such. The DNA is accurate enough as long as the the match aligns with a parent, sibling or offspring. Trying to match on any other level of relationship (eg cousins, aunts, uncles) is very hard to do without getting other people in that family to do DNA tests as well to rule out which ones they aren't.

Hence, while I'm certain that the DNA tests can catch rapists and murderers by matching DNA found at the scene of a crime with their parents or children, it's really something of a long-con. These sites gather up all these DNA databases and then "sell access" to the actual matching system, be it health care, criminal record checks, or just ancestry purposes.

My DNA is on GEDMatch, I don't really care if it helps tracking down a crook I may be related to , because there's an entire branch of distant family members that engaged in some terrorist activity back in the 1930's. But what is the likeliness that MY dna will help find someone that I'm not blood related to directly? That person passed away 30 years ago or so.

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[AmiMoJo]

These databases need to be deleted too. The privacy violates are incredible.

What do you do when an insurance company notices that someone in your family has a hereditary disease and decides to jack up your premiums? We need strong laws to protect DNA data and prevent that kind of abuse.

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[Richard_at_work]

These databases need to be deleted too. The privacy violates are incredible.

What do you do when an insurance company notices that someone in your family has a hereditary disease and decides to jack up your premiums? We need strong laws to protect DNA data and prevent that kind of abuse.

How about a better approach to healthcare in your country, where you should be able to get life saving treatment for decades without bankrupting you or your dependents...?

Re: Beware Leaky DNA

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a witch hunt. Guilty until proven you a have a voice to deny it.

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[inking]

I know you aren’t going to like it, but maybe you SHOULD pay a higher premiums in that case. The point of insurance is to mitigate risk, not to offload it onto others. You wouldn’t expect everyone to have to pay more for their car insurance, because there is this one guy that wrecks his car every week due to no fault of his own and everybody is paying for it because we have completely anonymized all traffic incident for muh privacy, do you? Some countries have social programs that essentially force you to pay for others and I don’t think that it is necessarily a bad thing for healthcare, but that is not what an insurance is for.

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't even have to be your DNA. Remember, when an expert witness stands up in court and says "based on the points of similarity we've identified, there is less than a 1 in 200,000 chance that this DNA doesn't match", what the jury hears is "there's a 200,000 to 1 chance that the defendant is guilty". But what he should be saying is "there are over 1600 people in the USA who match this DNA".

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[Hognoxious]

That couldn't possibly work, certainly not just after a major war left the country's economy in the shitter.

I mean, there'd be something on the telly about it, wouldn't there?

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[Hognoxious]

This is terrible! How can they justify convicting people based on DNA evidence alone!

Oh wait, they don't.

But here's an interesting fact: the first time DNA evidence was used in the UK it exonerated a mentally retarded suspect who'd already confessed.

Re: Beware Leaky DNA

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference between them is that you can do something about your driving skills but your DNA is not your fault and you can't modify it.

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[markdavis]

>"How about a better approach to healthcare in your country, where you should be able to get life saving treatment for decades without bankrupting you or your dependents...?"

How about a better approach where first almost everyone works, contributes to society, and pays taxes so such a system is financially viable? It is hard to have one without the other, especially when there is already a $21 trillion debt which is increasing at over $2 thousand dollars a second.

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a good discussion on the podcast "The Insight" titled "The Golden State Killer and the Genetic Panopticon" May 2, 2018. It requires a lot of additional narrowing of suspects and investigative work, both on the genealogy and investigative side. At least until the databases are much more comprehensive with accurate genealogy and a critical mass of dna.

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[Anonymous Coward]

Bankrupt you, or bankrupt the nation. Take your pick.

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[jedidiah]

> How about a better approach to healthcare in your country, where you should be able to get life saving treatment for decades without bankrupting you or your dependents...?

I would rather have more competent health care and my nurses not needing to use a food bank.

It never ceases to amaze me how broke idiots want to value money they don't even have more then their life.

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[MightyMartian]

Even the Neanderthals looked after sick members of the tribe. For chrissakes, act like a human being.

Re: Beware Leaky DNA

[inking]

That is completely irrelevant. Not how individual insurance works. You want societal insurance, great, but in that case DNA profiles aren’t an issue. That not being place, not giving this data to insurers is literally making others pay for you because you intentionally lied through omission about your family’s medical history.

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[drinkypoo]

I would rather have more competent health care

What you need is more doctors, but the AMA has taken steps to prevent that. Consequently there is a health care shortage. So now they're changing the rules so that nurse practitioners can do more of what doctors used to do, so your quality of health care will fall since you'll be seen by CNPs instead of MDs.

The AMA (which does not even represent the majority of MDs) restricts the supply of doctors (by manipulating education) to keep the cost of health care up, to benefit the doctors who are AMA members. But other doctors don't fight against what they're doing either, because they are all direct beneficiaries.

If the AMA didn't do this, then less money would be spent on the salaries of doctors who don't deserve it, and more would be available to pay more doctors, so we could all have better health care.

and my nurses not needing to use a food bank.

It doesn't matter if your need public assistance so long as they get it, and in the end, they are getting a good deal. If public assistance plus their wages equals a good living, then the system is working. And that's how a fair system would work, with UBI available to all citizens. The wealthy are concentrating the wealth at the top, with an ever-smaller share going to the worker, and they need to pay for the maintenance of the system (since no one else can afford to do so) or it will fail.

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[Anonymous Coward]

It's accurate enough to match someone who is a direct parent, sibling or offspring, but after that point, accuracy goes down the toilet pretty quickly.

I think you're going in the opposite direction. At least I hope you are going in the opposite direction. They (hopefully) aren't using your DNA to determine if a family member is a killer, they (hopefully) are using it to determine if you are a killer.

But that said, I also do not support convicting solely based on DNA evidence for the same reasons rtb61 mentioned.

Re: Beware Leaky DNA

[Anonymous Coward]

Americans stopped acting like human beings a loooong time ago.

Re: Beware Leaky DNA

[Anonymous Coward]

Because no nation on earth ever had nationally subsidised healthcare and didn't go broke.

Except Canada. And Australia. And The Netherlands. And fucking Cuba for fucks sake.

Re: Beware Leaky DNA

[Anonymous Coward]

Care, no insurance. We should practice care. Can you spell "care"?

Re: Beware Leaky DNA

[MightyMartian]

No, they just are too slavishly attached to the Invisible Hand, so they have created a highly inefficient health care system that ultimately costs consumers more.

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[ChatHuant]

What you need is more doctors, but the AMA has taken steps to prevent that. Consequently there is a health care shortage.

The AMA doesn't help, but their contribution to the American medical care shambles is rather small overall. The big problem is the system where insurance and pharmaceutical companies have inserted themselves between the doctors and the patients, and ensconced themselves there via intense lobbying and bribery.

The private insurance industry adds an average overhead of 18% to medical care costs. By comparison, public insurers like Medicare or Medicaid have an overhead of about 3% or less. The savings of replacing private insurance with a public solution have been estimated to over $350 billion annually. That is enough to give medical coverage to every American, and still leave enough over to improve everybody's health care.

Re: Beware Leaky DNA

[Anonymous Coward]

Droids dont care.

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[Aighearach]

The AMA is a lobbying group for conservative doctors. 25% of doctors are members. You seem confused about what their role is.

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[Anonymous Coward]

With a notable lack of respect, you want to keep on coasting on the medical breakthroughs of another country and enjoy your tax-subsidized health care system? Be my guest. But shut up about how expensibve our system is - how the hell do you think your CAT scans, MRIs and other medical wonders you get for cheap were created and paid for? That's right - by the expensive country.

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[Peter P Peters]

The threat of excess reliance on DNA evidence, remains the same, it can always be obtained from you and then planted where ever they want it, .

Because no defence lawyer has ever thought of this.
I'm pretty sure that murder trials go into a bit more detail than just matching DNA...

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[Agripa]

This is terrible! How can they justify convicting people based on DNA evidence alone!

Oh wait, they don't.

And they do not arrest, interrogate, hold people in jail in violation of the Eighth Amendment, charge them, and pressure them into a plea bargain either, except when they do.

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[Anonymous Coward]

The threat of excess reliance on DNA evidence, remains the same, it can always be obtained from you and then planted where ever they want it, .

Because no defence lawyer has ever thought of this.

I'm pretty sure that murder trials go into a bit more detail than just matching DNA...

Oh, defense lawyers have thought of it, but a lot of times jurors can be convinced that doubts stemming from "I was framed" or "You don't really understand the statistics behind the science" are not reasonable.

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[cthulhu11]

This.

More controversially, I wonder what percentage of costs would be reduced if we:

o Allowed and facilitated access to assisted suicide for *everyone* in chronic pain or with a terminal condition

o Stopped covering willful self-inflicted chronic conditions, ie. lung cancer for smokers, colon cancer for meat eaters.

Re: Beware Leaky DNA

[cthulhu11]

What about making other people pay because of what one puts into one's mouth?

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[Anonymous Coward]

There's also another problem. DNA matching is only about 50% accurate.

It's accurate enough to match someone who is a direct parent, sibling or offspring, but after that point, accuracy goes down the toilet pretty quickly.

Anecdotally, my matches look pretty good. I did the DNA test after I did a bunch of genealogy, and the nearer matches line up more or less where they should. The Ancestry guestimate of relationship is based on how many genes are shared in common, so it can be off by an order or two.

More distant matches aren't bad either. I'll find matches with second and third cousins pretty easily. I'm having a harder time with very distant cousins (trying to confirm a great-great-great-great grandfather's birthplace, to no success as of yet). But that doesn't really matter if you're trying to figure out who DNA matches to - any investigator is going to look at the closest matches first, and triangulate family trees to figure out who the likely candidates are.

But even if it was only 50% accurate, does it matter? If the DNA shared matches points to the children of Richard Roe and Jane Doe, it's easy enough to figure out which ones had the means to do the crime and get a warrant for their blood to test.

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[Anonymous Coward]

This is similar to the current fad of stating "The blockchain is immutable proof of X occurring" - control the chain, control reality.

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[redlemming]

How about a better approach to healthcare in your country, where you should be able to get life saving treatment for decades without bankrupting you or your dependents...?

How about a better approach where first almost everyone works, contributes to society, and pays taxes so such a system is financially viable? It is hard to have one without the other, especially when there is already a $21 trillion debt which is increasing at over $2 thousand dollars a second.

The debt is certainly a problem, but it doesn't preclude progress on the health care issue.

The USA is ALREADY spending roughly 17-18% of its GDP on health care, including all public and private spending.

European nations with health care programs are spending 9-11% of their GDP on health care - and getting better results in many key statistics. The same applies to the rest of the developed world, such as Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and others.

In short, the USA is spending a lot more than it needs to on health care, and getting generally poorer results. The rich get good health care, of course, but when you look at the health care statistics of the nation as a whole, they are not that impressive compared to the other developed nations. For example, many nations (more than 40), have lower child mortality rates than the USA - that's pretty awful.

Note that these other health care systems are not all single payer systems. Every nation seems to be slightly different in how they do this. Switzerland, for example, does not have a single payer system. As I understand things, they have strict regulation of health insurance companies, and public votes on key issues.

In short, there are many options.

Whatever option is chosen, the USA should be able to drop it's health care spending to say, 11% of GDP, either through a sensible single payer system, or perhaps copying the Swiss system outright and the extra 6-7% of GDP could be used to pay off the debt.

This would require raising taxes, but done properly the tax raise would be no more than what people are already spending on health care, so it wouldn't be a net impact on people's current take-home pay after health care expenses.

You might need to have some reform of the legal system, but's that long overdue and would have happened a long time ago if politicians weren't routinely accepting campaign contributions from associations of legal professionals. This would remove the impact of lawyer-insurance (or the "lawyer tax"), not just from the doctors from the entire supply chains leading the to production of medical goods and services, and hence would remove the compounding effect of overhead applying at each step in the supply chain (like compound interest, this grows quickly).

It's really a low hanging fruit - you have to get past the corruption and vote buying on the part of the few special interest groups (the insurance companies, the lawyers, some of the doctors, the pharmaceutical companies, some of the pharmacies), but there's nothing else government could do as easily that would free up such a huge amount of money to help pay off the debt. Putting things in perspective, ANY cut in government spending or tax raise will face opposition - and in most cases the amount at stake is far less for just as tough of a political battle.

A competent government with integrity could make this happen. A corrupt and unethical government, allied with a largely unethical legal profession, might have trouble doing this - unless the public wakes up and forces the issue. Who knows, it might even be an opportunity to fix a lot of the corruption and ethics problems ... ?

Of course, if you fixed the regressive tax problem in the USA (mostly an issue the state and local level), replacing most or all of these taxes with a progressive income tax, and got rid of most of the tax code (to remove loopholes), and appropriately taxed movement of money overseas (to prevent evasion), you could probably fund the whole system without raising taxes for the poor and the lower middle class - but that would require undoing a huge amount of deeply entrenched corruption, so it's perhaps unlikely.

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[Anonymous Coward]

Vegetarians Have Fewer Cancers But Higher Risk Of Colorectal Cancer, Study
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/142427.php

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[ebvwfbw]

They're a saying. As long as it's indicted, they'll convict a ham sandwich of murder. Just remember, the people that hold your future in their hands are people that were not smart enough to get out of jury duty. They also don't want to be there and they'll assume you're guilty. You were indicted after all and that nice prosecutor wouldn't think of indicting anyone that wasn't guilty. Would they? Happens all the time.

Good case of that was the Mike Tyson trial. The man acted like a caged animal in the court room and that's why he was convicted. There is no doubt in my mind he was innocent.

OJ on the other hand, IMHO - he was clearly guilty and I think everyone knows it.

Re: Beware Leaky DNA

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that it might be a 50% match to John doe 123, who is in the database, but it is a 100% match to John doe 456 who is not in the database.

50% and no alibi or cash for a lawyer may be enough to get a conviction, and is usually enough to force a plea deal to avoid an extra ten years.

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[Peter P Peters]

They're a saying. As long as it's indicted, they'll convict a ham sandwich of murder.

Fortunately I have more experience of how a courtroom works than just 'They're a saying'.

There is no doubt in my mind he was innocent....he was clearly guilty and I think everyone knows it

Courtrooms don't work like media headlines, even if that's all you know about the actual cases...

Re: Beware Leaky DNA

[terrycarlino]

Sure that's why in 2014 52,513 Canadians came to the U.S. for health care. Why over 500,000 Australians went abroad for medical care in 2017. Obviously their medical care must be perfect.

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[terrycarlino]

If by conservative you mean that they don't believe it is the role of the physician to aid a confused and temporarily depressed individual in off themselves, then I guess you might be right.

Re: Beware Leaky DNA

[inking]

Absolutely should be penalized. In fact, my former European health insurance did something similar. If I participated in activities that would make me healthier and thus reduce risk, I would get a minor rate reduction. It mostly involved providing receipts for going to gym, completing marathons or visiting educational events about better dietary practices. There is absolutely nothing exceptional about this. Frankly, I would prefer them to adjust the rate to the BMI too, at least for women who don’t typically get very muscular. Some of my friends have gotten complacent and fat; they absolutely should pay more than I do.

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[rtb61]

You already seem to have forgotten all those people fucked up with wrongful convictions based upon one forensic DNA scientist screwing with test results and even faking them completely, so there nothing back FAKE DNA evidence lead straight to convictions for hundreds of people. Yep, just DNA evidence will get you destroyed in court and force you to try to prove how it got there and that it was not your legal responsibility.

Re:Beware Leaky DNA

[ebvwfbw]

I have to wonder if you read my response, got a phone call or something and forgot where you were? I'm indicting the justice system for what it is. Usually a crap shoot. A jury certainly not of my peers. In fact they are often below average people and they'll convict with very flimsy evidence. To your point - in the future cases were overturned by DNA ruling them out illustrating how broken the justice system is.

To me this is all terrible because I happen to have a very strong sense of right and wrong. Sending an innocent guy to jail really upsets me. Not sending a guilty guy is almost as bad. When I read that I think it was Texas put a man to death over what turned out to be junk science from Florida, that just stays with you. The man was innocent.

If you've got nothing to hide, you've...

[grep -v '.*' *]

If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear. But your cousin or Aunt Minne, on the other hand.... I guess DNA makes a good perp pointer, as long as they're not the ONLY thing used to incriminate people.

By the way, if you've got absolutely nothing to hide -- what are all of your credit card and banking numbers again? I'm verifying data from Exactis. Thanks.

Re:If you've got nothing to hide, you've...

[AHuxley]

Re "I guess DNA makes a good perp pointer"
Follow the DNA line over to the person who lived in that part of the USA at that time.
Find out if the police interviewed them in the past?
Collect DNA today from that person thats ok for a court.
The next step is to go international. Moving to or from the USA decades ago to escape might not be as protective as it once was.

Re:If you've got nothing to hide, you've...

[Opportunist]

Not only that, but wait 'til the mob gets a hold of this. You want to be in our crew? No problem, hand in some hair samples. And should you try to get out, you might escape us, but we'll always find someone to club some knees in.

Re: If you've got nothing to hide, you've...

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't get a sample of Bin Laden's DNA before deep sixing his body. And DNA doesn't matter to the 400+ people who have been murdered by cops this year, legally.

Sieg heil the homeland this July 4th, or else! ae911truth org

Re:If you've got nothing to hide, you've...

[Anonymous Coward]

It was known that "affiliated" hookers were collecting samples for blackmail. It was in the local newspaper.

I've always thought that porn stars could have the same problem.

All that 1960-90's police work

[AHuxley]

How many informants got to walk after a crime in the past as they had more federal and state police work to help with?
All the small town police who got told about people in their own community but never did anything?
Federal, state, city informants who always had a call made for them?
The DNA draws into once powerful groups in a community that never had to consider police results.
That trend of the serial offender 3 states over could cover for many informants and powerful locals crimes. Local 1960's solution rates to homicide dropped as police corruption set in all over the USA.
Now that DNA is back to tell its own local story. Shredders will we working overtime to save reputations of police still working and of now high rank.
Political leaders who cover for well connected locals?
Decades later someone puts in for a DNA test and real police follow the truth back down to a small town.

Re:All that 1960-90's police work

[Q-Hack!]

More likely the corrupt cop will just claim he was sloppy at collecting sample at the scene of the crime. Of course you expect to see the cops DNA at the crime scene. Never mind that the sample was from a bit of semen.

Re:All that 1960-90's police work

[AHuxley]

Go back further from the 1980's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Everything that was once a mystery going back to the ~1960's is going to be tested from all over the USA.

Re: All that 1960-90's police work

[Calydor]

Somehow I don't think gay black people make up a large segment of Trump's support base.

Re: All that 1960-90's police work

[jedidiah]

> They aren't but they consider being called "nazi" a compliment

No, you've just abused the term (and all of the others) to the point where they no longer have any meaning. The insult only makes YOU look like a lazy idiot at this point.

Dependence on these kinds of insults makes your brain rot. You can't make a real argument anymore. Your mind has atrophied.

Just throw everyone in jail

[Anonymous Coward]

A jail is a gun free subsidized housing unit that provides free healthcare and wholesome balanced meals to all participants. Also since the sexes are separated there is no possibility the females will be harmed by toxic masculinity.

Since there are so many laws in the USA, everybody is guilty and deserving of the liberal utopia called prison. Sure maybe one person is innocent, but if one child is saved by locking up all of the United States, should we lock up everyone in the United States. I'm all for mandatory convictions based on DNA evidence or any other random confluence of circumstance.

Re:Just throw everyone in jail

[jfdavis668]

and all their ancestors!

Re:Just throw everyone in jail

[Tablizer]

the liberal utopia called prison

Conservatives are usually the ones for big full prisons.

Re:Just throw everyone in jail

[Calydor]

It's the grand unification between the political sides!

Re:Just throw everyone in jail

[fafalone]

Indeed, the mass incarceration policy driven by the drug war is massivey bipartisan. That some on the left want to slightly reduce sentence lengths, and force some low level users into treatment (and incarcerate them when they fail), is basically irrelevant, especially since they're once again calling for more police and more arrests for opiates (including the wonderful new policy of torturing pain patients). People like the retort about drug crimes not accounting for most of the prison population; but this is a narrow view. So many people get caught for property crime ultimately caused by drug addiction, robbery caused by drug addiction, violence caused by drug dealer disputes, all the gang activity funded by the drug war where gangs would collapse without that funding source. Make no mistake, the drug war is at the root of mass incarceration, and neither (R) nor (D) is doing anything to help (no, pot legalization won't help much).
Also entirely lost on both sides is the cognitive dissonance in recognizing that the drug war has failed, but absolutely refusing to consider alternatives not based on prohibition, despite sound evidence showing it would largely eliminate ancillary problems without raising addiction.

Re:Just throw everyone in jail

[Opportunist]

Curiously they are also often the ones that belong there. But then, we don't jail rich people, so they're good.

Re: Just throw everyone in jail

[Anonymous Coward]

Martha Stewart went to jail, so there, that proves the pauper's prisons aren't just for poor people. Every now an then a rich person gets sent up, like Westly Snipes... boy was Dave Chappelle surprised by the fake news:
" When everyone thought Wesley Snipes was in jail, I saw him at a party."

Now we all know just how fake the news really is, even black people. ae911truth org ... and RIP Barry Jennings

Re:Just throw everyone in jail

[Highdude702]

How many prisons does california have? Then compare that to every other state.. Yes please do count conservation/fire camps. Even without them the numbers are staggering.

Pirating DNA.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well as pirates always like to remind us. "Information wants to be free".

Re: Pirating DNA.

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought that.argument was related to politics, whereby the government does not conceal information to the voter.

Re: Pirating DNA.

[Anonymous Coward]

The argument is usually deployed against copyright law.

Re: Pirating DNA.

[Anonymous Coward]

It remains true. Understanding why left as thought exercise.

People worried about facial recognition?

[Anonymous Coward]

When this kind of database is already here??

Imagine when China build such database for everyone, for fighting crime of course, just the in the US.

Imagine if they'd just test what they have

[meglon]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/u...

Well, people are stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fishing expeditions like this were everyone is assumed guilty until proven otherwise - which is how these tests work: they answer the question "You are the perp, or related to them?" with yes or no - is exactly why there aren't any mandatory genetic register for all citizens. Using such registers in this way completely removes any and all presumption of innocence. It simply stinks to high heaven of totalitarianism.

Sadly, there are no need for such registers, because people are absolute morons who will help in creating such databases of their own volition, just in case they turn out to be distantly related to someone famous. *sigh*.

Re:Well, people are stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Using such registers in this way completely removes any and all presumption of innocence."

No more than running a search through a car registration/ownership database for people who have a red honda civic with a registration starting with X3G.

Re:Well, people are stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Private entities don't dispense justice and hence can't violate "presumption of innocence" (which can't be violated outside of a trial anyway).

2) Calling a partial hit on a DNA database a violation of a right is an extremely long bow to draw (which civil right is being violated?).

3) No-one has a privacy interest in anyone else's DNA anyway (I predict this will be litigated before the Supreme Court in the next decade or less).

Re: Well, people are stupid.

[reanjr]

The reality is jurors see DNA evidence as God's Own Truth. Even though it's clear someone's DNA can end up in a place they've never been.

Re:Well, people are stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

1. That's part of the problem. This information is available to anyone and everyone, you don't even have to have a reasonable suspicion. All you have to do is look. It's an end run around the system. It's a schoolbook example of a fishing expedition, something which is generally not approved in judicial circles as it is.

2. Partial hits are TMI. You're not entitled to the information at all to begin with, and I don't care who you are or why you're looking.

3. Really? I'm sure insurance companies are already looking into this, extensively. I'd love for you to get shafted because of some really distant relative apparently being genetically defective.

Re:Well, people are stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it is. If you're looking for a red honda civic with a license plate starting with X3G, that's a fairly specific search. You're looking for a specific thing, and cars btw, are not presumed innocent.

It's something quite different than "hey, let's look see if we can find anyone in this gigantic database of suspects - males living between $SEARCH_START_DATE and $CURRENT_DAY - which even remotely matches, and then proceed to dig into these "leads". And that's just the start.

Because then comes the next stage, where all the ground work is done to try to get you nailed. Newsflash, the police doesn't care if you're innocent or not, they are just trying to nail your ass. And that's the official stance. So, now you're on their radar by virtue of being distantly related to someone who did $SOMETHING. And evidence suppression is a real thing, even in the best of systems.

Then comes the delicate problem that once your DNA gets implicated, you suddenly are in the extremely awkward position of having to prove your innocence, rather than the other way around, because far too many people, jurors for otherwise, takes DNA as Gods own truth. Never mind that "DNA-contamination" and mismatches actually are real things. So, that means that if you can't credibly and reliably account for exactly what you did the evening of Tuesday the ninth of February 1982, you're in huge trouble. Because they have "evidence".

Re: Well, people are stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

is that how jurors see DNA evidence?

i guess you're aren't aware of the OJ Simpson trial. :(

Re:Well, people are stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, that means that if you can't credibly and reliably account for exactly what you did the evening of Tuesday the ninth of February 1982, you're in huge trouble. Because they have "evidence".

It's really a Tuesday. Well played.

Re: Well, people are stupid.

[reanjr]

The OJ trial was not an exercise in finding truth, it was an exercise in finding racial justice.

In my moms youth having "wrong" DNA was chriminal.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope that does not happen again...

Exonerated

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how many "solves" cases they're going to go back through to figure out how many people were wrongly executed. Oh, right, that requires someone other than the State to look into. I mean, they did their duty when the prosecutor pushed hard to be "tough on crime". Let's all forget that really means "tough on the suspect".

Don't get me wrong. There's almost certainly a lot of people who are found guilty or plea bargain who are guilty. But we don't really hold much accountability for all those who are innocent who are put away for decades or executed. "We all make mistakes," the prosecutors and the juries can say.

Well, your mistake can cost a person their life. In some ways, it only seems fair that if you are mistaken and another's life is taken that you should be held accountable and judged appropriately. This does not mean I could not or would not find a person guilty. It means that upon my own convictions, I should be prepared to suffer a fate not unlikely what I condemn another if I am wrong.

Re:Exonerated

[Miles_O'Toole]

When Bush was elected President, there were reports that law enforcement agencies destroyed evidence related to the cases of people executed during the time Bush was Governor of Texas.

They were afraid, apparently, proof might emerge that Bush had signed off on the execution of someone who could be proved innocent.

Yeah, right...

[Miles_O'Toole]

"Texas law enforcement also thinks that a man who was executed in 1999 for killing a 9-year-old girl was now also behind the murder of a 40-year-old realtor in 1981."

No doubt this same dead guy was guilty of every unsolved, cold case murder committed in Texas for the last 35 years.

In other news, Texas law enforcement is now boasting about having the highest percentage of solved cases in US history.

Re:Yeah, right...

[Anonymous Coward]

How did DNA in a database help with this? Didn't they take DNA from him after they fried him?

"the push is running up against privacy concerns."

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that. Those databases are not gathered for law enforcement to go trawl through with a dragnet. They're contributed to voluntarily for an entirely different purpose. So whatever any individual (or, in this case, their relatives!) may think of the practice, it is a breach of the deal under which the database got contributed to. It is a breach of the trust not to abuse the contributed data.

That makes both those databases and law enforcement untrustworthy. This regardless of the merits of any results achieved this way. This is a bit like Chinese calligraphy: If the result looks all right but you did it the wrong way, it's still wrong.

Re:In my moms youth having "wrong" DNA was chrimin

[Opportunist]

Just imagine what they could have done with actually being able to do DNA tests.

Then again, just imagine what they could've done with atomic bombs.

Genetic code stealing

[Anonymous Coward]

Me release my genetic code to the public domain, so that some other person can patent it? This has less to do with forensic science, and more to do with genetic code stealing. No thanks! Besides, why would I want to allow Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping's mad scientists to analyze my genetic code?

But where..

[Daemonik]

..are the exonerations? The truth is The Police and DA's are willing to bend the laws to use DNA evidence against you, but when that DNA evidence proves your innocence, especially if they've broken you down into confessing, they do everything they can to keep you from using it to get out of prison.

Re:But where..

[Anonymous Coward]

..are the exonerations? The truth is The Police and DA's are willing to bend the laws to use DNA evidence against you, but when that DNA evidence proves your innocence, especially if they've broken you down into confessing, they do everything they can to keep you from using it to get out of prison.

It may shock you to learn that police don't have the resources to keep investigating cases they've already closed. You don't need to do much googling to find cases where DNA exonerated someone who was found guilty, but it wasn't the police investigating that...

Re:But where..

[Agripa]

It may shock you to learn that police don't have the resources to keep investigating cases they've already closed. You don't need to do much googling to find cases where DNA exonerated someone who was found guilty, but it wasn't the police investigating that...

But they have the resources to object to releasing evidence for testing when it might prove innocence.

Re:But where..

[Whorhay]

Most of the cases I hear about it's the DA's Office actively fighting exoneration. The Police can get involved too depending on who's ego or reputation it would tarnish. There are plenty of cases where groups like The Innocence Project have spent the time and money to prove that someone is innocent but the DA's fight it like hell, going so far as to try and use Alford Pleas so they can keep a conviction on their record.

I don't expect the Police to keep investigating old closed cases on their own. But when new evidence comes to light the least they can do is not hinder the work that other people are doing.

Fast to jail, slow to unjail

[Anonymous Coward]

One way justice system.

The most telling part of the summary

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the most telling part of the summary: "The commercial sites require authorities to obtain search warrants for the information; the public site does not."

The police do not want to go through the proper channels and obtain warrants for the information they seek, so they 'encourage' people to upload their information to places where they are not required to submit their theories to a Judge.

Re:The most telling part of the summary

[jedidiah]

Considering that this is the age of Alexa, that's not a bad approach. People will happily subject themselves to the modern version of Big Brother for a small bit of convenience.

Re:In my moms youth having "wrong" DNA was chrimin

[jedidiah]

> In my moms youth having "wrong" DNA was chriminal.

Deranged comparisons like this are a form of Holocaust denial.

Insurance

[dohzer]

Get to the actual story here: has anyone else been refused health insurance based on this type of DNA?

Innocence project

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out the innocence project. They have successfully reversed wrongful convictions.

Re:Innocence project

[akgooseman]

The average individual can't afford enough lawyer time to undertake their own legitimate DNA-supported get-out-of-jail procedure because the justice system isn't one bit concerned about justice after a successful conviction. Some would argue the justice system isn't concerned with justice pre-conviction, either. Hence the need for the Innocence Project.

Already law for genetic discrimination

[blahbooboo]

These databases need to be deleted too. The privacy violates are incredible.

What do you do when an insurance company notices that someone in your family has a hereditary disease and decides to jack up your premiums? We need strong laws to protect DNA data and prevent that kind of abuse.

We already have a law, it's called Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008. The only catch, congress didnt put any protection for life insurance, disability insurance, and long-term care insurance.

https://www.genome.gov/1000232...

The most telling part of the public.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is there a public site in the first place? Seems the problem started before the police ever gotten involved.

Doctors with modpoints?

[drinkypoo]

Okay kids, explain how that was flamebait. Quote the relevant sections.

Re:Doctors with modpoints?

[DRJlaw]

Okay kids, explain how that was flamebait. Quote the relevant sections.

No, geezer, figure it out for yourself. All of it.

Re:Doctors with modpoints?

[drinkypoo]

No, geezer, figure it out for yourself. All of it.

So, none of it? You're just upset because it had my name at the top? Since you didn't provide an explanation, I'm free to seek my own, and that's most plausible.

Re:Doctors with modpoints?

[DRJlaw]

So, none of it? You're just upset because it had my name at the top? Since you didn't provide an explanation, I'm free to seek my own, and that's most plausible.

All of it.

I'm hardly upset, but you fail to realize: (a) nobody here works for you, so don't expect people to heave to your assignments. (b) "Kids;" this exemplar of your usual attitude explains why "They said they really wanted to hire me, then they just stopped returning my emails" -- not your self proclaimed "morals and standards" -- and (c) whining about moderation screams just "insecurity."

Finally, if people dare provide an explanation with facts you simply run away to the next topic, peppering posters with questions and more self-beneficial, self-created rules for discussion. So why bother replying substantively to your contradictory gobbeldygook? Doctor shortage -- despite having more doctors per capita than the UK and Canada -- CNPs providing poorer care than doctors -- because only a doctor can evaluate sugars and strep.

You're an expert in everything, so figure this one out for youself too. You'll be wrong, but you're obviously comfortable with that.

Re:Doctors with modpoints?

[drinkypoo]

Finally, if people dare provide an explanation with facts you simply run away to the next topic,

That's a good description of what happens with other people when I post citations, but not such a good description of my behavior. Again, put up or shut up.

Snitches get stitches

[reanjr]

You want me to submit my DNA to a public database in order to put my relatives in prison for indeterminate, supposed crimes?

No thanks...

Governments change. Data is forever.

[ElizabethGreene]

I see serious issues with this technology, and it's not a subtle one.

Trump jokes aside, today I do not live under an authoritative regime. I don't exactly trust my government, but I do feel free to speak out against their abuses without fearing prison or worse.

The problem is that governments change, and data is forever. Thirty years from now I could be a geriatric freedom fighter or my children could be fighting the war against the machines. If that happens, that DNA data will still exist and be used against us. I won't be a single wrinkly face among billions, I'll be in a tiny well-documented pool of possibly a dozen individuals.

In this case "think of the children" is entirely appropriate. Contributing to these databases today takes away privacy options for future generations permanently.

This is a terrible idea. Abort. Terminate. Halt. Cease.

The FBI already

[Anonymous Coward]

have enough DNA samples. What they need is new software and processes to do familial matches.

Alleged

[kackle]

I didn't RTFA, but shouldn't it be "The other arrest is of a 49-year-old DJ who allegedly strangled a schoolteacher in 1992."?

New round of exonerations in a decade or so

[Anonymous Coward]

DNA profiling has its uses, but as many cases have proven in the past decade or so it can easily be abused as well. First off while DNA is usually highly unique DNA profiles aren't so much so. There was a case not long ago where during a trial "experts" claimed that the chances of a profile mismatch were insanely unlikely, I believe when it was reviewed in appeals they found out the statistical probabilities were actually 50/50. And that is before you get into things like micro samples, evidence tampering, lab mistakes, etc. If you use DNA evidence as it was originally used, as in get evidence, find suspect with motive & opportunity, then do testing at a well ran facility, your chances of a mistake are extremely low. But if you go the lazy route, just throwing crime scene evidence at a database and trying to blindly convict the first match that the computer spits out the chances of an innocent person being convicted skyrocket.

Lab Tech falsifies results
Lab with erroneous results from incompetence

hahahahah

[p51d007]

Serves em right. If you are STUPID enough to give ANYONE your DNA, you are STUPID! With the data mining of PC's, smartphones, websites and what not, you'd have to be a complete moron to think someone wouldn't data mine DNA to solve an old cold case.

Re:hahahahah

[Anonymous Coward]

So, what if your relative is a 'complete moron' and submitted his own DNA on such a web site?

Can a murderer have control over his whole extended family?

captcha: untried

Re:hahahahah

[Anonymous Coward]

If your family shared their DNA... Just like all your friends posting your photo on Facebook and tagging it with your real name, and maybe even adding a caption saying it's your birthday celebration at your house and leaving the geolocation data in the photo.

Re:In my moms youth having "wrong" DNA was chrimin

[Anonymous Coward]

Your mom sounds pretty wild...

This is a cheat of life

[Anonymous Coward]

Murders don't know that this technology will exist in the future.

Play fair !

Only catch murders with technology of that area... ! LOL

Respect the game of life ! =D

Re:This is a cheat of life

[ebvwfbw]

No statute of limitations on murder.

Require a search warrent

[SoftwareArtist]

The commercial sites require authorities to obtain search warrants for the information; the public site does not.

There's an easy solution to that problem. Make them get a search warrant before searching the public site too. DNA is super sensitive personal information. The police shouldn't be searching it without a warrant.

I know, people will say that doesn't make sense. It's a public database. Anyone can access it. The information was freely given away by other people. But we're dealing with a hard paradox. On one hand, your DNA is super sensitive personal information. No one but you should be able to give it away. On the other hand, each of your parents and siblings shares half your DNA. When a relative gives away their own sequence, they're also giving away part of yours. So does that mean your DNA isn't really private after all? Or does it mean that no one is allowed to give away their own sequence? Or do we try to balance the two, putting up barriers that protect privacy without restricting freedom too much?

The same problem comes up in other places. That's what the whole "right to privacy" is about. Anyone can walk by your house, take photos of it, post them online with your address and phone number. They can follow you to work and post details about where you work, when you commute, what route you take. Once you leave your house you're on public roads, right? But there are laws protecting your right to privacy (at least in some places), so they can't do all that. We need to balance your right to privacy against their right to follow you around in public and post what they see. The same with DNA.

Gedmatch is not Open source

[Anonymous Coward]

For starters, the âsource codeâ(TM) for gedmatch is not available and the owner will not share the code so therefore it is not open source, itâ(TM)s an open database, public database.