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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.
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.
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"