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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.
"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.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
..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.
One way justice system.
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.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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...?
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.
Even the Neanderthals looked after sick members of the tribe. For chrissakes, act like a human being.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
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.