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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.
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.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
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.
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
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.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
and all their ancestors!
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/u...
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
It's the grand unification between the political sides!
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
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.
"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.
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.
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).
Curiously they are also often the ones that belong there. But then, we don't jail rich people, so they're good.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
..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.
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.
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.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> In my moms youth having "wrong" DNA was chriminal.
Deranged comparisons like this are a form of Holocaust denial.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Get to the actual story here: has anyone else been refused health insurance based on this type of DNA?
Check out the innocence project. They have successfully reversed wrongful convictions.
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...
Okay kids, explain how that was flamebait. Quote the relevant sections.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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...
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.
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.
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."?
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".
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.
The OJ trial was not an exercise in finding truth, it was an exercise in finding racial justice.
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.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
No statute of limitations on murder.