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How Genealogy Websites Make It Easier To Catch Killers (ieee.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: Over the past six months a small, publicly available genealogy database has become the go-to source for solving cold case crimes. The free online tool, called GEDmatch, is an ancestry service that allows people to submit their DNA data and search for relatives -- an open access version of AncestryDNA or 23andMe. Since April, investigators have used GEDmatch to identify victims, killers, and missing persons all over the U.S. in at least 19 cases, many of them decades old, according to authors of a report published today in Science. The authors predict that in the near future, as genetic genealogy reports gain in popularity, such tools could be used to find nearly any individual in the U.S. of European descent.
GEDmatch holds the genetic data of only about a million people. But cold case investigators have been exploiting the database using a genomic analysis technique called long-range familial search. The technique allows researchers to match an individual's DNA to distant relatives, such as third cousins. Chances are, one of those relatives will have used a genetic genealogy service. More than 17 million people have participated in these services -- a number that has grown rapidly over the last two years. AncestryDNA and 23andMe hold most of those customers. A genetic match to a distant relative can fairly quickly lead investigators to the person of interest. In a highly publicized case, GEDmatch was used earlier this year to identify the "Golden State Killer," a serial rapist and murderer who terrorized California in the 1970s and 1980s, but was never caught. In April, investigators were able to use a genealogy database to narrow down DNA data from crime scenes and identify the "Golden State Killer," a serial rapist and murderer who terrorized California in the 1970s and 1980s.
GEDmatch holds the genetic data of only about a million people. But cold case investigators have been exploiting the database using a genomic analysis technique called long-range familial search. The technique allows researchers to match an individual's DNA to distant relatives, such as third cousins. Chances are, one of those relatives will have used a genetic genealogy service. More than 17 million people have participated in these services -- a number that has grown rapidly over the last two years. AncestryDNA and 23andMe hold most of those customers. A genetic match to a distant relative can fairly quickly lead investigators to the person of interest. In a highly publicized case, GEDmatch was used earlier this year to identify the "Golden State Killer," a serial rapist and murderer who terrorized California in the 1970s and 1980s, but was never caught. In April, investigators were able to use a genealogy database to narrow down DNA data from crime scenes and identify the "Golden State Killer," a serial rapist and murderer who terrorized California in the 1970s and 1980s.
Well, it seems those really hard to solve crimes often involve corrupt law enforcers perhaps start the DNA search there ;D?
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
given the nature of our justice system. Very few cases go all the way to trial. Most of the time the prosecutors can get a plea deal with the threat of long jail time (take a 20 year sentence instead of life since you know the jury's likely to convict).
It doesn't help that juries are overly emotional. I've been on a jury where a women said, no joke, "We can't allow our personal feelings to sway our ruling and we need to get this guy off the streets". She didn't even pause for breath when she contradicted herself, which given her girth was impressive...
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Nice fearmongering, Ivan. Don't kill/rape/offend anyone and you have nothing to worry about.
Right.
Unless you consider that planting DNA at a crime scene is easy as swiping a hair/tooth brush, or combing through your trash for kleenex and toothpicks.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I have always thought that submitting your information to those sites was kind of like submitting your information to sites like facebook and since I don't have a facebook account I won be using them either.
Any information you make available at large on the Internet may be used, not only to catch serial killer but for other reasons as well. It may also be used by serial killers to target you!
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Where everyone is a suspect and you're guilty unless proven innocent.
It doesn't work that way. Even a DNA match alone is not enough to convict. There has to be corroborating evidence.
But if the DNA match flags 20 people, and 19 of them live in other states, and the other one is the murder victim's ex-boyfriend with a domestic violence restraining order on him, then he's goin' down.
Kin who put in for a DNA test as a fun hobby are going to find a lot of interesting people.
Undercover police who got into crime to keep a deep cover story. Who become corrupt.
Police informants who expected city and state police never to question their crimes as their information was so vital.
The use of military and special forces units to do police work. Wait for other nations to ask the USA for results.
The smart people doing DNA work don't know about any police deals done.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
If you're trawling trough a database of everyone's genes it means per definition that they are ALL suspects.
Saying "everyone" is a suspect is the same as saying no one is a suspect. It is meaningless.
DNA evidence has more often been used to exonerate the innocent than to convict the guilty. Just ask the Central Park Five, although Donald Trump still insists they are guilty.
If you had line of sight to this in the 70s/80s then you were a genius. This method primarily is used on cold cases from years in the past. Criminals these days mostly know about DNA evidence.
Those databases should not be available to law enforcement. We don't let law enforcement DNA test random or innocent people, why should they get access to these databases to go around the law?
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I'd think it would be useful to submit some fake data but I'm sure of the legality of it. Probably legal if you submitted someone else's DNA with their approval as your own but beyond that who knows and that would pretty much be a one time thing that doesn't scale. If you don't care about laws, well then, the sky is the limit.
If I remember correctly there was a case in the news recently when the DNA for a number of cases pointed to a single perpetrator. Turns out the DNA was from the forensic analyst who collected the DNA samples, contaminated them and found his or her own DNA. Doubtful the analyst was indicted but not sure what happened to the DNA of the actual perps.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
The data itself could be very valuable - but it can also be badly misused.
I remember when prosecutors claimed that DNA evidence only had a 1 in 6 trillion chance of being wrong. A statement that is wildly wrong for a great many reasons - not the least of which is that crime labs make mistakes far more often than that.
Using genealogy databases that you could have a positive feedback of investigating a related group of people more often, resulting in more convictions, resulting in more investigations. Similar to the way bias can sneak into any justice system.
Since in most cases I assume the suspects DNA would be tested - it may be possible to avoid the above failings, but I'm still uneasy about possible misuse.
>"It doesn't work that way. [...] There has to be corroborating evidence."
Ask Kavanaugh how that worked out. He wasn't convicted of anything, but without a single bit of corroborating evidence, his name was smeared to high hell and back and his career stained forever. Accusation without corroborating evidence can still be very damaging.
I wonder if the germans have a word for scared shitless, yet simultaneously in awe and happiness at the karmatic overtones of this form of justice.
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and because their was no corroborating evidence he was not charged with anything. Applying for a highly charged political position is always going to result in reputation damage
Or maybe Paul Erds, whatever; the connections always leads back to one of them...
Nullius in verba
Accusation without corroborating evidence can still be very damaging.
If you are a false positive living in NJ, and the victim is in Los Angeles, you will just be crossed off the list, and you will never know you were flagged. It will have no effect whatsoever on your life.
DNA evidence has more often been used to exonerate the innocent than to convict the guilty.
It's used to convict the guilty all the time, you just don't see it because it completely shut down the "it wasn't me" defense when it totally was you. In fact before DNA profiling many cases would probably never get near a court room, because if the drunk/drugged/assaulted woman couldn't pick out the rapist from a line-up there wasn't really anything to go on. Now they all claim it was voluntary which DNA can't say anything about, but the goal posts moved. Same with a lot of other serious crime, before you had some crappy surveillance tape and fingerprints that could be trivially defeated with a ski mask and gloves if you had anything at all, now damn near everything the burglar/robber/assaulter/murderer touched can be used to identify them.
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>"It doesn't work that way. [...] There has to be corroborating evidence."
Ask Kavanaugh how that worked out. He wasn't convicted of anything, but without a single bit of corroborating evidence, his name was smeared to high hell and back and his career stained forever. Accusation without corroborating evidence can still be very damaging.
I think there's no problem with someone having drank a lot in college. However, what I saw during the Senate hearing was a belligerent guy who did not know his place and was an asshole and a liar to the people who were about to decide his nomination. To be honest, if politics wasn't as polarized as it is in the US, this guy should have never been accepted. But, as it is, the Republicans will say yes to anything their side proposes and no to anything the Democrats offer (and vice versa). So, a guy who lied about what he did in college ended up being accepted to the Supreme Court. Madness...
Didn't Slashdot report on this when it happened?
Nice fearmongering, Ivan. Don't kill/rape/offend anyone and you have nothing to worry about.
Right.
Unless you consider that planting DNA at a crime scene is easy as swiping a hair/tooth brush, or combing through your trash for kleenex and toothpicks.
It's considerably worse than that.
Your DNA might end up on the scene of a crime as easily as either the perp or the victim using the same seat on any form of public transportation as you have used earlier, or simply passing them on the street.
And that's ignoring the entire issue of errors in the lab, or simple probability. I don't remember the odds for getting a positive DNA-match off-hand for the wrong person, but it's not insignificant. Let's, for the sake of argument, say it's one in a million. Now, how many people are there in the US? If you have a probable match for 1 in a million, how many perps does that give you? Add to that the number of people who come from abroad who might have been at the scene.
Add to this the tendency to consider DNA as the final and ultimate evidence, or even proof. Suddenly you're in the position where you have to refute the "evidence", i.e you're guilty until proven otherwise.
Having to prove a negative is always very, very difficult, but it's particularly insidious in this situation. Not only do you have to prove a negative, you're also facing an uphill struggle in that everyone is already convinced in your guilt - heck, they even want you to be guilty, they have their "evidence" and they want things over with. To make things even worse you have to fight something concrete like "your DNA was found on the scene" with abstract concepts like probability, unless you can't positively absolutely prove that you're innocent, like "I wasn't borne when this person was murdered".
I have no doubts about this being an excellent method for getting more people sentenced... but sentenced doesn't mean necessarily mean guilty, which is a huge problem.
So it's virtually impossible to stop law enforcement without a separate law. What's happening is that people's relatives are putting their DNA in the database an then that's being used to narrow down the search for the culprits. In theory that's not so bad, but you're right that in practice there's a lot of room for abuse.
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if you can use the threat of life in jail to get that ex-boyfriend to take a 5 year plea deal then sure, it works that way. Not sure about the rest of the country but in the South and South West there's a lot of racism still, so it's terrifyingly easy to get a conviction. Sure, if the guy is well off he'll have a lawyer that'll shut down the circumstantial evidence but, well, the South & South West aren't well known for their well to do minority communities...
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How is his career stained, exactly? He's a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. You can't go up from there. Sure, he had to sit through interrogation and a couple of weeks of intense media scrutiny, but in the end, he got what he wanted. Cry me a river.
Meanwhile, Dr. Ford, the accuser, got nothing out of the experience other than a chance to confront her (alleged) attacker.
Remember, Gorsuch got through with hardly any drama, so this can't just be about politics.
Lesson 1: Don't drink so much you can't remember what happened.
Lesson 2: If someone sexually assaults you, pursue it immediately and to the fullest extent possible because, some time later, that person could be a candidate for Supreme Court at which point politics will rule the day and not justice.
Considering he now has a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, I'd say it worked out pretty well. You sound like the President: oh woe is Kavanaugh, you poor thing! He is now (if he wasn't already) is a fine position to not give two shits about what other people think about him. I think he'll be just fine.
And you're right: he wasn't convicted of anything. On the other hand, he wasn't undergoing a criminal trial, facing jail time or other harsh penalties. He was being considered for a very, very important job that, ultimately, stems from the trust the American people put in the Court. Untold number of people have been denied jobs (even, or especially, high-profile jobs) for far, far less than a single person's sworn testimony.
Tomorrow political dissidents and scapegoats