I find this method seriously scary due to the probability of a false positive. I mean, suppose you have a system that only fails once in a million times and the killer has already left the country. You ask the two million people in the metropolitan area to submit DNA. You get on average two matches. One doesn't have an alibi. You take him to trial and tell the jury that he not only doesn't have an alibi, he had a 1 in a million DNA match. It sounds pretty convincing. It is very possible the jury won't have the understanding of statistics to ask "was this a sweep or did you only test a couple of likely suspects?" Nor is it likely that the information will be volunteered by the court.
In any sane legal system you couldn't convict someone on one piece of positive evidence (DNA) and one negative (no alibi).
If you have an insane legal system where this could happen, you're fucked anyway.
Since it was murder/rape I guess that the rapist left the dna in a place where only a person having had sex with the victim would leave it sort of...
Exactly, if your DNA is found in the victims's vagina, your "she must have brushed against me in the street" defence isn't going to sound too convincing.
Amazingly, lawyers and judges do actually take things like plausibility, possibility and probability into account in criminal cases. It's never as simple as "we have one piece of DNA evidence, therefore you're you're guilty".
actually, no - it's interesting to see what actual happens, because the question is - how/why does this DNA match actually matter?
It's nearly as impossible to associate DNA at a crime scene with an individual being actually involved without further proof - otherwise this is in the same category as trying to assign an IP address to an individual.
I'm fairly sure DNA is a bit more useful than this, or they wouldn't have bothered with the appeal for volunteers in the first place.
And yes, obviously, you have to end up with enough evidence to convict someone at a trial, no one is suggesting you have some sort of trial by CSI: "it's a match!" "Right, bang him up in prison for fifty years wiout trial then".
There is no end to the amount of crimes that could be prevented or solved if only we were ready to embrace draconian governmental invasions of our privacy and restrictions on our freedom of choice. Do you realize that if we only had laws forbidding women from traveling alone in public without being escorted by a male relative how many rapes we might prevent each year?
Being persuaded by the likelihood of getting caught from murdering someone is only an invasion of your privacy and a restriction on your freedom of choice in the most outlandish libertarian fantasies, where any "government interference" is inherently evil.
You will still have the "freedom" to rape or murder someone, as this isn't Minority Report style pre-cog yet, it just means you're highly likely to get caught and convicted for it. Excuse me for not blubbing over the rights of murderers and rapists to get away scot free with their crimes.
I'd rather err on the side of having murders and rapes go unsolved, rather than err on the side of police having everyone's DNA sequences.
If you commit rape and murder and are convicted by your DNA after a fair trial, I don't see the problem. You're guilty of the crime and should be punished.
Now, the question of whether DNA evidence is quite the 100% guaranteed foolproof method some people claim is a different issue, but it should still be covered by the "fair trial" proviso.
Arguments about the police planting DNA evidence and fitting up suspects for political reasons are pure paranoid fantasy: if they wanted to they could do that already without using DNA quite easily.
Everyone here seems to think this is a bad thing. I disagree. Facebook et. al. are just applying what the majority THINK is their moral code, strictly. Most parents don't want pictures of boobies posted where their children can see them. Fine - no pictures of topless women, drawings of Adam and Eve, or the Venus de Milo ( Aphrodite de Milos). Oh wait, that's not what you meant?
The summary says the policies are arbitrary. They're not. Just the opposite. And it exposes the ridiculousness of our double standards.
Most people don't care about pictures of breasts as such. As you say, there are plenty of works of art with naked female flesh in them. However, that doesn't meran there is no difference between the Venus de Milo and a porn video.
Sorry, I just can't approve of a company that doesn't support delicious chicken sandwiches.
But no, really - I see what's going on here. "We're tolerant of everything - unless it's something we don't find culturally acceptable." Yep, that passes liberal scrutiny.
Being tolerant of something doesn't mean you have to agree with it, and nor does it mean you aren't allowed to discuss it or legally oppose it, on the basis that the original person's right to say what they like is absolute and shouldn't be dampened by the fear of possible consequences.
Fuck off, if someone opposes gay marriage and gay rights, they have to take the consequences, not hide behind their "right" to be evil arseholes without suffering the righteous indignation of normal non-homophobic people.
You right wingers seem to think you should be given absolute liberty, while calling for the suppression of the liberty of others.
If you want to come out and say you hate X, don't be surprised when X hates you back, and doesn't stick to the school bully "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" argument beloved of fascists everywhere (until they get into actual power and start by silencing people's objections permanently).
My impression is that in America violence isn't much tolerated either. When was the last time you saw on TV someone getting shot in the head - for real I mean? When those Americans had their heads chopped off and videos of the event were posted on the internet, did you see the videos on your local news? When you see a car accident reported on the news, do they show the mangled body before its covered with a sheet?
I don't feel the need to see people being shot in the head, decapitated or mangled in a car crash to follow what the news is about, especially if my kids are watching too.
Most people feel the same, which is why most TV news is "censored" like this.
I could have predicted your reply. Pure NIMBY intolerance.
If you don't want neighbours to complain about your erecting monstrous structures next door to them, move somewhere where the neighbours are a few miles away.
In any sort of urban environment, people have to co-operate to make life tolerable, and the overall public good outweighs your right to be an arsehole.
And censorship - limiting the allowed topics of and positions in conversations - is harmful no matter the source, especially since more and more public spaces are actually commercial ventures.
What a load of bollocks. I'm sorry, but I do not want my children's Moshi Monsters forums (or whatever) to be full of people swearing and posting violent porn videos. There is a time and a place for everything (4chan).
If someone tried to "forgive" me for being gay, having sex outside marriage, or whatever other tribal taboo they've dredged up from the Bible, I'd deck the fucker.
There are true statements that can't be proved ("I love you") and false statements that can't be disproved ("there is an invisible massless flying teapot orbiting the Earth"). Big deal, neither of those say anything about the plausibility of an invisible fucking sky fairy directing the universe.
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I find this method seriously scary due to the probability of a false positive. I mean, suppose you have a system that only fails once in a million times and the killer has already left the country. You ask the two million people in the metropolitan area to submit DNA. You get on average two matches. One doesn't have an alibi. You take him to trial and tell the jury that he not only doesn't have an alibi, he had a 1 in a million DNA match. It sounds pretty convincing. It is very possible the jury won't have the understanding of statistics to ask "was this a sweep or did you only test a couple of likely suspects?" Nor is it likely that the information will be volunteered by the court.
In any sane legal system you couldn't convict someone on one piece of positive evidence (DNA) and one negative (no alibi).
If you have an insane legal system where this could happen, you're fucked anyway.
Since it was murder/rape I guess that the rapist left the dna in a place where only a person having had sex with the victim would leave it sort of...
Exactly, if your DNA is found in the victims's vagina, your "she must have brushed against me in the street" defence isn't going to sound too convincing.
Amazingly, lawyers and judges do actually take things like plausibility, possibility and probability into account in criminal cases. It's never as simple as "we have one piece of DNA evidence, therefore you're you're guilty".
actually, no - it's interesting to see what actual happens, because the question is - how/why does this DNA match actually matter?
It's nearly as impossible to associate DNA at a crime scene with an individual being actually involved without further proof - otherwise this is in the same category as trying to assign an IP address to an individual.
I'm fairly sure DNA is a bit more useful than this, or they wouldn't have bothered with the appeal for volunteers in the first place.
And yes, obviously, you have to end up with enough evidence to convict someone at a trial, no one is suggesting you have some sort of trial by CSI: "it's a match!" "Right, bang him up in prison for fifty years wiout trial then".
Trouble is..how can you know you can trust others in the govt years down the line?
Democracy. In the end, it's the only thing you can rely on.
People committing assault/rape/murder are rarely thinking with their rational brain when they commit the crime.
So what? It still hopefully means that they can be caught and convicted more easily, I just don't see why that can ever be a bad thing.
There is no end to the amount of crimes that could be prevented or solved if only we were ready to embrace draconian governmental invasions of our privacy and restrictions on our freedom of choice. Do you realize that if we only had laws forbidding women from traveling alone in public without being escorted by a male relative how many rapes we might prevent each year?
Being persuaded by the likelihood of getting caught from murdering someone is only an invasion of your privacy and a restriction on your freedom of choice in the most outlandish libertarian fantasies, where any "government interference" is inherently evil.
You will still have the "freedom" to rape or murder someone, as this isn't Minority Report style pre-cog yet, it just means you're highly likely to get caught and convicted for it. Excuse me for not blubbing over the rights of murderers and rapists to get away scot free with their crimes.
I'd rather err on the side of having murders and rapes go unsolved, rather than err on the side of police having everyone's DNA sequences.
If you commit rape and murder and are convicted by your DNA after a fair trial, I don't see the problem. You're guilty of the crime and should be punished.
Now, the question of whether DNA evidence is quite the 100% guaranteed foolproof method some people claim is a different issue, but it should still be covered by the "fair trial" proviso.
Arguments about the police planting DNA evidence and fitting up suspects for political reasons are pure paranoid fantasy: if they wanted to they could do that already without using DNA quite easily.
If you click again on the uncensored version you just get a lot of limp cock shots and grey beards. Still, whatever turns you on...
Everyone here seems to think this is a bad thing. I disagree. Facebook et. al. are just applying what the majority THINK is their moral code, strictly. Most parents don't want pictures of boobies posted where their children can see them. Fine - no pictures of topless women, drawings of Adam and Eve, or the Venus de Milo ( Aphrodite de Milos). Oh wait, that's not what you meant?
The summary says the policies are arbitrary. They're not. Just the opposite. And it exposes the ridiculousness of our double standards.
Most people don't care about pictures of breasts as such. As you say, there are plenty of works of art with naked female flesh in them. However, that doesn't meran there is no difference between the Venus de Milo and a porn video.
Funny how burqas bring out the otherwise extremely well disguised feminism in most slashdotters.
Is "liberty" only important for political statements?
All statements are political, especially those which claim to be a-political.
Sorry, I just can't approve of a company that doesn't support delicious chicken sandwiches. But no, really - I see what's going on here. "We're tolerant of everything - unless it's something we don't find culturally acceptable." Yep, that passes liberal scrutiny.
Being tolerant of something doesn't mean you have to agree with it, and nor does it mean you aren't allowed to discuss it or legally oppose it, on the basis that the original person's right to say what they like is absolute and shouldn't be dampened by the fear of possible consequences.
You right wingers seem to think you should be given absolute liberty, while calling for the suppression of the liberty of others.
If you want to come out and say you hate X, don't be surprised when X hates you back, and doesn't stick to the school bully "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" argument beloved of fascists everywhere (until they get into actual power and start by silencing people's objections permanently).
A film of a tit deliberately being hacked off wouldn't get a certificate at all, it would land the filmmaker in jail.
My impression is that in America violence isn't much tolerated either. When was the last time you saw on TV someone getting shot in the head - for real I mean? When those Americans had their heads chopped off and videos of the event were posted on the internet, did you see the videos on your local news? When you see a car accident reported on the news, do they show the mangled body before its covered with a sheet?
I don't feel the need to see people being shot in the head, decapitated or mangled in a car crash to follow what the news is about, especially if my kids are watching too.
Most people feel the same, which is why most TV news is "censored" like this.
(man, I am dating myself here!)
That's OK, you're on slashdot, we take whatever "dates" we can.
What the first thing Adam said to Eve? "Stand back. I'm not sure how big this thing is gonna get!"
What's the first thing Eve said to Adam?
"Of course I came."
The original sin was lying.
I could have predicted your reply. Pure NIMBY intolerance.
If you don't want neighbours to complain about your erecting monstrous structures next door to them, move somewhere where the neighbours are a few miles away.
In any sort of urban environment, people have to co-operate to make life tolerable, and the overall public good outweighs your right to be an arsehole.
I think the world would be a better place if we allowed children to watch porn and didn't allow them to watch violence.
Exposing children to pr0n is a form of emotional violence, unless you're of the paedophile persuasion.
And censorship - limiting the allowed topics of and positions in conversations - is harmful no matter the source, especially since more and more public spaces are actually commercial ventures.
What a load of bollocks. I'm sorry, but I do not want my children's Moshi Monsters forums (or whatever) to be full of people swearing and posting violent porn videos. There is a time and a place for everything (4chan).
If someone tried to "forgive" me for being gay, having sex outside marriage, or whatever other tribal taboo they've dredged up from the Bible, I'd deck the fucker.
My generalizations are derived from empirical data...lets start with 9/11.
9/11 was an act of political terrorism, not an example of the average Muslim reaction to being offended, you stupid fuck.
I'm laying 50=50 odds that Iran lights off a nuke on someone.
What, on the basis that they are Muslim, and therefore insane? So why haven't Pakistan done anything yet?
If you go to the middle east and offend a Muslim (that is, engage in Blasphemy) you will most likely get your throat cut.
If you go to the US and offend a Christian (that is, engage in Blasphemy) you will most likely get your head shot off.
That's one baseless anecdote each, so it's a tie!
It is OK to mock Christians, and anyone else who believes in things they cannot prove.
Perhaps you are unaware of the fact that Gödel's First Incompleteness theorem proved that there exist true statements that may never be proven.
There are true statements that can't be proved ("I love you") and false statements that can't be disproved ("there is an invisible massless flying teapot orbiting the Earth"). Big deal, neither of those say anything about the plausibility of an invisible fucking sky fairy directing the universe.