
Your DNA Is Out There. Do You Want Law Enforcement Using It? - Jerry2
https://www.bloombergquint.com/businessweek/your-dna-is-out-there-do-you-want-law-enforcement-using-it
======
nickysielicki
I'm more concerned about the impact on forensics, how these large banks of
information will inevitably leak and compound upon developments in the
creation of artificial DNA.

DNA evidence is considered infallible within the justice system, should it be?
Here's a paper from 2009. [1] Around the same time the paper was published,
the author was quoted in a NYT article [2] (again, nearly a decade ago)
saying, "“You can just engineer a crime scene, any biology undergraduate could
perform this.”" Think about how much this field developed within the past
decade. Here [3] is another paper from the end of last year about looking at
methylation signatures on DNA to profile the person it belongs to. Imagine the
possibility of finding badly degraded DNA at a crime scene and still being
able to say, "whoever did this, they have this skin color, they're within this
age range, they're a smoker, and they have frequent exposure to this
particular industrial chemical." _Minority report_ wasn't imaginative enough.

I'm concerned about this being used politically, I think it's possible with
enough money and motivation. I think our courts are too addicted to open-and-
shut convictions to reevaluate the validity of DNA evidence going forward.

[1]:
[https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fsigen.2009.06.009](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fsigen.2009.06.009)

[2]:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/science/18dna.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/science/18dna.html)

[3]:
[https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-017-1373-1](https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-017-1373-1)

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _our courts are too addicted to open-and-shut convictions to reevaluate the
> validity of DNA evidence going forward_

Have you ever served on a jury? These questions are deeply contemplated in
selection, presentation and deliberation. If the evidence could have been
falsified, a jury neutral to that argument will hear the defense’s case.

~~~
paulgrant999
What are you joking?

They strike anyone with a brain or domain-level knowledge (until they run out
of strikes).

You never see the totality of the evidence; just what the judge "allows in"
(that isn't prejudicial to the prosecutors case).

You don't know what the punishments are; half the time you aren't instructed
on lesser offences; and most of the time you never even get to see the actual
laws, or more importantly, case law.

if you think sitting on a jury (as it stands today) qualifies you to render
any sort of judgement on the "evidence", you are woefully mistaken.

You are a puppet. A fop. Anything but "the last bulwark against state
tyranny".

The appearance of justice, is the only thing Courts give a shit about. You are
part of that appearance. A show, for the uneducated to think they still have a
functioning legal system.

~~~
dang
We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our
request to stop.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
vikingcaffiene
I think the ability to solve a criminal act via the technique described is
perfectly valid. It's quite ingenious in fact.

What GREATLY concerns me is the thought of what happens when one of these
companies gets down on their luck and sells all this data to an insurance
company. Can you imagine what would happen to your rates and coverage if it
comes back that your family has, say, a predisposition towards diabetes or
cancer? There needs to be legislation enacted to strictly control how this
information gets used. Furthermore an individual should be allowed to control
how that information is shared and be able to opt out of any scenarios they
are not comfortable with. Law enforcement scenarios could be exempt but
tightly regulated to avoid abuse.

[edit] - its been pointed out that insurance co's can't do what I am
describing (which is awesome btw). I think my point stands about the
implications of this data being monetized to our detriment.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
What happens when your sample is contaminated with a criminal's (or future
criminal)? What if a clean sample generates a false positive match to
something undesirable? What do you do when your erroneous genetic records
close off doors or sends you through the criminal justice system? You will be
powerless to fix it.

You are at the complete mercy of lab techs not screwing _anything_ up. It's
safer not to put personally identifying information into a database.

~~~
HarryHirsch
Remember Annie Dookhan!

~~~
sdrothrock
I had to look her up:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Dookhan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Dookhan)

She was a chemist at a crime lab who falsified large amounts of evidence.

This is pretty shocking.

> On December 17, Dookhan was formally arraigned on 27 charges—17 counts of
> obstruction of justice, eight counts of tampering with evidence and one
> count each of perjury and falsification of records.

> [The judge presiding over Dookhan's case] wrote, "Innocent persons were
> incarcerated, guilty persons have been released to further endanger the
> public, millions and millions of public dollars are being expended to deal
> with the chaos Ms. Dookhan created, and the integrity of the criminal
> justice system has been shaken to the core."

All of that resulted in a sentence of only three years (Nov 2013 to April
2016).

------
ocdtrekkie
The creepiest bit is the GSK story: Where even if I've been careful to not use
any genetic testing services, not granted anyone permission to access or use
my medical data, etc., I'm still screwed because less privacy-oriented
individuals in my family can effectively hand out "close enough" data for my
genetic information.

Though honestly, DNA is probably the least worst data law enforcement could be
using against me. It's reasonably accurate, and it requires they have actual
physical evidence in a case they're investigating to compare against. While
it's true I could've touched an object shortly before a killer did, it's very
far from the dragnet approach of say... querying the identities of all cell
phone users in a geographic area at a given time. If my identity pops up in a
DNA search, it's reasonable that I will, at the very least, have useful data
about the incident at hand.

I would like more protection though for search of these sorts of databases
though. Searching a DNA database should require a warrant of some kind. For a
judge to look at where the DNA was found and the circumstances of the case,
and decide it's reasonable and warranted to conduct the search.

~~~
gregmac
It's the combination that really scares me.

Your cell phone located you in the area at about the right time, _and_ your
"close enough" dna was the only dna found on the murder weapon. Slam dunk
case.

Don't even really need people to put this evidence together: AI can do it!
What can possibly go wrong?

------
harimau777
I took a course in college where we studied the basic process of DNA
amplification. We were just learning at a theoretical level, but from what I
understand almost anyone with access to a university biology lab and the
associated training could easily create copies of a DNA sample. Doesn't that
mean that it would be relatively easy for something like an intelligence
organization to frame someone for a crime?

~~~
robinwassen
I guess they could point the suspicion to someone innocent, but I would be
surprised if law enforcement didn't validate the DNA before sentencing a
crime.

~~~
HarryHirsch
The cops have no incentive to run confirmations, for leadership to be re-
elected they must appear "tough on crime" or something. There are just no
consequences for false positives.

In Orlando the police arrested a fellow after a field test indicated that a
box of donuts was coated in meth:
[https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/breaking-news/os-
krispy...](https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/breaking-news/os-krispy-kreme-
glaze-orlando-police-20171012-story.html)

In North Carolina the police arrested several men after a field test that
identified sugar as fentanyl: [https://wtkr.com/2018/08/29/2m-worth-of-
fentanyl-seized-in-b...](https://wtkr.com/2018/08/29/2m-worth-of-fentanyl-
seized-in-bust-turns-out-to-be-sugar-lab-finds/)

It's well known that that sort of test isn't specific for anything and merely
gives law enforcement a pretext to arrest a nogoodnik they deem guilty. Why
would anyone trust them to act different with DNA? The police's business is
arrests, matches are good for arrests, confirmatory tests are bad for arrests,
hence no checks.

~~~
User23
It's not impossible that it really was fentanyl and some dirty cops stole it.

------
palisade
[https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/04/19/framed-for-
mur...](https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/04/19/framed-for-murder-by-
his-own-dna)

------
DevX101
Not sure if anyone's done this but I specifically put a fake name and email
when I submitted my DNA test samples to maintain my privacy as much as
possible.

I suppose they could track me based on my mailing address, which I didn't
spoof, but it's better than nothing.

~~~
endymi0n
The scary thing about DNA and all of its future use is that all of your
"privacy" measures are completely irrelevant, as the DNA of whoever is
genetically related to you and known will easily lead back to you. And the
probability of _someone_ in your extended family being registered in a genetic
database will closely approach one within the next decade.

~~~
monocasa
Specifically that's how they found a serial rapist. The rapist hadn't
submitted his DNA, but enough of his family had.

~~~
bilbo0s
I was reading somewhere on a security website that the topsy-turvy thing about
that was that the impoverished, who tend to have entire families that are
impoverished, are far less likely to ever be in these commercial DNA
databases. So the people most likely to commit a crime, are the least likely
to have DNA on file. (Of course he went on to point out that the poor are only
more likely to commit _property_ offenses, and property offenses statistically
require less DNA evidence to solve than personal offenses. So it wouldn't
matter much in practice.)

It was an interesting take on the familial DNA issue with commercial DNA
databases.

~~~
jolmg
> impoverished, who tend to have entire families that are impoverished, are
> far less likely to ever be in these commercial DNA databases. So the people
> most likely to commit a crime

Well if we're going to make overgeneralizations like that, I could guess that
the impoverished on average are more honorable than the rich, and less likely
to commit crimes. In fact, that honor might even be the cause of their
impoverishment. Crime pays and when the richest are so because they're willing
to take money from under the table, outright steal it, or "earn" it from
selling to addicts, what chance do the people that are trying to earn a living
through honest means have? You know there are cemeteries for drug lords where
the each tomb is a little mansion?

There's also studies where free money was given away to anyone that wanted to
take it. Most looked well off and said they wanted it for purse or whatever
taking a ton of bills. Homeless on the other hand would just take a few bucks
to buy a hotdog or other necesity, too ashamed to take more.

There's also videos online of people trying to steal packages (the homeowner
set up a camera and trap). All looked well off. They didn't look homeless or
sketchy in any way. Some were even driving good cars.

Let's not judge people on the amount of money they have.

~~~
lifeformed
I don't think they were really making a moral statement saying that crimes are
committed by bad people, but that crimes are often committed by people in
desperate situations and reduced opportunities, which I think is a reasonable,
non-moralistic interpretation of the statistics.

~~~
jolmg
> saying that crimes are committed by bad people

That's different, and probably an objectively true statement unless law is
written badly or by a thoroughly corrupt government.

> but that crimes are often committed by people in desperate situations and
> reduced opportunities

That's what I'm not sure I'd agree with. It's just as logical to think that
people (not all) in desperate situations are so because they're restrictive in
their actions, taking only opportunities that are in completely in line with
their moral ideals. It's also logical to think that people (also not all) that
are well off might be so because they took opportunities that might not have
been of the highest morality (if not to say that they might have been outright
illegal).

> which I think is a reasonable, non-moralistic interpretation of the
> statistics.

Can you cite those statistics?

What I dislike about that type of thinking is that it leads to prejudice, so
I'm not sure it's "non-moralistic" in any case.

Anyway even if there is a location where most poor are bad and most rich are
good, this seems to be very location and culture dependent. I don't think it's
a claim that can be shown to be universally true.

------
partycoder
Your DNA and fingerprints can also be extracted from your trash.

------
stephengillie
This article is so FUD that it hurts.

Honestly, yes, I want law enforcement to use DNA among other evidence they
collect. I do not live in fear that law enforcement is secretly hunting me. If
you do, speak to someone about your paranoia. My name and address have been on
my public resume and my website WHOIS for over 5 years, and I haven't
experienced any negative repercussions whatsoever.

 _I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain._

~~~
saagarjha
DNA is vastly different from your name and address, which many would consider
public information. DNA is much more identifying and private.

~~~
stephengillie
Yes, and? Do you expect police to come to your house because you're a carrier
for Cystic Fibrosis?

Please state your argument in full. Statements like this are just further FUD.

~~~
angersock
How would you feel about having a taser in a collar at the base of yours (and
everyone's) neck? It only gets turned on by the authorities if they see a
crime in progress. It's perfectly harmless otherwise, right? If you're not
doing anything wrong, what's to fear?

In the case of markers like this, it's pretty easy to correlate by race or
other heritable factors criminal behavior. If there's no harm in it, when a
crime goes down in an area it seems reasonable to go and just round up all the
people with rough genetic markers matching, right?

It might even make sense to keep them in groups organized by genetic markers
and race, since that should speed up policework dramatically.

And later, if you want to procreate with somebody, maybe you should make sure
their genotype won't mark your kids for poor treatment by the authorities--
after all, accidents _do_ happen, and the labwork is never 100%, so better
safe than sorry.

Can you see why this makes people antsy?

