
Cops are asking Ancestry.com and 23andMe for their customers’ DNA - kmfrk
http://fusion.net/story/215204/law-enforcement-agencies-are-asking-ancestry-com-and-23andme-for-their-customers-dna/
======
ksenzee
The article quotes Denver's district attorney as saying that this familial DNA
searching is especially good for "cold cases where the victims are women or
children". _Women or children._ We're searching through databases of innocent
people's DNA, finding potentially damaging false positives, all because we
need to keep _women and children_ safe. Has this guy been binge watching Mad
Men?

~~~
anigbrowl
Women are at about 3x the risk of men for intimate partner violence, which
includes sexual assault -- see
[http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/intimatepartnerviolenc...](http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/intimatepartnerviolence/datasources.html)
for extensive background.

While I strongly object to mass DNA testing of the type proposed here, the
DA's comment should be read in the light of the huge backlog that exists for
testing rape kits. Denver, CO's clearance rate is only about 30%, and there
was until recently a strong bias towards testing cases involving stranger
assault but not assault from family members:
[http://www.endthebacklog.org/denver](http://www.endthebacklog.org/denver)

So without endorsing the DA's call, it us based on a legitimate public policy
issue rather than purely emotional grandstanding.

~~~
tajen
All but one of my 8 closest male friends have been slapped by ex-girlfriends.
I don't usually see any testimonial for this behavior in statistics. There
could be a strong bias against men.

~~~
anigbrowl
Possible, but in the spirit of statistical rigor this could also mean that 7
of your friends dated the same violent woman.

------
berberous
This title is inaccurate and misleading. The cops searched a publicly
accessible Ancestry.com DNA database. Ancestry.com did then hand over the
individual's name after receiving a court order. It also later shuttered the
public database as a result of learning that cops were using it in this
manner.

There is no allegation in this article that 23andme or Ancestry.com has turned
over private DNA information (although it's certainly plausible that this has
occurred or one day will occur).

~~~
rch
The the originally linked article did reference 23andMe:

 _23andMe says it’s received a couple of requests from both state law
enforcement and the FBI, but that it has “successfully resisted them.”_

~~~
lwhalen
Until they get an NSL compelling them to shut their pieholes about any
'requests', successfully resisted or not.

~~~
rando3826
Perfectly reasonable to assume they already have gotten NSLs.

------
mahyarm
This is why I didn't use 23andMe's service. Because it's in their database,
forever.

I want a genetic sequencing service where they sequence everything, put it on
multiple encrypted USB sticks and send it to you. Once you confirm you
received your copy, they destroy the backup USB sticks.

They never will store it on some centralized server. It will never end up on
some tape backup. They will never have a copy after you get yours.

Then you need DNA analysis software that runs offline.

Most of them won't want to do that although, because it makes them a commodity
service.

~~~
aianus
You're missing the whole point of 23andme.

It's not a consumer product to analyze your own DNA, that's just a disguise.
With machine learning and a large enough population size they will eventually
be able to determine the genetic markers that promote every disease.
Personalized medicine will be the next breakthrough in medicine and human
longevity.

This requires them to have everyone's DNA, trait, and medical history on file.

~~~
amelius
Imho, this crowdsourced data belongs to the public domain. Imagine that the
most important research papers were not accessible to the public, while the
public contributed to them. Well, that is about to happen.

~~~
_ak
Have you heard about openSNP? It may be relevant to your interests:
[https://opensnp.org/](https://opensnp.org/)

------
vessenes
I have pitched to 23andme a few times over the last few years that they should
accept Bitcoin, and offer totally PII-free purchases. This is a great use of a
cryptocurrency to my mind; a legitimate good which one should in no way attach
to one's identity.

I would use that service. But, I would never, ever send them my DNA attached
to my identity.

Sounds like I can't be the first to use Bitcoin with them either, come to
think of it..

~~~
jacquesm
> But, I would never, ever send them my DNA attached to my identity.

Your DNA _IS_ your identity, and sending it to them is sending them all the
information ever needed to identify you. For an encore you are also helping to
identify your parents and your children and other relatives to a lesser degree
depending on how far they are removed from you in the family tree.

That there is a name and a social security number attached to your DNA right
when you send it is a convenience, not having that information is not an
obstacle if any of your family members are also 23andme customers.

The only way this would work is if _everybody_ sent them anonymous samples
_and_ 23andme would destroy each and every sample after receiving and
processing it and destroy any and all records created as a result of
processing that sample. No way they'll do that, and you could easily argue the
only reason they exist is to build up that database.

I wrote about this a couple of years ago in some more detail:

[http://jacquesmattheij.com/your-genetic-information-is-
not-j...](http://jacquesmattheij.com/your-genetic-information-is-not-just-
yours-but-it-is-family-property)

~~~
gherkin0
>> But, I would never, ever send them my DNA attached to my identity.

> Your DNA IS your identity, and sending it to them is sending them all the
> information ever needed to identify you.

Not really: in the case the cops already have the DNA but it's useless to them
because they don't know how to find the person it belongs to. If the cops
found an (erroneous) match to sequence done anonymously, they would learn
little to nothing that they could act on.

Now the game might be up if they got a family-member match on a non-anonymous
relative, but there's little you can do about that.

~~~
eveningcoffee
_Now the game might be up if they got a family-member match on a non-anonymous
relative, but there 's little you can do about that. _

Of course you can. As parent above mentioned - you do not send your DNA. Plain
and simple.

~~~
gherkin0
I don't think so. Even if you never submit a sample, your bother could, and
then they could get a match that tells them the DNA is from a sibling of your
brother. It wouldn't finger you, exactly, but it would get them very close.

~~~
eveningcoffee
Oh. I see now. Thank you for the clarification!

For some reason I had impression that it is about checker not having access to
some ones DNA sample.

------
joering2
I had personal, but short encounter with 23andMe.

I proceed with my charge and got the spit kit. Then a friend told me "it's
pretty much a Google-owned company", so that was enough for me to change my
mind.

I was still intrigued what they might find about me, so I asked 23, before
sending the kit back, if I could actually cancel the order and re-order, but
use my friend's credit card, with their permission of course.

23 responded that I can cancel, of course, but they do not allow to use
someone else's CC, whether with or without their consent. I asked "why", and
was told that "we need to identify the spit with the owner". God knows for
what, but latest news that 23 is okay to share your DNA with insurance
companies (I can bet bottom dollar they won't share it for free!) makes much
more sense now, after all.

I cancelled my order and send the kit back, but I wasn't done quite yet. From
$99 order, I only got $45 back. I was told that "the kit cannot be reused, so
it has to be thrown away". So I said: fine, give me the kit I paid for back,
and keep the remaining $. They refused, and continued to refuse to refund the
remaining portion of my charge.

Eventually, a credit card chargeback dispute that they lost took care of it
and after recovering all the costs, I emailed all my friends never to do a
mistake and give your business to 23andMe.

~~~
Camillo
Why would you expect all of your money back? On top of the wasted kit, there's
shipping, handling etc. You are of course allowed to withdraw from your
decision, but it's unreasonable to expect the other party to fully cover the
cost of you changing your mind.

~~~
joering2
Thanks for the question.

Most businesses using credit cards in USA are "in retail business", which
means that "client is always right" (even if they're not).

Google or 23andMe is not different when it comes to work with Merchant Service
Provider. And not many know that in the USA, most MSPs require company they
provide CC services to, to respect a refund request despite what their TOS
says. Most companies will tell you they don't accept refunds but that's not
true according to their MSP statement.

Frankly, I couldn't care less what is unreasonable or not, given that 23andMe
already accounted % of refunds/chargebacks they encounter into their services'
price.

ps. The kit wasn't wasted. It came in hard to forge metalic-type bag with some
sort of hologram on it. The kit wasn't even unsealed.

~~~
Camillo
Basically you're like the people who litter because they pay tax for the
government to clean up, only applied to the private sector.

~~~
joering2
On the positive side, it's better to be a janitor than be unemployed. It's
never a good feeling to lose a job, even if you're "just" swiping the streets.

~~~
Confusion
That's the broken window fallacy.

------
titzer
A lot of legal reasoning w.r.t. DNA has been too quick to equate DNA with
fingerprints. Obviously, DNA contains far more information than fingerprints,
to the point where it literally contains an entire copy of you. I cannot
believe how blatant the violations of our rights are these days, and how
passive people are in the face of this new dimension of intrusion.

[http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-
courts/ci_27566601/californ...](http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-
courts/ci_27566601/california-dna-collection-law-now-before-state-supreme)

This shit really pisses me off. The state supreme court found California's
collection of DNA samples for people _arrested_ but never charged or convicted
to be unconstitutional. Apparently, that ruling has now been overturned.

Please fight law enforcement's new encroaching on our rights. We are now safer
than we ever have been and yet the government STILL wants more power.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Obviously, DNA contains far more information than fingerprints, to the point
> where it literally contains an entire copy of you.

No, it doesn't literally contain an entire copy of you.

~~~
titzer
I was just being brief. It contains an entire blueprint of your biological
morphology to a degree of accuracy that given appropriate measures could be
used to construct an identical twin with identical susceptibility and
predisposition to disease, ability, intelligence, to the extent that those are
determined by genes. That includes a number of very private things, from
everything to susceptibility to certain mental diseases to penis size.

And no, the government shouldn't get to know any of that about you without a
fucking court order.

~~~
nommm-nommm
If the government really wants your DNA it isn't hard to obtain legally.
They'll just follow you around everywhere until you leave behind your DNA and
then grab it. They'll wait until you drop your coffee cup in a public trash or
spit on the ground or leave behind a cigarette butt. Many crimes have been
solved this way.

For example see COMMONWEALTH v. Jeffrey BLY [http://caselaw.findlaw.com/ma-
supreme-judicial-court/1186295...](http://caselaw.findlaw.com/ma-supreme-
judicial-court/1186295.html#sthash.nIt97uVl.dpuf)

>Suppression issues. (a) Physical evidence. Bly argues that the method used by
the Commonwealth in obtaining his known DNA sample constituted a nonconsensual
seizure and thus violated his rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth
Amendments to the United States Constitution, under art. 14 of the
Massachusetts Declaration of Rights and under the search warrant requirements
of G.L. c. 276, § 1. The judge denied Bly's motion to suppress on this issue,
finding that the cigarette butts and water bottle seized by the police
constituted trash that was abandoned by Bly.

Or STATE OF WASHINGTON v. JOHN NICHOLAS ATHAN
[http://www.denverda.org/DNA_Documents/Athan.pdf](http://www.denverda.org/DNA_Documents/Athan.pdf)

>We find there is no inherent privacy interest in saliva. Certainly the
nonconsensual collection of blood or urine samples in some circumstances, such
as under the facts of Robinson, invokes privacy concerns; however, obtaining
the saliva sample in this case did not involve an invasive or involuntary
procedure. The relevant question in this case is whether, when a person licks
an envelope and places it in the mail, that person retains any privacy
interest in his saliva at all. Unlike a nonconsensual sampling situation,
there was no force involved in obtaining Athan's saliva sample here. The facts
of this situation are analogous to a person spitting on the sidewalk or
leaving a cigarette butt in an ashtray. We hold under these circumstances, any
privacy interest is lost. The envelope, and any saliva contained on it,
becomes the property of the recipient.

~~~
username223
But that requires a significant new effort for each individual. It has been
possible to do Facebook-level surveillance for millennia, if you knew who you
wanted to follow in advance, and paid someone to follow them. You could even
save the information for later use. Facebook essentially pays people in
trinkets to surveil themselves, and stores the results forever. The sequencing
companies are trying to "unlock value" in an analogous way for DNA.

------
droopybuns
More source material for the "Don't talk to cops" argument. If there is anyone
who hasn't seen it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc)

~~~
vitd
That was my first thought, as well. However, it did say that the FBI agent had
a warrant to collect his DNA through a cheek swab and that he would have been
compelled to comply had he refused.

------
benchtobedside
From the original article [1]: "If the idea of investigators poking through
your DNA freaks you out, both Ancestry.com and 23andMe have options to delete
your information with the sites. 23andMe says it will delete information
within 30 days upon request."

One may wonder if they treat this policy much like Ashley Madison treated
their removal promise.

[1]: [http://fusion.net/story/215204/law-enforcement-agencies-
are-...](http://fusion.net/story/215204/law-enforcement-agencies-are-asking-
ancestry-com-and-23andme-for-their-customers-dna/)

~~~
chaostheory
According to a customer rep, the 3rd party company, LabCorp, that actually
processes the genotype testing will keep all the data for up to two years
regardless of a deletion request.

 _" Account Closure

When closing an account, we remove all Genetic Information within your account
(or profile) within thirty (30) days of our receipt of your request. As stated
in the applicable Consent Document, however, Genetic Information and/or Self-
Reported Information that you have previously provided and for which you have
given consent to use in 23andWe Research will not be removed from ongoing or
completed studies that use the information. Our contracted genotyping
laboratory may also retain your Genetic Information as required by local law
and we may retain backup copies for a limited period of time pursuant to our
data protection policies. In addition, we retain limited Registration
Information related to your order history (e.g., name, contact, and
transaction data) for accounting and compliance purposes.

You are able to read both documents in full at:
[https://www.23andme.com/about/tos/](https://www.23andme.com/about/tos/)
[https://www.23andme.com/about/privacy/](https://www.23andme.com/about/privacy/)

In our TOS it states, 'Our contracted genotyping laboratory may also retain
your Genetic Information as required by local law and we may retain backup
copies for a limited period of time pursuant to our data protection policies.'

What this means is the data file generated from the processing is stored,
though the sample is discarded shortly after the processing of the sample is
complete (if biostorage is declined). This data file is stored for up to two
years. National Genetics Institute (NGI), our contracted laboratory, is
required to keep the results of the analysis for up to two years as required
by CLIA. Under HIPAA, LabCorp (this includes NGI) is required by law to
maintain the privacy of our customers. You can read LabCorp's privacy
statement here

[https://www.labcorp.com/wps/portal/!ut/p/c0/04_SB8K8xLLM9MSS...](https://www.labcorp.com/wps/portal/!ut/p/c0/04_SB8K8xLLM9MSSzPy8xBz9CP0os_hQV5NgQ09LYwP_MGdXAyMvRzNfT9dgY0cLM_2CbEdFAAFB4uk!/"*)

EDIT: According to someone who currently works at 23andme, they never delete
data - ever. On multiple occassions when I bring data deletion up, there's a
puzzled look and a quick denial that they ever delete data regardless of
customer requests. Which is accurate if you read the above TOS... they only
delete data that ties you to your submitted genotype data:

"however, Genetic Information and/or Self-Reported Information that you have
previously provided and for which you have given consent to use in 23andWe
Research will not be removed from ongoing or completed studies that use the
information"

~~~
vitd
When you say "According to someone who works there" does "there" mean at
23andme, or at the 3rd party company?

~~~
chaostheory
23andme - I'll update my comment

------
maresca
This is exactly the type of bullshit I'm talking about when I try to stress
privacy to people I know and they think I'm a lunatic. Most people don't want
to hear what "could" happen, only what has happened in the past.

~~~
SixSigma
And they get all Godwin on you when you tell them that IBM hoarded and then
processed census data for the Third Reich in exactly the scenario of:

Hand over information to someone you trust (in that case the Govt. of your
country who proclaim that they welcome Jews); someone who wants to use it
against not you gains control of it via takeover (in that case a bunch of
psychotics who will murder you because in 1933 your grandma ticked "Jewish" on
the census form).

It isn't far fetched nonsense, it is tried and tested.

Http://ibmandtheholocaust.com/

------
jackreichert
> This is not only because of privacy concerns—the people who contribute their
> DNA to such endeavors, whether medical or genealogical, rarely expect to
> have their genetic code scrutinized by cops—but also because those databases
> haven’t been vetted for use by law enforcement.

It's a real shame that behavior like this will stifle progress. I had been
interested in doing 23andMe, and now I'm reconsidering it.

------
Cshelton
Data should have attorney/client privileges. That would solve all this privacy
stuff. No, just because the data exist, does not mean you can just have it. If
both my attorney (23&me) and I agree that you may use it, then yes, otherwise,
no. Never ever ever will you get it and no court can rule otherwise. It's red
oculus that we have to be afraid to use all these services because what they
might do with our data and who they might sell it too.

------
pmlnr
Whoever didn't see this coming had not lived in this world in the past few
years.

~~~
nly
On that note, as someone entering the US in a few days, I wonder how long
it'll be before they take DNA at US borders. They already take retina, photos
and fingerprints.

~~~
Implicated
Retina scans through customs? I've never even _had_ a retina scan.

~~~
schoen
I think in the U.S. it's just fingerprinting and a photograph, not a retina
scan.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Biometric_Identity_M...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Biometric_Identity_Management)

(I'm not trying to minimize or legitimize this -- I find it very offensive and
have planned my own travel to avoid visiting countries where I would be
fingerprinted. I'm just pointing out that US-VISIT doesn't currently include a
retina scan, at least not routinely at all ports of entry.)

------
facepalm
I asked 23andMe if they could somehow anonymize my account and they didn't
even seem to understand what I want. They said I could change my username but
I wanted a more thorough anonymization. That was a while ago (years), maybe
they'll understand eventually.

(I wasn't worried about law enforcement, but I can think of all sorts of
undesirable scenarios should their database ever leak, which it probably
will).

------
trengrj
I bought a kit from 23andMe a few years back and was quite keen to get
information on my genetics and health factors. However, I realised by
submitting my DNA to them, it would probably go into global dataset for law
enforcement. I was ok to do this for myself, but putting you DNA into a
dataset like this can also potentially affect your family which is something I
didn't want to do.

------
cryoshon
Yikes. Shouldn't this information be protected under HIPPAA or something?

~~~
schoen
(Edit: dragonwriter's comment also makes the important practical point that
these entities aren't HIPAA-covered in the first place!)

Take a look at "Law Enforcement Purposes" within "Permitted Uses and
Disclosures" in the Summary of the HIPAA Privacy Rule.

[http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/summary/i...](http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/summary/index.html)

 _Law Enforcement Purposes_. Covered entities may disclose protected health
information to law enforcement officials for law enforcement purposes under
the following six circumstances, and subject to specified conditions: (1) as
required by law (including court orders, court-ordered warrants, subpoenas)
and administrative requests; (2) to identify or locate a suspect, fugitive,
material witness, or missing person; (3) in response to a law enforcement
official’s request for information about a victim or suspected victim of a
crime; (4) to alert law enforcement of a person’s death, if the covered entity
suspects that criminal activity caused the death; (5) when a covered entity
believes that protected health information is evidence of a crime that
occurred on its premises; and (6) by a covered health care provider in a
medical emergency not occurring on its premises, when necessary to inform law
enforcement about the commission and nature of a crime, the location of the
crime or crime victims, and the perpetrator of the crime.

------
autobahn
Not that it was a good idea in the first place, but now most should know never
to use these services. Too much potential for abuse.

~~~
venomsnake
Well - if you have big enough database (of anything) - the Feds will come
after it, and the Supreme Court chances of reaffirming 3rd party information
doctrine are high.

------
cmiles74
Especially disturbing in light of this recent article about the systemtic
mishandling of DNA evidence.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10366761](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10366761)

Unsurprisingly, it seems that the labs are biased in favor of their primary
customers: the proseccution.

------
cm2187
The other database I really mistrust is medical DNA databases. First because
of the reasons mentioned in this article. But also because coming from a
family of doctors myself, I know they are computer illiterate, which gives me
little trust in their ability to not leak the data in the wild.

------
afarrell
It is commonly said that there is a 1-in-a-million chance of falsely matching
someone else. I don't know where that is from, but if you're 1 in a million,
there are 318 Americans just like you.

------
Johnny555
"As NYU law professor Erin Murphy told the New Orleans Advocate regarding the
Usry case, gathering DNA information is “a series of totally reasonable steps
by law enforcement.” If you’re a cop trying to solve a crime, and you have DNA
at your disposal, you’re going to want to use it to further your
investigation."

If the police broke into people's houses to snoop through their private
effects, that would help solve crimes too, but it doesn't mean it's "totally
reasonable" \-- why is snooping through private DNA records "totally
reasonable"?

~~~
garrettgrimsley
It comes down to the third-party doctrine[0], which is the same reason the
text messages or emails you send are not subject to 4th Amendment protections.
While in your home you have an expectation of privacy the courts have ruled
that once you release something to a third-party this expectation is not
valid.

[0]
[https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43586.pdf](https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43586.pdf)

------
copperx
I can't wait for these services to be free so I can be the product.

------
flog
I thought the DNA analysis being done by these companies wasn't full
sequencing, but rather genotyping. Isn't the implication of this less
alarming?

~~~
anon1mous
Today it's genotyping. But if they store the sample they can sequence it once
the price goes down.

------
Navarr
Could we edit the headline to be less sensational? Wired's article is nowhere
near as sensational.

It doesn't even state what this headline is saying

------
bayesianhorse
That seems less of an issue about privacy, and more like a case about badly
used genetics/statistics. DNA is fallible, at least with the currently used
technology, and police have to get that into their heads. It's not the fault
of 23andMe or others if police and prosecutors don't understand the
implications.

------
junktest
Yaniv Erlich and Arvind Narayanan "Routes for breaching and protecting genetic
privacy"
[http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v15/n6/abs/nrg3723.html](http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v15/n6/abs/nrg3723.html)

------
lobo_tuerto
Interesting read that goes along the OP theme:

[http://www.npr.org/2015/10/09/447202433/-great-pause-
among-f...](http://www.npr.org/2015/10/09/447202433/-great-pause-among-
forensic-scientists-as-dna-proves-fallible)

------
mkhalil
Surprising? No, not really. Disappointing? Maybe.

------
EugeneOZ
Please add [popup] to title of links where annoying popup interrupts your
reading.

------
gojomo
(Relevant lightly-edited repost from my prior comment almost 2 years ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6797054](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6797054))

Were you born in the US after 1963? If so, your state of birth probably
already took a sample of your blood for genetic disease testing at birth:

[http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jul/19/opinion/la-oe-
timmer...](http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jul/19/opinion/la-oe-timmermans-
infant-genetic-screening-20130719)

Parental consent is not required – though with enough advance effort and
written request, opting-out is possible.

Further, many states retain the "residual dried blood spots" for more than 6
months and in some cases, indefinitely:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16737872](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16737872)

So a sample of your genetic material may already exist in a state government
filing cabinet, somewhere. (Your state capital? Each county?)

In California, the retained information _and sample_ can be used "for medical
intervention, counseling or specific research projects which the California
Board of Health approves" and "anonymous research studies". See the section
"Storage and Use of Dried Blood Spots" at:

[http://www.babysfirsttest.org/newborn-
screening/states/calif...](http://www.babysfirsttest.org/newborn-
screening/states/california#second-section)

For newborns, the California program currently tests for 79 different
disorders:

[http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/nbs/Documents/NBS-
DisordersD...](http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/nbs/Documents/NBS-
DisordersDetectable011312.pdf)

And the per-disease records are apparently kept for lookup-by-individual
without retesting, because there's a routine by-email process for requesting
long-ago sickle-cell results (back to 1990) about NCAA student athletes:

[http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/nbs/Pages/NBSFAQTraitAthlete...](http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/nbs/Pages/NBSFAQTraitAthletes.aspx)

And that's not even considering all the health procedures (blood donations,
tests, surgeries) or natural shedding (hairs, skin, saliva, excrement) routine
in a normal life. You are a firehose of genetic samples, to any even slightly
attentive observer, or even passive observers who take an interest some time
later.

So: good luck keeping your genes from the state, if it really wants them.

------
Retric
Yet, Women are also more likely to kill there intimate partner. (This flips if
you include ex partners.) Which may seem like a surprising statistic, but
women often feel the need to use weapons to equalize a physical situation.
Which can easily turn deadly.

 _Of children under age 5 killed by a parent, the rate for biological fathers
was slightly higher than for biological mothers.[4] However, of children under
5 killed by someone other than their parent, 80% were killed by males.[4]
Males were more likely to be murder victims (76.8%).[4]_

~ 1 in 4 women and ~1 in 7 men will be victims of severe violence by an
intimate partner in their lifetimes.

PS: The classic sitcom frying pan may seem funny, but it's a deadly weapon.
[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FryingPanOfDoom](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FryingPanOfDoom)

~~~
michaelkeenan
> Yet, Women are also more likely to kill there intimate partner. (This flips
> if you include ex partners.)

When describing a statistic on the internet, especially a surprising
statistic, please include a source. We don't know you, so the level of trust
we'd have of your statistic is "someone said it on Hacker News", which of
course is not very much trust. You might be correct, but others on Hacker News
make mistakes, so any sensible person reading that will shrug and think "eh,
maybe".

~~~
reasons9
There's a reason he didn't provide a source: because it's not true.

In 2007, 1,640 women were killed by male partners, and 700 men were killed by
female partners. [1] and the stats are far, far worse when one looks at non-
lethal violence.

The notion that women are more dangerous is a commonly spread mysoginist lie.
It's designed to get upvoted by other anti-feminist, anti-woman "men".

1:
[http://opdv.ny.gov/statistics/nationaldvdata/intparthom.html](http://opdv.ny.gov/statistics/nationaldvdata/intparthom.html)

~~~
Retric
For your source _The victim has recently separated from the offender._ That's
the second half.

Note, the stat I quoted included women killing women not just women killing
men. Men are also far more likely to kill an ex partner than woman.

As to the sourse, I was on a project dealing with violent crimes in the US
army at the time. I remember being somewhat shocked but not the original
material.

Edit: I can't seem to find the details, so I am willing to accept I am not
recalling this correctly.

~~~
jholman
Upvoted for your edit.

I make this comment, rather than just upvoting, because I wish to explicitly
encourage on HN the social norm that Retric just displayed, of being open to
being wrong.

------
rgbrenner
_Cops are asking Ancestry.com and 23andMe for their customers’ DNA_

What's with the title here? Not only is that not the title of the article, but
23andMe isn't even in the article at all.

~~~
_delirium
It was the title of the originally submitted article that the HN moderators
replaced with this one. Previous article: [http://fusion.net/story/215204/law-
enforcement-agencies-are-...](http://fusion.net/story/215204/law-enforcement-
agencies-are-asking-ancestry-com-and-23andme-for-their-customers-dna/)

~~~
rgbrenner
Thanks, just noticed dang's post at the bottom.

~~~
dang
People seem to dislike this change so we'll revert it.

------
dang
Url changed from [http://fusion.net/story/215204/law-enforcement-agencies-
are-...](http://fusion.net/story/215204/law-enforcement-agencies-are-asking-
ancestry-com-and-23andme-for-their-customers-dna/), which points to this.
Edit: nope.

~~~
biot
The Wired story doesn't have any mention of 23andMe in it, so the title is now
inaccurate. And now having read the fusion.net story, I think it's a much
better article than the Wired one because it covers the angle of each
company's privacy policy, their interaction with law enforcement, the
introduction of transparency reports, and so on rather than Wired's which only
covers the imprecise nature of DNA.

~~~
dang
Ok, we'll reverse the change.

------
rodgerd
It's a sad comment on HN that the interesting discussion of this is buried
under the braying of people of people who would appear to be more at home in
/r/mensrights or some similar commune of sex offender apologists and woman-
haters.

~~~
fche
the salt is strong

