Searching DNA For Relatives Raises Concerns 199
An anonymous reader calls our attention to California's familial searching policy, which looks for genetic ties between culprits and kin. The technique has come to the fore in the last few years, after a Colorado prosecutor pushed the FBI to relax its rules on cross-state searches. "Los Angeles Police Department investigators want to search the state's DNA database again — not for exact matches but for any profiles similar enough to belong to a parent or sibling. The hope is that one of those family members might lead detectives to the killer. This strategy, pioneered in Britain, is poised to become an important crime-fighting tool in the United States. The Los Angeles case will mark the first major use of California's newly approved familial searching policy, the most far-reaching in the nation."
DNA evidence 'planting'? (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose this might be slightly off-topic, but one concern I have with the use of DNA evidence is that, now that everybody knows about DNA evidence, what's to stop someone from planting DNA evidence at a crime scene? Splash some body fluids here, drop some hair there, and smear some skin cells at a strategic location, and voila "we have DNA evidence that places the defendant at the scene of the crime."
Privacy concerns, yes (Score:5, Insightful)
But dress it all up as "social networking" and you'll have zillions of willing participants.
routine in Britain (Score:4, Insightful)
sauce (Score:3, Insightful)
I can understand how convicts, felons, suspects, and arrestees get their DNA thrown into a federal database, but how do they get the DNA of their family members if crime doesn't happen to run in the family? Where are all these DNA samples coming from?
So much for "slippery slope" (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:DNA evidence 'planting'? (Score:5, Insightful)
if somebody that hates you that much has access to your DNA samples, you've already got some serious problems!
Never been divorced have you?
Re:Let the abuse begin (Score:3, Insightful)
"Good thing I had this stamp made to imprint my signature, otherwise I would get writers cramp signing all these warrants. My clerk will stamp them for you on the way out."
Re:DNA evidence 'planting'? (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously though, what about adopted kids? (Score:5, Insightful)
Officer: Hi, can you tell us where that lowlife father of your is?
Kid: He is at work at the moment.
Officer: Yeah, drop the act kid, he ain't worked a day of his life. Now, where is he ya little lying bastard?
Kid: He will come home from work in three hours...
*three hours later*
Officer: This ain't your dad! Quit fucking with us here!
Kid: Whaaaaaaa! (Or any other such life changing crying sound when you suddenly find out you are adopted and your whole life has been a lie)
Re:Seriously though, what about adopted kids? (Score:5, Insightful)
Good point. Or consider problems that could come up if the kid's biological father was an anonymous sperm donor - could be bad if either the kid or the biological father got into trouble.
Re:Privacy concerns, yes (Score:4, Insightful)
Lazy lawmaking (Score:3, Insightful)
One would have thought that with a week or two on ask slashdot, a whole bunch of the more obvious problems with this approach could have been forestalled. And with another few weeks of expert review even more simple constraints could have been devised.
It seems to me inevitable that this approach to investigation will only get more prevalent, so I don't see any reason why CA could not have spent some time to try and get some of the details right in advance.
How about introducing a law with some overly-strict limitations and then relax them over time instead of introducing an overly-loosely managed system and then going back to make it right after it's ruined a few peoples lives.
It just seems like a piss poor attitude to lawmaking to me.
What about clones? (Score:4, Insightful)
Great points of this post's parent and grandparent; especially relative to descendants.
Any questions involving genetic information should be examined with a long-term view. Perhaps not now, but think of future Clones. Should a cloned human pay the price of his/her predecessors genetic information? The mistakes they made in their previous life may affect their future life as a new individual. Communities of people, not just atomic families, may be singled out or "behaviorally predetermined" to commit crime simply on genetic heritage, of which they have no control. Perhaps that genetic heritage is combined with economic, credit, health and lifestyle information?
It is only a matter of time until the cost of mapping 'enough'* of every living human's genome will be 'worth it'*. Shortly after, the cost of genome-mapping all available deceased humans will be negligible. The field of medicine will flourish with this information. (You may even gain heath insurance discounts with a year's proof of purchase at the grocery store -- you are rewarded for eating relative to your pre-determined health risks.)
Yet every individual's privacy will diminish with access (any access) to a history of humanity's genetic information. Thus, thinking about DNA databases must be done with a long-term perspective.
* = Where the information's value to society --be it a friendly or otherwise group of people-- outweighs the cost of gathering it. Perhaps the equivalent cost of fingerprinting every newborn baby equals the cost of genome mapping every newborn baby.
Time to obfuscate my DNA... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Privacy concerns, yes (Score:3, Insightful)
Similar issue with DNA tests for immigration.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Big brother issues aside, the problem is that some children may be adopted, and that the issue of parenthood is not as clear-cut as we would like to think. As well as the old latin saying:
Mater semper certa est, pater numquam.
Re:Seriously though, what about adopted kids? (Score:4, Insightful)
Paragraphs man, paragraphs! It's a wall of bloody text up there. Not to mention a premature and gratuitous execution of Godwin's Law That said:
So, government bad, but combining the clergy and attorneys "in the private sector" WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong?!? Or in other words, what we need to do is create another quasi-governmental agency (that answers to whom?) to entrust this super secret information to, but since it isn't called "government" it's somehow better than what it really is?
You then go on to say that this entire mythical structure you've created would be useless because they wouldn't actually give out the information law enforcement is looking for. So why the hell are you suggesting we create it in the first place?
You're entire post can be reduced to, "No! The gub'mint can't have my bodily fluid data." Saving you time you could use to add another layer to your tinfoil hat and haul a few more wheelbarrows of dirt out of your survivalist's bunker.
Re:Seriously though, what about adopted kids? (Score:2, Insightful)
The chance may be very small, but if I share 1/4 of the markers with a suspect (as a sibling would) then I have to deal with hassle of being questioned by the feds. It's profiling. You can't pull over everyone driving a lexus in a low income neighborhood looking for stolen cars and you can't question everyone who has a given number of repeats at a certain locus in hopes of finding a criminal.