Stumbled across this while looking for something else. But, I do have a question for wordforge. What do you think of this? Should DNA evidence, obtained from freely provided genetics websites such as 23 and me and ancestry be able to be obtained and used in criminal investigations? https://www.iflscience.com/how-police-used-dna-to-find-the-alleged-golden-state-killer-47411 As a "donor" to 23 and Me. I have no problem with this. and if anyone genetically related to me is identified as a criminal - regardless of degree, then they deserve to be punished for that crime.
I always presumed that was the point behind those sites anyways? To collect DNA for a national registry. Getting proprietary rights to it in the EULA was just a happy side effect.
See. ... I did it for the medical possibilities. I guess we all have different reasons for doing things.
I'm in favor of such DNA being accessed for use in criminal investigations. It could help solve alot of crimes.
I have not signed up for any of those ancestry type services, so I don't know what terms and conditions they lay out for those who do. It does not leave me with a warm and fuzzy feeling, however, that people might volunteer their genetic information with no understanding that the government could subpoena it and use it against them in a court of law. Yes, the end result in many cases is that presumptively guilty people get punished. But there are some pretty slippery slopes. I would not want the government, for example, to force a 23 and me to turn over the entirety of its database.
I just sent away a 23AndMe kit I picked up for cheap on Amazon Prime Day, the registration process warned me that insurance companies might try to use that information to discriminate against me and I shouldn't share it with them. I don't remember anything else. Personally, I'm fine with helping incriminate any dangerous criminal relatives I might have out there. I doubt the cops are using DNA testing to crack down on bike thefts or mail fraud or jaywalking.
It's easy to say now that it's fine if the government uses your DNA to get other people who are in fact dangerous criminals. And right now, it's probably too cost-prohibitive for the government (or anyone) to just mess around with the DNA for non-specific reasons. But I am a little paranoid when it comes to what future uses could be devised with one's DNA, or if it would be used in relatively petty cases, or if it can be trusted to be handled correctly by either the company or the government.
Yeah, I'm pretty much putting my faith in the laziness of the authorities. I've seen enough incidents of theft and vandalism that could easily be solved by fingerprinting the prime suspect, only to have the cops say "yeah, we're not bothering with that."
heh-like one of the few times they came into the after hours I used to run. Sure, it's a highly illegal bar overflowing with a variety of drugs... but other than getting their target, they managed not to bother noticing anything else. Although I think they also let us slide as a safe consumption site...
Seems like getting your DNA from 23andme should be possible, but should be subject to the exact same legal standards as compelling you to give a sample. Authorities being able to give 23andme a sample and say "here, scan your database for people this matches" seems ripe for abuse. Not to mention a clear 4th Amendment violation of the sort that Thomas and Alito love.
privacy and data at 23andme We will not release any individual-level personal information to law enforcement unless we are required to do so by court order, subpoena, search warrant or other requests that we determine are legally valid. notably, that criteria is not expounded upon other than what the lowest minions of their legal team rubber stamp.
Yup. Other things to think about: Cops don't even need a search warrant for some DNA databases. I think that Ancestry.com will run your DNA sample through their database and then give you the names and other info of people you're related to. So the cops don't have to get a warrant to figure out who the relatives of a DNA sample might be. They just send the sample to Ancestry.com, claiming that it's their own, and then go from there. Mind you, as the OJ Simpson case proved, even in high-profile cases, cops don't always do a good job maintaining things like chain of custody or preventing evidence from contamination. Imagine that you spit out a wad of gum while you're walking down the street, sometime later, a person is murdered in that spot and they fall on the wad of gum. The police assume that the gum came from the killer, take a DNA sample from it, but don't get any matches in 23andMe's database. Then, a decade or more later, you, or someone related to you, sends their DNA to 23andMe, the police track you down and accuse you of being the killer. How do you prove that you weren't the killer? Do you have detailed records showing that you weren't in the area at the time of the killing?
There is so much more to identifying a criminal - especially cold case files, than DNA. It's discussed in the link I provided.
For now. The folks who nabbed this guy and the Golden State Killer have all been, rightly, lauded as heroes. They've gotten fame, some undoubtedly will have been promoted to higher paying positions, and others will have gotten book deals, or hired as consultants for TV shows and movies as a result of this. Sooner, or later, some unscrupulous bastard is going to want the same thing for themselves, and they're going to do whatever it takes to accomplish it. If that means bending a few rules, so be it. Fucking 20K drug cases had to be thrown out because of a corrupt lab tech. Let's not forget all the people who were put on death row only later to be found innocent (not to mention the ones wrongly executed). In many of those cases, police and prosecutors actively suppressed exculpatory evidence, even years later. And even when the innocent people have been released, they've still had to fight to have their convictions expunged and get financial compensation for the years that they were incarcerated.
'zactly... one more unreliable and alterable thing that can be used as evidence anyways with the added bonus of a myth of precision attached.
I totally get that. And like everything else, new technology will be added to the ways and means for people to cheat. That doesn't mean, in my opinion, that it should be shut down completely. It just means that is another avenue to view when looking for things that can be manipulated to make someone look guilty.
What is really sad for me is that being a convicted felon my DNA was taken, but I know how well CT does with records and testing and there is a pretty good chance they fucked it up. OTOH 23 and me is corporate data collectors so they will be much more likely to properly store it.
