The Messy Consequences of the Golden State Killer Case
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
One thing with these DOJ guidelines is that they will create a 2 tier system of justice. Ordinary victims won't be able to use these genetic databases to try to obtain justice. However, family members and close friends of the executives of these companies will have access to these (If the founder of the company comes to law enforcement and says, "Here are the closest DNA matches for the assailant of my niece." do you think law enforcement will refuse that information?)
Parallel construction might be a possibility (though still illegal), but it would be difficult in this situation when the criminal isn't a suspect already.
I'm sure this would have terrible unintended consequences but I can't think of any at the moment.
False positives mean a SWAT team knocking down your door and shooting your dog and possibly you. A false positive means your name forever associated with horrible crimes.
Universal DNA databases are an IMMENSE increase in govt power that needs to be matched by greater accountability and oversight.
And it will depend on the bandwidth for the city/county/state attorneys to take this to plea/trail.
I think the pure probability based on the size of the sample pool makes a false positive an inevitability at scale.
https://gizmodo.com/when-bad-dna-tests-lead-to-false-convict... https://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/mar/09/forensics-firm-i... https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/forensics-gone-wrong...
That being said, there are also many false convictions where the innocent accused people were exonerated after DNA testing became available.
Sure, he wasn't declared guilty, but he also got a $2 million settlement. What happened to him was bad. $2 million bad. And it was because of a poorly handled finger print. I can't imagine people in the future will be treated better because we're using DNA instead.
This is certainly unethical (informed consent) and probably illegal under federal and state law. Would you like to make your DNA available to anyone who wishes to utilize it without your consent?
I'm sure insurance companies would like to get their hands on this information. I can see people with certain problematic genes being unable to get life insurance for example.
Maybe not a huge risk, but does present a bit of an interesting problem.
It was signed by George W. Bush(Republican) into law.
I remember being surprised because I would have thought that health care companies would have made a some kind of "free market enterprise" argument that they should be able to use DNA data to make insurance more "efficient".
It even passed in the house 416 - 16.
People say they want a free market health care system, but also they want 'fairness'..... and most people feel that being charged more for something outside of your control is 'not fair'. These two notions are at odds.
The only way to solve this is by having a single payer, universal health care system.
The glaringly obvious one is outing the real father in cases where a woman had an affair (or was raped) and is trying to make things work with some other man.
This is potentially a huge can of worms. Irrefutable evidence that Pillar of the Community is Daddy to multiple children because he's a serial philanderer or serial rapist is generally pretty explosive news that can tear apart whole communities, especially in small towns or religious communities.
I mean, this is clearly dystopian...but you know that (I hope)
Please don't encourage the surveillance state to go around and keep a DB of all your genetic information. It doesn't end well.
And of course the biggest problem of all, which is that these sites are used to discover third-parties not using the site or consenting at all. The article bizarrely omits this, making the whole thing seem like a cookie consent popup.
The value to society of catching the perps in these cases is large enough to make giving police access on a case-by-case basis worth it.
That is for a judge to decide. While signing (or not) a warrant
Regardless of one's belief of how murder should be punished, I think it's pretty clear that rape is an offense as destructive as murder. The reason it does not bear the same penalty is pragmatic: if the punishment were the same then why should a rapist not kill the victim as well? The penalty would be no worse and the chance of being captured would go down.
> How can you give informed consent to sharing your data when the entire point of these sites is not knowing what you discover?
Your question isn't just genetic question but really a mass surveillance question. E.g. relatives tend to look alike so an advanced facial recognition system could be used to, say, see where a wanted suspect's possible relatives live and then follow them in case said suspect contacts them. Or simply look for people who have a "guilt factor" above X near where a crime was committed and sweep them up.
The real reason is even more prosaic in the U.S.: the Supreme Court in Coker v. Georgia decided that it was unconstitutional, despite having been constitutional and practiced by some number of states for nearly 200 years.
It doesn't get any more philosophical than that: six men didn't like it, so the nation doesn't have it any more.
But, to the grandparent's point, rape has been a capital crime in the past, and there's no reason it couldn't be again.
If your family member is a mass murderer, I really don't care if investigators use information related to you to catch them. Even if that data is your DNA, and it was shared contrary to your expectations.
Nobody wants to see their loved ones go to prison, but the Golden State Killer was an absolute monster, and it's an demonstrably good thing he was caught and faced justice.
I understand that people feel that using DNA information from genealogy services to investigate crimes might feel like a slippery slope towards egregious abuse (and maybe that's true), but the Golden State Killer is definitely not an example of such abuse.
"I understand that people feel like unchecked government mass surveillance might feel like a slipper slope towards egregious abuse, but it's worth it to catch all the evil terrorists and pedophiles"
Sure the Golden State Killer was a terrible person, but I'm not willing to just blindly trust and accept that the government should be able to access and use whatever data they want to keep me "safe."
Personally, I fall into the "Those who trade liberty for security deserve neither" camp
Every person in every civilization has made the trade off between liberty and security to some degree. All but the staunchest anarchists are for some laws.
Discussion over where the grey areas end are valid; and I'd argue more useful then assuming what ever is currently acceptable to any given person must be the optimal tradeoff.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
So, the liberty must be "essential" and the safety must be "temporary" - and the classification as such would be the essence of the argument. It's not so much a statement of principle as it is invective.
And in context, it's actually about the liberties of a legislative assembly [1] rather than those of the individual, but that's a minor detail.
1. https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-ben-franklin-really-said
As I see it, the issue is not that these websites are being used by law enforcement, but that there is not formalized rules for doing so, nor is there transparency in how they are used by law enforcement. An example of a formal rule would be a warrant requirement.
The problem is that police don't actually make anyone safer, they simply create order for the state after something has occurred. I have never once called the police and had them actually do a single thing to help or solve the problem I was facing. Yet I can recount countless instances of them harassing me for nothing? Why is that? Maybe the fundamental notion of 'secure vs liberty' is flawed if we aren't actually provided with more security.
After they caught the guy, I found out that those guys showed up due to a DNA match against subsequent violent crimes, for which we were the only victims who knew his identity. Soon after the cops re-victimized us they put out a media alert that quickly resulted in someone turning him in. It was two more months before anyone told us they'd caught him. Two. Friggin. Months. Of continuing to worry that this criminal might make good on their threats of doing further harm.
Seriously, I can't imagine many people reading this have lived for months under that level of stress and fear.
Fuck the police.
That's the nightmare scenario of familial matching and government access to / creation of DNA databases.
Here's a story of someone who came close and probably would have been convicted had their attorney not credibly identified a source of the transference.
I donated blood earlier today. Maybe I shouldn't have because there is a possible future where a newly evolved disease is discovered that is rampant in sterile needles, lays relatively dormant for 10 years in people, and then kills them.
As was pointed out by another commenter, the (accused) Golden State Killer was a police officer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_State_Killer#Joseph_Jam...
So the people you're saying you'd want to trust with this info in order to do the right thing, are sometimes literally the "Bad Guys" you shouldn't. :(
At a point in time everything may work as intended but the track record is that the system will be abused.
Using "but wouldn't you want to lock up those darn killers" is itself an emotional appeal.