San Francisco police linked a woman to a crime using DNA from her rape exam
sfchronicle.com
sfchronicle.com
This discussion occur repeatedly here in Sweden when ever there is a major unsolved murder that gather large media attention, as then there is a lot of pressure to resolve the crime and the data is there in the computer. They will go onto news media and say, whats the harm if they just take a small peek?
It kind of feels wrong but why? I absolutely see issues if this was open information or if the private sector was allowed to use it in decision making about people. But if done with strict implementation around usage and privacy for criminal activity would this create more societal benefit than negative? Also people could request their own information for health risks type information and then adjust life if this would benefit possible health outcomes. Are the risks focused around bad implementation of the system and/or slippery slope type arguments?
Politicians violated those rules once in late 90s when a high positioned politician was murdered and they wanted to catch the criminal by doing a dna search, which resulted in a match.
From a pure practical perspective, the result of allowing police access to dna databases is that more criminal cases will be resolved than if they aren't, be that a database of rape victims or research database with blood of infants. The biggest ethical problem is that by violating the purpose of those databases, the result might be that people stop volunteering to be in those databases. There are also a slippery slope argument that by allowing police access to the database you are also inviting abuse of the information within in, both legal (in terms of politicians creating new use cases) and illegal.
There is also this icky feeling that comes when people violate the purse of collected personal information for purposes which people have not consented to.
The police wanted access to the sample of a single suspect. The straightforward thing to do would of course have been to get a sample directly from the suspect. But as the case was so high profile and there had just been a public debacle with another arrested and eventually released suspect, the police preferred to risk the integrity of the scientific research project rather than do their job the normal way.
It's infuriating because it was so unnecessary. But police prestige was on the line and here we are.
Edit: source (Swedish) https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordet_p%C3%A5_Anna_Lindh
Then I'd have my baby at home with a midwife.
>Apply strict rules about individual viewing access for criminality only with clear logs and then it was open at some anonymised / grouped level for research.
Like the strict rules we have here in the United States preventing the CIA, the FBI and the NSA capturing and sifting through the communications of US citizens? Rules that are routinely violated and ignored with no criminal penalties or sanctions ever handed out?
https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-and-h...
>It kind of feels wrong but why?
Because if history has proven anything, it is that people in power are above the law. They can not and should not be trusted with our genetic information.
>Are the risks focused around bad implementation of the system and/or slippery slope type arguments?
No, rather the total opposite. In every single case where information is available to the government and/or those in power, that information has been accessed, shared and data mined, without exception, without regard to the law and without any legal sanction to those who break the law by illegally accessing this information. From, "parallel construction" to the Snowden revelations to the recent abuses cited by Senator Wyden, only willful ignorance can possibly allow anyone to trust the government and the powerful to follow the law.
I guess I'll take the Godwin point. What if the Weimar republic had a lot of strict rules to build such a DNA database? That would have "helped" a lot of folks in 1933 to speed things up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Net...
And the only country you can actually compare to in Western Europe is Belgium. Luxembourg was directly annexed, and France and Italy were in very specific situations ( collaborationist government with some limited autonomy that collaborated on Jews, ally with more autonomy that barely collaborated on Jews vs direct military occupation by German authorities). Belgium and Netherlands were ruled more similarly to Eastern European occupied countries ( directly by Reichscommisars), even if in a much more civilized manner.
https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/can-i-be-required-to-pay-c...
I'm American, so US law is what I have some familiarity with. I would assume many countries have similar laws.
Some states destroy the blood spots after a year, 12 states store them for at least 21 years.
California has stored a DNA samples indefinitely and has collected from every baby born after 1983. They mainly sell the data to research companies.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/califo...
I understand all the counter arguments, and I don't take them lightly, but I think that properly implemented this could be a net benefit to society. And if it doesn't work as desired we can simply change it or stop doing it. The press and parliament are sure to keep a close eye on this. (I live in a democracy that functions fairly well, I'm not sure I would still be in favour if I lived in another country).
No, not quite. In one case, a person didn't realize his or her DNA was provided to law enforcement. In the case of the rape kit, the person most likely was aware.
If I were the victim of a crime and the Police had DNA that they collected which could prove the identity of the perpetrator, I'd be concerned if the police didn't use it.
> The woman, Boudin said, was recently arrested on suspicion of a felony property crime, with police identifying her based on the rape-kit evidence she gave as a victim, Boudin said.
In San Francisco, to actually be charged with a felony property crime, you have to do something truly horrific.
If you haven't watched the video Veritasium did about the Golden State Killer, I highly recommend it. It details quite nicely how if anybody has your DNA sample, the police have access to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT18KJouHWg
Bonus points for noticing how many of these company reps who tout "nothing to hide" like protecting their own privacy.
All 50 states require DNA samples at birth. Some states destroy the blood spots after a year, 12 states store them for at least 21 years.
California stores DNA samples indefinitely and has collected from every baby born after 1983. They mainly use the data for research but also sell it to private companies.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/califo...
And people are fine with that?
GINA prohibits discrimination on genotype by health insurance and employers, but those kinds of insurance are left in as loopholes.
(I support the California system, it helps a lot in medical research, I just want the loophole patched.)
source: https://archive.fo/SHfBT
"Does your husband know that he is not the father?"-type blackmailing for example.
Planting false DNA evidence on people could be a thing.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-kept-macron-dista...
> French President Emmanuel Macron refused a Kremlin request that he take a Russian COVID-19 test when he arrived to see President Vladimir Putin this week, to prevent Russia getting hold of Macron's DNA, two sources in Macron's entourage told Reuters.
If someone has access to enough nicely distributed DNA samples they can correctly identify you from your DNA even if you are not in any database only based on your family tree.
Varitasium video for reference: https://youtu.be/KT18KJouHWg
This is generally time consuming and done to identify criminals but it is very simple.
Fully cached AMP pages like the one you shared are especially problematic [0].
Maybe check out the canonical page instead:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-biobank-dna-babies-w...
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_di...
Google has become toxic to the web, alas.
Society would feel more free if every police officer's DNA was stored in nationally searchable database and indefinitely retained.
If it's good enough for rape victims, it should be fine for the police right? Since they have nothing to hide, as upholders of our laws, they will have nothing to worry about.
If I had to guess, the accession DNA draw is solely for identifying remains, and CODIS is maintained entirely separately, though I don't have anything to back that up off the top of my head.
[1] https://www.fbi.gov/services/laboratory/biometric-analysis/c...
Would it? Usually the criticism I see of police is that they protect each other even when there's clear evidence (e.g. a video) of a police officer committing a crime. Police officers already have plenty of technical ways to investigate each other, but what good is that if evidence of misconduct is buried or they refuse to arrest each other?
DNA lets cops catch criminals. Through smart police-work. This is progress.
For me, after seeing this, I would possibly not report being raped. Arresting the rapist isn't going to directly help me (depending on the situation), so by selfish game theory I shouldn't risk compromising my DNA
I.e. I'm not willing to trade away all my liberty for security. A certain level of background crime is acceptable. Just like I accept a certain level of risk every time I get in a car, eat a steak, go jogging, etc.
Yes I watched Gattaca not really long ago, based on some HN or Twitter FUD. Pretty stupid movie.
It might have been a good movie, had the protagonist been actually qualified for the job but cheated of the opportunity because they were the underclass. That would have played into the theme instead of refuting it.
I am baffled by the reputation Gattica has received.
Hand your biometric to government it in their rights now, regarding how to use it. Warning to us all.
Perhaps the warning is to not commit the crime.
Think of the children this might save from vile criminals! And think of the control this would gives employers over the health and genetic make-up of their prospective employees!
There Is No Gene For The Human Spirit.
But if instead they run their unknown DNA though a database of rape victims to see if any of them was the criminal, they're not "just taking a sample", they are invading the privacy of vulnerable women on the off chance one of them is a criminal. And they are obviously deterring people from reporting future crimes in which they have to give their DNA. I don't believe I need to belabor this, the case in the story had nothing to do with how easy it might be to collect DNA from someone you've already identified
The genie is already out of the bottle wrt DNA, so governance and oversight are all that’s left to ensure it’s not wielded improperly (in a very similar, but not quite the same way, as photographs in public).
(my dna has been genotyped by all major commercial providers, and is also public as part of Harvard’s personal genome project)
The problem is it's not a great look to be "against catching the bad guys." If I provide the literal essence of my being for some medical or ancestral purpose, it should be used for that purpose only, full stop—no exceptions, which means some kind of cryptographic enforcement.
If the police need a suspect's DNA, they can collect it by hand, with a warrant. And it should be thrown out when the suspect is cleared of charges (and maybe even post-prison release).
On the employer side, given how they love pseudoscientific personality tests, it's not hard to imagine an HR product correlating DNA with worker traits:
"This employee shares 99.9998% DNA with a cluster of criminals convicted of wire fraud. Upgrade to see evidence-backed pre-crime intervention recommendations."
I have a very good imagination but I cannot imagine this world.
I didn't realize being a victim meant you couldn't be a perp of other crimes.
The point is that being raped shouldn’t have made her more likely to be caught.
I think this is a fair stance to take, as DNA from rape kits being used for future tracking of the raped is going to disincentivise the use of rape kits.
I want to live in a world with less sexual violence, and if rape victims can submit DNA evidence without having to worry about state tracking (and those kits actually be analysed) then I think we can get a step closer to that world.
So you are arguing police only collects DNA from only ethical sources of your liking?
Great equaliser would be collecting everyone's DNA at birth.
Let me explain why that difference matters. Now, on top of the frustrating fact that there are many, many backlogs in rape kit testing across the country, women know that cooperating with authorities and reporting your rape exposes a victim to lifetime granular surveillance at the DNA level. Now, the imperfections of DNA testing expose every rape victim who submits a test to the false positives, and people who know nothing about the strength of the case will assume that being suspect or being arrested is the same as being convicted: https://gizmodo.com/when-bad-dna-tests-lead-to-false-convict...
At least where I am from (iirc) there is no sequencing involved. Instead the DNA is cut with restriction enzymes. Basically restriction enzyme + a persons DNA gives a unique fragment pattern.
Isn't the truth, the truth?
I mean, did she do the property crime or not? If she did why do we have a problem with the way we got to the truth?
In this world, or the world of the last 10,000 years, you should live life as if everybody can see everything. If you don't like that, well too badsy. Be nicer.
That being said, we probably don't have too much time before we have to distinguish between the notions of 1) being compelled to testify and 2) having one's own account being taken without the need to actively testify.
Do you think in the future people will decline rape exams knowing their info will be put into a database that could be used against them indefinitely?
It's a trap of their own doing.
I think it depends. If the person in question knows they are guilty of some crime that carries a heavy penalty, then they may decline the rape kit.
If the person in question does not know they are guilty of some crime that carries a heavy penalty, then they likely will not decline a rape kit.
I think people who commit crimes cause damage to society, so I tend to have little sympathy for schemes to let them escape justice, FWIW.
"Never talk to the cops." Isn't just for people who are guilty. Same with talking to a lawyer. I would hesitate to hand over my personal information, moreso if I don't have faith in the institution it goes to. I hear so many stories about rape kits never getting processed and how difficult it is to convict on rape because it's mostly he-said she-said. I also think putting someone in the position of getting caught so they can maybe catch their rapist isn't a great way to reduce overall crime.
There are a bunch of examples where this plays out poorly and nobody has a fear of getting caught. Black people had higher vaccine hesitancy because of historical distrust[1]. The CIA used a Hepatitis B vaccination program as cover to collect DNA to find Bin Laden[2].
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-13/understan...
[2] https://news.yahoo.com/cia-bin-laden-vaccine-ruse-010004824....
The point is that a) when you voluntarily give information, you've given it - and can have no reasonable expectation that the cat can be put back into the bag. and b) it's wrong to worry about a guilty person being caught because the truth was just too darn easy to find. Justice is a search for truth. Liberty is in a way the choice of what to share, but it doesn't matter why you shared - you did, it's out.
I think it is a simple privacy issue.
Privacy is the idea that there should be intentional barriers between the government and "the truth". The government may catch more criminals if it has full access to "the truth", but there are also downsides. To avid the downsides, we limit the ways in which governments and individuals can access/obtain "the truth".
This is why we have search warrants opposed to universal surveillance.
I generally like to err in the direction of "Don't chalk up to malice what is readily explained by stupidity."
Though in this case I would say probably failure to think things through adequately.
If you divvy up responsibility sufficiently malice at an organizational level is indistinguishable from all the individual actors within optimizing for achieving their own little KPIs. Generally speaking most people do their jobs satisfactorily. Nobody needs to be incompetent to get bad results. "Not my fault a little old lady got shot, I just check the spelling on the paperwork."
Companies and the wealthy don't conspire against you, they just follow a flawed profit motive that does not fall to 0% as perfect market theory predicts.
The ugliness does not come from malice, it comes from externalities. You don't see the damage you cause and once someone tells you to look it is too late and you must pretend to be ignorant.
Taking a cheap jab at capitalism (or anything else) in this context just paints you as blinded by ideology. No organization in the history of humanity has come up with a reproducible solution to this problem.
Police in general don't care about rape - it's hard to accept the "hard to get a conviction" argument when they have years of backlogged rape kits[1], which is further appalling when you find out that when they do actually test them they final serial rapists[2]. This is even when the police already only test "believable" claims[3], so the backlog is already biased towards conviction.
Then even when caught in the act rapists can get off without any significant penalties[4], leading to victims attempting suicide[5].
No, it isn't a matter of rapes being hard to convict, it's that police just don't care if a woman gets raped[6]. Which isn't surprising given the high rates of abuse in police households[7], and can rape people in custody[8].
They then have the gall to say "defunding means they aren't solving crime". They weren't solving crimes when they had more funding, and have demonstrated they will happily change what they report to make their numbers look however they want [6 again]
[1] https://www.endthebacklog.org/backlog/what-rape-kit-backlog [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/08/an-epid... [3] https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/07/why-do... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_v._Turner https://www.fox26houston.com/news/father-calls-out-judge-for... https://www.insider.com/judge-teen-accused-rape-deserves-len... https://abcnews.go.com/US/inappropriately-light-sentences-se... https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/06/24/man-co... and on and on [5] https://jezebel.com/illinois-judge-reverses-conviction-of-18... [6] https://www.startribune.com/ignoring-rape-complaints-when-po... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/17/abolis... https://gothamist.com/news/report-nypd-has-systematically-un... https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/sep/19/thousands-of... https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/23/us/rape-victims-kits-poli... [7] https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/police-... [8] https://theintercept.com/2019/08/30/nypd-anna-chambers-rape-...
Police have no duty to protect any particular person. Not caring about a person is legal precedent.
This is an extension of the lack of "duty to rescue" in much English-written commonlaw; in much of Europe, Latin America, and Africa even normal citizens are legally required to render aid to people in need[10].
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_to_rescue#Civil_law_syste...
This is particularly pernicious in communities where trust in the police is low, because if you "break rank" you can force the police onto the community, but the community as a whole can't benefit from what you bring to the police.