3 ms·
There's a lot of negative reaction here. What's wrong with the police searching DNA data to find a suspect? Is it: A) They might do something statistically inv
by Nutmog 11y ago
There's a lot of negative reaction here. What's wrong with the police searching DNA data to find a suspect? Is it:
A) They might do something statistically invalid like charging whoever matches, even if somebody is bound to match just by chance. That didn't happen here. Usry was only a suspect and interrogated then let go. If he did get wrongly convicted, that means there's always at high risk of that for any investigation even without DNA. If we don't trust our processes for protecting against wrongful convictions, then we should try to fix those because they'll already be being abused. If we don't want police to interrogate any suspects who aren't already known to be guilty, then we might find they become a lot less effective at solving crimes.
"... was interrogated for six hours and finally gave blood for a DNA sample. For the next month, he remained under suspicion until his DNA was determined not to match the samples taken from the crime scene."
That looks like a perfectly normal and acceptable way of investigating a crime. It looks like the system working safely.
B) Police accessing personal data is wrong. How about phone tapping with a warrant? How about searching a house with a warrant? Private surveillance footage? Where do you draw the line and not allow them to investigate crimes?
C) People confuse it with secret anti-terrorist or antidisestablishmentarian (I found a use for that word!) NSA investigations which don't follow the well accepted warrant process.
D) Other.
- Veratyr 11y agoI have a few problems: - 23AndMe/Ancestry shouldn't have a database of DNA -> identity mappings. - Law enforcement shouldn't have the ability to compel surrender of data for which someone can have a reasonable expectation of privacy (medical records, private communications, journals etc.). Privacy trumps investigation for me. - Law enforcement shouldn't have any kind of "search" access to any private DNA database. I could accept them getting information for an exact match but including relatives and partial matches is too far.
- Nutmog 11y agoI understand wanting to keep the police out of your private things. But we already let them in when they have a warrant. Are you saying DNA is more private than your house, computer, phone converations, etc? Or that all those things should be off limits to police with a warrant? Of course this is not the same as giving them free access to whatever they want. Then I could understand people's worries. Individual policemen could use it to harass people they don't like, or other abuses.
- DanBC 11y agoThe warrant would tend to be targeted at a specific person. "Tell us what you have on Bob Jones", and not a population "Tell us what you have on everybody named Jones"
- Veratyr 11y ago> Are you saying DNA is more private than your house, computer, phone converations, etc? Or that all those things should be off limits to police with a warrant? I can live with the police gaining access to my house but my computer and phone conversations are just as off limits to them as I want my DNA to be. Every device I own that can store data is fully encrypted so the police have no access to that regardless of their wishes. Same goes for most of my phone conversations. I draw the limits at two things: my body (DNA) and my mind (communications, data).