7 ms·

I was very confused about this. The genealogy website did not probide any information to law enforcement. Instead, law enforcement uploaded DNA from the crime s

• chatmasta 8y ago
  ...and then the genealogy website provided information to law enforcement by showing profiles of people with similar DNA. Perhaps that’s the real privacy issue... anyone can find a piece of hair on the sidewalk, send it to a genealogy website, and identify who it might belong to and/or any relatives.
  • maxerickson 8y ago
    The sites have more privacy controls than that.
    • chatmasta 8y ago
      But I have no say over my uncle’s privacy controls. If someone finds my hair, and my uncle allows himself to be publicly searchable by DNA, then the person who found the hair knows it belongs to someone associated with my uncle. They can then find him on Facebook and commence further analysis. It’s the same problem we saw with Cambridge Analytica. Incidental data shared by our friends can reveal information about ourselves when analyzed in bulk or supplemented with additional data.
      • eksu 8y ago
        You don't have a reasonable right to privacy of relations. That's all public record.
        • mattnewton 8y ago
          This in effect makes my DNA a matter of public record based on the decisions of my relatives (behind some hoops, but in practice it doesn’t seem hard). That seems like a breach of privacy.
          • deleted 8y ago
            [deleted]
          • paxys 8y ago
            Well it's technically your uncle's DNA. Limiting what he can or can't do with it because it also matches yours would then infringe on his rights.
            • mattnewton 8y ago
              Sure, in the same way my neighbors infringe on my rights to blast music at 4am.
              • kenjackson 8y ago
                Not the same. Your uncles DNA only establishes he is your uncle. Unless your also saying that your uncle is not free to disclose any information that might be contained in his DNA. For example that he is a white male.
          • eanzenberg 8y ago
            You dont own your relative’s genetics. They can do whatever they want with them. There’s no breach of your privacy because nothing of yours was breached.
            • mattnewton 8y ago
              But my dna can now be matched to me - That is a breach of privacy today, or at least and end run around legislation that attempts to limit the spread of genetic information. We should think really carefully about this! My uncle’s right to check out who his long lost cousins could put my genetic information in the hands of a potential employer, insurer, or government. That could be really bad. This is similar to the Facebook scenario, where it’s not just your privacy you are trading away for whatever benefit, but those of people related or near you.
      • conanbatt 8y ago
        You uncle should have a right to rat you out if he pleases. A mother can turn on his murderous child to the police if she wishes so. I think the debatible point is consent: i dont think anyone ever consented to their dna being able to be used to incriminate them or anyone else without their express consent.
  • themodelplumber 8y ago
    I can see it now: "Hi. We're not actually related, but I believe you may be 2nd or 3rd cousins to someone who left a brand new, pink hairbrush at my B&B."
    • tzakrajs 8y ago
      "So can you come pick this hairbrush up and give it to your cousin?"
  • nashashmi 8y ago
    Gattaca!
    • FPGAhacker 8y ago
      I had the same thought.
      • FPGAhacker 8y ago
        I guess people didn't like that movie. I thought it was great, and a relevant reference.
        • orionblastar 8y ago
          It needs to be rebooted for modern times.
  • 21 8y ago
    So after search by phone number or email on Facebook, we will also have search by DNA. For when you want to get in touch with that mysterious stranger on the subway...
    • patrickaljord 8y ago
      You'd first need to pull a hair from that stranger on the subway though.
      • sjg007 8y ago
        You would just need to swab anything they touched.. it might be sufficient.
      • mannykannot 8y ago
        Good point - you would have a better chance with someone who works for a food vendor...
      • lamarpye 8y ago
        Done
      • return1 8y ago
        and sequence it
  • coldtea 8y ago
    >anyone can find a piece of hair on the sidewalk, send it to a genealogy website, and identify who it might belong to and/or any relatives. Searching for relatives in such sites, CAN be a privacy issue, but I don't see how your particular example works exactly. What motivation exactly would have anyone that found a piece of hair, on the sidewalk or elsewhere, to know people with DNA from/similar to that hair's?
    • braythwayt 8y ago
      Consider this creepy altrnative: You have a drink at a bar. Stranger swabs it, or steals the glass, collects DNA, sends it in, now triangulates who you are from your relatives. I don't know if it's that easy, but something like this may become possible.
      • coldtea 8y ago
        >Consider this creepy altrnative: You have a drink at a bar. Stranger swabs it, or steals the glass, collects DNA, sends it in, now triangulates who you are from your relatives. Sure, but following you would be much easier. Why go through all the trouble (AND live an online trace).
        • gnode 8y ago
          > an online trace Maybe in the future leaked DNA sequence databases will be available, downloadable, and searchable by criminals without a third party. If so, this would actually be less likely to create evidence than following them.
      • hrasyid 8y ago
        If they have your paternal relatives and your maternal relatives, that pretty much just leaves you and your siblings, right? *Unless there are other marriages between your mom's and dad's families
      • nkrisc 8y ago
        They've probably got your finger prints too as a bonus.
  • ehsankia 8y ago
    I agree. My understand was that both parties have to agree for the website to connect them. I'm not sure what specific site this is, but I wouldn't trust a site that just connects me to other people without my consent.
    • hrasyid 8y ago
      Your consent, or even you being on the website, isn't needed. If enough of your relatives consented, the stalker can have at least a list of your relatives, and try to guess you from there (as the police did in this case)
      • ehsankia 8y ago
        That's assuming again that my relative accept to share. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the direct result. In this case, the relative of the killer never agreed to share the data with the police.
        • hrasyid 8y ago
          > the relative of the killer never agreed to share the data with the police Not with the police, but they let people who find a related DNA to find them (this is a feature of these websites). Once the police have your DNA, then can find your relatives. You can't control whether your relatives are opted in to this feature or not.
  • chrischen 8y ago
    23andme requires quite a bit of saliva. They could definitely up the requirements to decrease the chance of fraud.
    • golem14 8y ago
      Good point, and makes it less likely LEAs just sent in the DNA the 'regular' way ... I wonder how they submitted the DNA
    • et2o 8y ago
      It's trivial to replicate even very small amounts of DNA. They don't actually need very much DNA, they just ask for that much to ensure it will work.
      • chrischen 8y ago
        Wouldn't they have to replicate whatever medium it is in as well? For example, if sending in saliva, you'd have to replicate the saliva as well.
        • et2o 8y ago
          No need to replicate saliva. The DNA extraction chemistry wouldn't depend on saliva components.
  • unethical_ban 8y ago
    So the issue is 23andMe or similar accepting DNA samples without verifying identify beforehand. As in, they should submit some kind of ID or affidavit that they are the provider of the sample before delivering it.
• conanbatt 8y ago
  This is weird af. I don't think anyone truly consents to the use of his dna this way, and its a strange case of privacy violation. Im actually stunned, I don't yet have an opinion on how this should be handled.
  • haZard_OS 8y ago
    Nor do I. Obviously, I don't want to appear regretful that the killer was found. I predict that someone in the near future will be saddled with the unenviable task of arguing against the precedent set by this arrest. Good luck to that poor soul.
    • crankylinuxuser 8y ago
      Given lab on a chips, and public spaces, sequencing would be done trivially anywhere there are sensors. And given that people shed skin cells and hair regularly, that can be called abandoned property. Being in a location at a certain place and time could be trivial to determine, no matter how careful you are. I have a bad feeling this precedent won't be upturned.
      • tzs 8y ago
        > Being in a location at a certain place and time could be trivial to determine, no matter how careful you are. Well, that would determine that your DNA was there, but as we saw in that case discussed here earlier this week [1] is it a lot easier than most people realize for your DNA to get transferred to things or people who then transfer it to a crime scene, where it can be discovered and thought to be from the criminal. I spent a while thinking about what one could do to defend against the risk that one's DNA might be falsely found at a crime scene for a crime that occurred when you are home alone. I couldn't think of a good way to prove you were home, but you don't need that. You just need evidence sufficient to raise reasonable doubt. I came up with two ideas, one that you can do yourself, and one that would involve a startup that provides an alibi service. Not sure if anyone actually needs anything like this yet, but it is an interesting problem to thing about. (I live alone, and my office switched to work at home a few months ago. I can now easily go several days now where the only people who see me are fast food workers, gas station attendants, and others in retail. Even at the fast food place I visit several times a week, where they remember me sufficiently to say "the usual?" when I walk in, and make the right thing if a say "yes", I doubt that if they were asked if I was there on a particular morning they would not be able to remember. All they could say is a come in 3 or 4 times a week but they wouldn't know which were the days I did not come in...so if somehow I was tied to a crime, I would probably have a very hard time establishing that I was not there). First the self-hosted version. This is based on the old classic method that people, such as kidnappers, would sometimes use to prove that a hostage was still alive as of a particular date: send a photograph of the hostage holding a major newspaper from that date. Set up a camera in your home that periodically takes a photo (or maybe a short video) of you standing next to a couple of monitors. One of the monitors displays current prices for several major stocks on exchanges around the world, and exchange rates on several currency exchanges around the world. The other shows several major news sites. After the photo is taken it is hashed and timestamped using a trusted timestamp service [2] (or if you want to do it simpler, just Tweet the hash). If you ever need to raise doubt about a claim that you were somewhere at a time you claim you were at home, you offer the photo or videos taken near that time. The timestamp for the hash establishes an upper limit for the time that the photo was made. The prices on the stocks and currencies and the headlines on the news sites should allow establishing a lower limit on when it was made. That gives you evidence that you were home between those times. Could this be faked? Yes. You could take a photo made earlier in next to blank monitors, and then around the time you are committing the crime ssh home and make the system take a photo of the monitors displaying the price and news data, and then Photoshop that into the earlier photo, and upload it. But if your system is set up to work honestly, I think it would be good enough for reasonable doubt, unless the prosecutor can offer actual evidence that you DID hack it rather than just speculating that you MIGHT have done so. The startup version, offering an alibi as a service, would just need you to have a webcam and microphone at home. With this service, you periodically initiate a video chat with the service, which it records. You should do the chat from a place where the background is easily recognized and unique. During the chat, the service gives you a random number of 6 digits. You speak the digits, while simultaneously holding up a number of fingers corresponding to those digits. The service saves the video and the random number. Maybe also hold up your phone with it using a GPS or mapping app showing your location. In fact, the alibi service could probably make the whole client side a smartphone app. Use the smartphone front facing camera instead of a webcam. The app can use the phone GPS to record the location. If you are worried about privacy issues over the videos of you being uploaded to the alibi service, there could be an option to store everything (video, GPS location) locally or on whatever secure cloud storage you use for your own videos and photos, with just a hash uploaded to the alibi server. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16903330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16903330 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• lostlogin 8y ago
  The stringing bit in that for me is that is this “It wasn’t a matter of if he was coming, it was when,” Ms. Schubert said. Her parents were “not gun people,” she said, but her father bought a firearm. Her mother kept an ice pick under her pillow when she slept.” How many people have been that scared?
• return1 8y ago
  i find it hard to believe that they were so lucky that a "small website that allows you to upload DNA data directly" just happened to have that data.
  • fixermark 8y ago
    For an individual, the set of data those websites have on who matches you is around "Your total living relatives out to 6th cousin or so" * a ratio of people willing to use the site's services. That turns out to be a lot of people. And when you correlate that with data on where people live and where they lived at the time of a string of crimes, it turns out to be a lot of data.