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Here's an actual case of an innocent person who faced charges and a high probability of losing their freedom due to DNA transference: https://www.wired.com/sto
by tbyehl 7y ago
Here's an actual case of an innocent person who faced charges and a high probability of losing their freedom due to DNA transference:
https://www.wired.com/story/dna-transfer-framed-murder/ https://www.wired.com/story/dna-transfer-framed-murder/
The take-away is that shed skin cells containing DNA can migrate and a DNA match from that type of evidence shouldn't be relied on as proof of anything.
To my view, the combination of DNA transference, advancing DNA collection / analysis techniques, the mere existence of DNA databases, and familial searches are absolutely terrifying.
- gbrown 7y agoGood counterpoint, definitely an issue. When the police find macroscopic quantities of bodily fluids, however, it would seem to be madness not to use the evidence.
- tbyehl 7y agoAbsolutely. I do question if society is better off catching a few more criminals through these databases and familial matching vs the potential for innocents to be imprisoned based on nothing more than a DNA match against skin cells. I'm also not too fond of the idea of my relatives' DNA being used to draw suspicion to another relative just because someone's DNA wound up in a database. To me it's just another one of those things (ALPRs, all the compilations of "it's just metadata") that erode our privacy and give the state a great deal of power for relatively little benefit to the people. All crimes don't get solved, all criminals don't get caught, and in a society where everyone's a law-breaker because there are too many laws to know them all and so many of them are dumb, that's how things should be.