4 ms·

I changed my mind about DNA acquisition / privacy concerns after reading the backstory of the Golden State Killer: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_James_

I changed my mind about DNA acquisition / privacy concerns after reading the backstory of the Golden State Killer: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_James_DeAngelo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_James_DeAngelo Officers uploaded DNA from a rape kit and got back a family tree, then investigated all 2,000 possibilities. Problem solved. He’d eluded capture till the ripe old age of 77 or so, after having raped around 50 women and murdering several by beating them to death with logs. Can someone help me understand some concrete scenarios where DNA testing is clearly a bad thing? Because it seems to be a net win for society. Leave your DNA at a crime scene -> you’ve left your ID.

jdright 6y ago
It really looks like something useful, until it will be misused. It is not a matter of if, but of when. So, better to not have this at all, even if the price to pay is if some cases will go unsolved. You must think about the worse case and consider the consequences. Think about a reelect Trump feeling empowered using such a thing, don't know, to target minorities with his white supremacist ideals. If this is too much for you, consider China with Uighurs instead. Make this 100x worse considering this is a private enterprise.
- engineer_22 6y ago
  The authoritarian Left is just as much a concern as Trump. Consider China with the... Wait, you already said China.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
foofoo55 6y ago
Because a crime scene might also have the DNA of innocent people. Because public DNA information could be a source of prejudice mis-used by government, law enforcement, health services, employers, even family, friends, and potential spouses. Because in all likelihood it would become another way to generate targeted advertising.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
onetimemanytime 6y ago
DNA is often not enough though. We also need a camera at home (maybe not in the bathroom though) and a body camera that can record us and others, to help police solve crimes. no?
1986 6y ago
Since we're actively in the midst of a national reckoning with police overreach (at a minimum), while people are getting arrested for constitutionally protected speech largely based on their political alignment, I think the slippery slope argument is honestly quite valid here. It's scary to me that a relative's choice to dig into their family tree will law enforcement to significantly narrow the search space for someone they don't like and happen to have a strand of hair from.
peteradio 6y ago
Leave someone else's dna at a crime you've framed someone, how did you get that dna, well you bought it from some unscrupulous lab. Or how about insurance companies start purchasing this data, oh but thats illegal so lets just say we don't but actually really do and totally pervert the idea of insurance. Golden state killer might stick out in your mind as a horrible evil but its nothing against the trillions of cuts by making this data widely available for purchase.
dvt 6y ago
I don't mean to be dismissive, but engineers tend to simplify these problems, as if the legal system is a perfect justice-dispensing black box. But that's not how it works. This is a question of ethics and moral weights. This is why we have things like habeas corpus, chain of custody, rules about juries and evidence, and all kinds of things. DNA acquisition is rife with privacy concerns. The chance that some criminals might elude capture is one of the implications of why, for example, we don't implant everyone with a tracking chip, or require people to report their whereabouts to the government. If everyone had a tracking chip, no one could commit crimes any more, right? This is a reductio argument, but it shows why what might seem like "sure-shot" strategies (versions of which, in some cases, have been implemented in authoritarian governments) were definitely not "net wins" for society.
- sillysaurusx 6y ago
  I urge you to spend time reading the Wikipedia page of the golden state killer. Put yourself in the victims’ shoes. Imagine someone waking you in the middle of the night with a floodlight, shoving a gun in your face, screaming at you to lay on the floor while they put dishes on your back, saying “If I hear these fall, I’ll kill everyone.” Then he takes your loved one to the livingroom and mercilessly rapes her for hours. The ethical argument cuts both ways. Not only did that scenario happen, but it happened fifty times. He was unstoppable by anything but DNA. How, then, is it ethical to look someone in the eye and say “Your lover was murdered, and we could find who did it, but we won’t”?
  - dvt 6y ago
    > The ethical argument cuts both ways. Not only did that scenario happen, but it happened fifty times. He was unstoppable by anything but DNA. The atrocities committed by authoritarian governments by far exceed the emotional force of your argument. From the Holocaust, to the Great Leap Forward, to the Holodomor. We're talking so much suffering that you can't even comprehend it (think of it like a moral neutron star). Millions murdered, raped, and tortured over the course of decades. Given what history has taught us so far, the ethical downsides of authoritarian carte blanche by far exceeds the downsides of erring on the side of protecting individual rights.
dspoka 6y ago
Chief Medical Officer of Intel talking about what hacks look like on people's genetic information. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKQDSgBHPfY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKQDSgBHPfY
shrubble 6y ago
Question: do the hacker/home-DNA labs allow for the ability to take someone's DNA, amplify or recreate it, then allow you to smear it on a jacket or a dead person's cheek, thereby framing an innocent person?
- t-c-h 6y ago
  They would need to purify the DNA (remove all other amino acids and membrane proteins etc.) to amplify it and remove any traces of chemicals used for the amplification. But A) naked DNA will be exposed to the elements/chemicals which could cause damage/denaturation, B) it would look really odd to find batches of pure DNA without any hairs/cells/other proteins. Maybe some techniques exist to replicate more believable tissue? Honestly not sure as I'm not too well versed on lab-techniques other than sequencing.
  - Metacelsus 6y ago
    Methylation analysis could tell them apart, since DNA from PCR isn't methylated. But most forensic labs wouldn't do this, and I think it would be very possible to frame someone in this way.
tsimionescu 6y ago
The number of killers in the world is significantly dwarfed by all of the people who aren't killers. And even then, among all of the people who have ever killed someone, the number who were not caught but would have been caught if the police only had access to everyone's DNA is so vamishingly small, that there is no reason to take this seriously. Not to mention that your argument falls apart once you realize that we have no real idea how powerful DNA evidence is, especially when found in small quantities. Is it possible that, if I walk daily by a high-rise that I have never entered, my DNA could be found in a room inside that building (e.g. because a fallen hair or my sneezing got on the clothes/shoes of someone passing by)? Likely, yes. In fact, I would bet that trying to match all of the DNA at all of the crime scenes with all of the people in America would be much more likely to increase the number of false convictions than to help bring more murderers to justice.
vkou 6y ago
> Can someone help me understand some concrete scenarios where DNA testing is clearly a bad thing? It may be a good thing for society, but it may be bad for me. Suppose that in the process of investigating all 2,000 possibilities, the detective in question was lazy, and figured that you know, #56 fits the bill if we kind of squint. #56 would then have a pretty nasty legal surprise to deal with, where they had to come up with an alibi for "Where were you on the night of November 23rd, 1986?" Best of luck defending yourself against that! If I had more faith in our police system, this wouldn't be a concern. I don't, though. Police have a history of routinely misused partially-matching DNA/fingerprints/police line mugshots, to either convict, or cause serious problems for people who later turned out to be innocent. So, I'll have a strong pass on having my DNA entered into a database. There is no personal upshot for me, and only downside, if some idiot with a badge, a gun, and an incredibly poor grasp of statistics stumbles upon me.
mesozoic 6y ago
Funny I came to the exact opposite opinion from that.

jdright 6y ago

It really looks like something useful, until it will be misused. It is not a matter of if, but of when. So, better to not have this at all, even if the price to pay is if some cases will go unsolved. You must think about the worse case and consider the consequences. Think about a reelect Trump feeling empowered using such a thing, don't know, to target minorities with his white supremacist ideals. If this is too much for you, consider China with Uighurs instead. Make this 100x worse considering this is a private enterprise.

engineer_22 6y ago
The authoritarian Left is just as much a concern as Trump. Consider China with the... Wait, you already said China.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

foofoo55 6y ago

Because a crime scene might also have the DNA of innocent people. Because public DNA information could be a source of prejudice mis-used by government, law enforcement, health services, employers, even family, friends, and potential spouses. Because in all likelihood it would become another way to generate targeted advertising.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

onetimemanytime 6y ago

DNA is often not enough though. We also need a camera at home (maybe not in the bathroom though) and a body camera that can record us and others, to help police solve crimes. no?

1986 6y ago

Since we're actively in the midst of a national reckoning with police overreach (at a minimum), while people are getting arrested for constitutionally protected speech largely based on their political alignment, I think the slippery slope argument is honestly quite valid here. It's scary to me that a relative's choice to dig into their family tree will law enforcement to significantly narrow the search space for someone they don't like and happen to have a strand of hair from.

peteradio 6y ago

Leave someone else's dna at a crime you've framed someone, how did you get that dna, well you bought it from some unscrupulous lab. Or how about insurance companies start purchasing this data, oh but thats illegal so lets just say we don't but actually really do and totally pervert the idea of insurance. Golden state killer might stick out in your mind as a horrible evil but its nothing against the trillions of cuts by making this data widely available for purchase.

dvt 6y ago

I don't mean to be dismissive, but engineers tend to simplify these problems, as if the legal system is a perfect justice-dispensing black box. But that's not how it works. This is a question of ethics and moral weights. This is why we have things like habeas corpus, chain of custody, rules about juries and evidence, and all kinds of things. DNA acquisition is rife with privacy concerns. The chance that some criminals might elude capture is one of the implications of why, for example, we don't implant everyone with a tracking chip, or require people to report their whereabouts to the government. If everyone had a tracking chip, no one could commit crimes any more, right? This is a reductio argument, but it shows why what might seem like "sure-shot" strategies (versions of which, in some cases, have been implemented in authoritarian governments) were definitely not "net wins" for society.

sillysaurusx 6y ago
I urge you to spend time reading the Wikipedia page of the golden state killer. Put yourself in the victims’ shoes. Imagine someone waking you in the middle of the night with a floodlight, shoving a gun in your face, screaming at you to lay on the floor while they put dishes on your back, saying “If I hear these fall, I’ll kill everyone.” Then he takes your loved one to the livingroom and mercilessly rapes her for hours. The ethical argument cuts both ways. Not only did that scenario happen, but it happened fifty times. He was unstoppable by anything but DNA. How, then, is it ethical to look someone in the eye and say “Your lover was murdered, and we could find who did it, but we won’t”?
- dvt 6y ago
  > The ethical argument cuts both ways. Not only did that scenario happen, but it happened fifty times. He was unstoppable by anything but DNA. The atrocities committed by authoritarian governments by far exceed the emotional force of your argument. From the Holocaust, to the Great Leap Forward, to the Holodomor. We're talking so much suffering that you can't even comprehend it (think of it like a moral neutron star). Millions murdered, raped, and tortured over the course of decades. Given what history has taught us so far, the ethical downsides of authoritarian carte blanche by far exceeds the downsides of erring on the side of protecting individual rights.

dspoka 6y ago

Chief Medical Officer of Intel talking about what hacks look like on people's genetic information. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKQDSgBHPfY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKQDSgBHPfY

shrubble 6y ago

Question: do the hacker/home-DNA labs allow for the ability to take someone's DNA, amplify or recreate it, then allow you to smear it on a jacket or a dead person's cheek, thereby framing an innocent person?

t-c-h 6y ago
They would need to purify the DNA (remove all other amino acids and membrane proteins etc.) to amplify it and remove any traces of chemicals used for the amplification. But A) naked DNA will be exposed to the elements/chemicals which could cause damage/denaturation, B) it would look really odd to find batches of pure DNA without any hairs/cells/other proteins. Maybe some techniques exist to replicate more believable tissue? Honestly not sure as I'm not too well versed on lab-techniques other than sequencing.
- Metacelsus 6y ago
  Methylation analysis could tell them apart, since DNA from PCR isn't methylated. But most forensic labs wouldn't do this, and I think it would be very possible to frame someone in this way.

tsimionescu 6y ago

The number of killers in the world is significantly dwarfed by all of the people who aren't killers. And even then, among all of the people who have ever killed someone, the number who were not caught but would have been caught if the police only had access to everyone's DNA is so vamishingly small, that there is no reason to take this seriously. Not to mention that your argument falls apart once you realize that we have no real idea how powerful DNA evidence is, especially when found in small quantities. Is it possible that, if I walk daily by a high-rise that I have never entered, my DNA could be found in a room inside that building (e.g. because a fallen hair or my sneezing got on the clothes/shoes of someone passing by)? Likely, yes. In fact, I would bet that trying to match all of the DNA at all of the crime scenes with all of the people in America would be much more likely to increase the number of false convictions than to help bring more murderers to justice.

vkou 6y ago

> Can someone help me understand some concrete scenarios where DNA testing is clearly a bad thing? It may be a good thing for society, but it may be bad for me. Suppose that in the process of investigating all 2,000 possibilities, the detective in question was lazy, and figured that you know, #56 fits the bill if we kind of squint. #56 would then have a pretty nasty legal surprise to deal with, where they had to come up with an alibi for "Where were you on the night of November 23rd, 1986?" Best of luck defending yourself against that! If I had more faith in our police system, this wouldn't be a concern. I don't, though. Police have a history of routinely misused partially-matching DNA/fingerprints/police line mugshots, to either convict, or cause serious problems for people who later turned out to be innocent. So, I'll have a strong pass on having my DNA entered into a database. There is no personal upshot for me, and only downside, if some idiot with a badge, a gun, and an incredibly poor grasp of statistics stumbles upon me.

mesozoic 6y ago

Funny I came to the exact opposite opinion from that.