This is similar to why police should not use DNA collected for medical research. Resolving the police case might help a victim, but the harm to the original purpose of collecting DNA has a potential risk of doing untold harm if people stop providing DNA in fear that the database might be misused.
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?
What would the pros/cons be if we did the opposite, if everyone at birth had a DNA swab taken and recorded. 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.
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?
>What would the pros/cons be if we did the opposite, if everyone at birth had a DNA swab taken and recorded.
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?
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.
Sweden currently has a system where when babies blood are tested, a small sample is kept, recorded, and stored. There are strict rules about viewing access and purpose.
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.
You have the story wrong. There is no searchable database of DNA. There are only blood samples from newborns.
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.
Sure, because we know that "strict rules" are never broken.
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.
Are you including Germany in the rest of Western Europe? Because in that case, you're incorrect.
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.
The 1930s are exactly the time when business machines enabled automated national population censuses. Business machines allowed countless new ways to sort and segregate the population by gender, ethnicity, religion, political affiliation, mental (dis)abilities. It was simply too tempting. The only reason the DNA wasn't used was because it hadn't been discovered yet.
It'll still be the latter. Courts have argued that even in the case where it is known the child does not belong to the "father", he's still required to pay child support.
There is an entire class of crime that would all of a sudden become much easier to solve. It's very hard to rape someone or to break into a house without leaving any DNA trace.
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).
> This is similar to why police should not use DNA collected for medical research.
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.
DNA is a genie that's flown far and free from their bottle. Even if you are not in the system directly (from, say, 23&me, rape kits, arrests, etc), someone within 2-3 degrees of separation on your family tree is. It's enough for you to be identified in most cases.
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.
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.
> 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.
Finding people from remote relatives and medical inferences.
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.
> 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.
i can think of so many ways to get the visitor's DNA, like he will naturally lose some hair somewhere, or use the toilet, etc. Maybe the refusal is more a reaction to the mistrust implied in the request to take "their" Test
I imagine that the tests done routinely at childbirth are not a full genome sequencing. The samples can be kept for full sequencing later in the event of a sale or research project.
Society will feel less free if all police are permitted to have the unregulated right to collect and indefinitely retain DNA from any source in a searchable database.
Society would feel more free if every police officer's DNA was stored in nationally searchable database and indefinitely retained.
That's very reasonable. Police and public office holders should require their DNA sequence to be available online, and all DNA collected in association with crimes can also be published. That way civic minded citizens can have a tool to track down potential offenders, and also to identify any genetic predisposition to health conditions so they can help the officers get the support they need.
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.
> Society would feel more free if every police officer's DNA was stored in nationally searchable database and indefinitely retained.
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?
Wow, do they not have to get blood draws before entering the force? I know little about police officers, but I know during in-processing into the military, at some point you get blood drawn and your told that the information from that will go into the CODIS database for ever and always. Or at least I remember MEPS mentioning that when I was enlisting in the Navy.
I remember something vaguely similar, but don't think that's accurate. New CODIS DNA draws are done when CODIS entry is triggered (after conviction or IRO retention in confinement, for qualifying offenses). You can even get CODIS entries expunged if there's a non-criminal disposition (e.g., accused retained in confinement at IRO later deals out via SILT or NJP/board waiver).
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.
Reading this [1]. It definitely seems as CODIS's primary purpose is connection to crime and such. I could be wrong and hope I am wrong. But it wouldn't be too surprising, my understanding from when I was in and see SAPR cases unfold, if the victim had a rape kit done and allowed for it go get tested (in case anyone isn't in the service, a military SAPR victim can have a rape kit complete and opt to not have it ran, but the military is supposed to keep it for 50 years at which any time a victim can opt to have it ran), they get hits on the DNA if it was another service member without them having to call them in for giving a DNA sample. So, I am pretty sure service memeber's DNA exist in CODIS or in some database that can be used to run against crime evidence.
I get the point. But terrible example. Gattaca allowed a scumbag to endanger a billion-dollar space mission to further their own ego. Not the poster child for privacy.
No. Yet the 'hero' was patently unfit for the job they sought, and cheated other qualified candidates to get it. At a possible societal cost in the billions.
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.
I honestly thought the whole genetic aspect was completely beside the point. The people in the movie just trusted the black box algorithm. Nobody gives a damn whether it even works or if all the results are manipulated or simply inaccurate.
Given that people shed plenty of blood for our liberties, no, preventing all rapes/murder is not worth surrendering all our liberties.
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.
No, it is not worth it, and in the long-run may not have the desired effect.
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
Its a letter of the law versus spirit of the law. I am of the later. Investigating one crime does not inherently give permission to use data from that crime to start trying to solve other crimes unless they are directly connected, i.e. tying a bunch of murders together with similarities because it may be a serial killer instead of one off murders.
Yes, one cound imagine an alternate world where strong controls meant data was never abused and government had a history of honestly protecting people. And then I could see an argument for why you would voluntarily (or even by compliance) give info to the government, like with contract tracing or even reporting a horrible personal crime like this. But the reality is, your information will be abused, and there is no good reason to help any government I'm aware of out, given how systematically uncaring they all are.
>Yes, one cound imagine an alternate world where strong controls meant data was never abused and government had a history of honestly protecting people.
I have a very good imagination but I cannot imagine this world.
You leave your DNA everywhere. You leave it on pop cans you drink from, with hair and skin you shed, not to mention DNA relatives who willingly share with anyone who will sequence and store their DNA (23andme, Ancestory, and so forth). Any expectation of privacy regarding DNA is not grounded in reality.
Cool cool cool. So can jobs (say schools), some of which require fingerprinting now, require a DNA sample too?
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!
You missed my point (which I admittedly didn’t make well). Because DNA is so ubiquitous, policy and regulation is the only way to provide safeguards (and there are already laws regulating the use of DNA for health insurance issuance). Rape victims, without exception, should not be dissuaded from coming forward out of fear of future crimes (speaking specially of this instance), but DNA databases and collection are still a useful tool for crime solving. It should be regulated, but still permitted, while ensuring victims are not disenfranchised or harmed in the process (when dna collection occurs as part of their own crime investigations).
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)
I see, thanks for clarifying. I don't agree that the genie is out of the bottle, but regardless, yes strict regulation of and siloing of biometric databases would be welcome.
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 think the salient point is that the genie can still come further out of the bottle and be even more difficult to control with regulations if not halted or controlled with
Regulation now.
Some genes will be considered a security risk or a health hazard for one reason or another, and CRISPR will be available as a tool for modification. In 10, 20, 30 years people who don't want to be treated may have to settle for a limited range of jobs.
This point is wrong in relation to the story. They have some unknown DNA, and certainly they can go and stake out peoples houses and see it they throw out a cigarette but or however you get it. This seems reasonable, and if they are grabbing DNA off something a person threw away, they arguably wouldn't even need a warrant.
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
I was about to comment that in the next few years we would start seeing people who are willing to let the government biometrically finger fuck them because its pointless to fight back, but here you are proving that the battle was already lost and people are willing to roll over and take it already.
The possible 4th amendment/Victim's Bill of Rights violations here are not the same as the lack privacy with private companies/DNA collection from items you discard.
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.
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...
I can imagine a world where people think victims deserve the crimes committed against them because victims are more likely to be in a DNA database. Lovely statistics.
No, but we will likely see fewer people coming forward about being raped if they are know that their rape kit can and will be used against them in the future. The SFPD's mistake here is allowing the db of victim DNA from rape kits to ever interface with the general DNA database they use.
In the US, lawful search is limited to reasonable suspicion and warrants. This means that yes, some crimes do go unsolved that might be solved otherwise if police, or the state in general, had unlimited powers of search. It is a trade-off.
It's kind of like how we probably shouldn't arrest people without legal residency when they show up at the police station to report a serious crime. Yes, they're violating the terms of their visa, but ensuring people in that position continue to report even more serious crimes is probably more important.
If a DNA sample is taken from an assault victim, how is the DNA from the victim (technically) distinguished from that of perpetrator? Why isn't the readout an average of perpetrator and victim? Of course the perpetrator's readout should be saved but not the victim's.
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.
Speculating here, but presumably the victim is willing and able to supply their own DNA as an elimination sample. Whatever DNA is left over gets run through a database, and possibly matched with an identity. If the identity comes with a photo, the victim may well be able to verify whether that photo is that of their attacker.
DNA samples would have been taken from victim directly, for comparison. I guess samples and records also include location of sample collection (hair, skin, mouth, etc), time, date, circumstance, etc.
I assume that police departments will retain DNA from every sample they can get their hands on, just like fingerprints. You're in a DB at that point, and it's useful data (demonstrably). I'd be surprised if many police departments have a privacy policy, much less comply with it, regarding your rights after a DNA sample is taken, relative the auspices under which they collected it. Assume the worst if you're at all worried about your DNA being on file somewhere.
I guess I could have been more clear. My question is about the lab side of things. Indefinite and indiscriminate data retention is definitely a problem although a different one.
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.
Do you think that people that have given their DNA for a rape-kit or some other reason would think twice about later committing a property crime, knowing that info was put into a database that could be used against them indefinitely?
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.
You never know what will be illegal later. Especially when you are in a vulnerable class (i.e. already a target), you can be fairly certain you will be found already "guilty" of something once someone powerful enough starts to dislike you. As such, providing such things and cooperating with the police is essentially assisting your own oppression. It's a stupid idea, regardless of your own conscience.
You did not answer the questions though. Answer whether you think if people will decline a rape kit exam, knowing the DNA from that could be used against them in the future. I.e. crimes or whatever circumstances that have not happened yet.
That sounds a lot like, "If you don't have anything to hide, why do you need privacy?" I'm not trying to put words in your mouth (feel free to clarify if you feel its needed), but I feel like I hear the kind of thing you're saying fairly often.
"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].
There's nothing to argue - you definitely can be compelled to provide self-incriminating evidence including blood samples; the fifth amendment exemption is solely about actual testimony.
Right: you can be compelled to give blood, for example. But the fourth should apply.
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.
I believe that they are fully distinguished already; taking over your accounts without the need to actively testify seems comparable to taking the contents of your safe or contents of your private correspondence or contents of your storage box at someone else's place - clearly permissible if (but only if) there's a warrant for that.
In this case it "worked" but what about the false positives, the cases where it didn't work. This is why we have rules against illegal searches and the right to remain silent.
That's such a privileged point of view. Do you not see how minorities will suffer from being exposed, unable to hide? Human society is not ready for your idea.
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.
The cynic in me says they DGAF the message this sends because rapes are hard to get a conviction for so they'd rather not have the cases be opened in the first place because it makes their stats look better.
Seems like as I get older I find my self being correct much more often than I want to be.
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.
This is true of any large organization with sufficiently diffuse responsibility. The catholic church, the bureaucracies of the USSR or Roman empire, DuPont, etc. they all do it.
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.
It is laziness not malice. You have 90 cases today with a 15% chance of conviction and 10 lesser crimes with 80% conviction rate. You can only process 40 per day. Which ones will you pick?
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]
Headlines like your [6], "Ignoring rape complaints: When police fail to protect and serve," are only scratching the surface when you consider cases like Warren[9]. Women called 911 twice during a home invasion, assistance never came. Instead they were raped for 14 hours.
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].
Looking up prior convictions seems necessary to establishing the credibility of someone filing a police report. You shouldn't be able to use the police to resolve crimes against you, yet expect yourself immune to the same legal system in which you seek benefit.
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.
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?