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1   Ceffer   2018 Apr 27, 11:03am  

Nothing worse than being ratted out by your own boogers.
2   tovarichpeter   2018 Apr 27, 11:19am  

Instead of unsustainable police pensions, we should be funding more DNA testing. DNA does a much better job of catching the guilty and freeing the innocent and identifying the forgotten than cops and lawyers. I certainly have no objection if my DNA catches a rapist or a serial killer.


https://www.theatlantic.com/sponsored/i-am-evidence/righteous-victims/1841//?&utm_source=TL_ATL_O_1841_1&camp=N286407.117907THEATLANTICMONTHLY%7CMKL%7CPID_218745164
3   NDrLoR   2018 Apr 27, 1:15pm  

No normal person would object. Of course, this is California.
4   Patrick   2018 Apr 27, 1:22pm  

More details from http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article209913514.html :

Paul Holes, a retired investigator with the Contra Costa County District Attorney's Office, confirmed Friday that he used "open-source" site GEDmatch to help law enforcement make the DNA connection.

The investigation was conducted over a long period of time as officials in Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert's office and crime lab explored online family trees that appeared to match DNA samples from the East Area Rapist's crimes, Grippi said. They then followed clues to individuals in the family trees to determine whether they were potential suspects.

The process finally came to fruition last Thursday, when the investigation focused on the possibility that DeAngelo might be a suspect, a suspicion bolstered by the fact that he had lived in areas where the attacks occurred and was in the right age range, Grippi said.


That's all fine, except that DNA could also be used to identify and punish citizens who vote for the "wrong" candidate, as well as their relatives.
5   SunnyvaleCA   2018 Apr 27, 1:42pm  

I used to laugh when Facebook users post while on vacation ... and then their house is burgled because the thief knows nobody is home. That's just self-inflicted stupidity.

However, the DNA case is an example of using a "social" website in which the perpetrator wasn't even participating. Can we assume, too, that insurance companies are putting together lists of people with genetically inherited diseases?

There are plenty of other examples. How many people who don't use Facebook have had a friend/colleague/family post their photo and name the face. Sure, the DMV has photos, but now you are known to marketers, advertisers, salespeople, and other kinds of thieves throughout the world.
6   NDrLoR   2018 Apr 27, 4:00pm  

Especially gratifying since I expect by this late date he thought he was home free. However, it must have been in the back of his mind after DNA came along that he knew he left samples along the way which would some day be traced to him--he wasn't as smart as he thought he was. Hope he gets death, but in California he'll die of older age before that--I don't think anyone has been executed in California for 30 years.
7   Strategist   2018 Apr 27, 6:28pm  

If everyone was required to have their DNA results stored in a database accessible only to the FBI, crime would drop like a rock. It would be easy to catch criminals who leave a trace of their DNA at a crime scene, because we would know right away whodunnit. Those even thinking of committing a crime would think twice as the chances of getting caught will increase sharply. Rapes, murders, child molestations would decrease the most as DNA is almost always left in these crimes.
8   Sunnyvale94087   2018 Apr 27, 7:01pm  

Strategist says
If everyone was required to have their DNA results stored in a database accessible only to the FBI, crime would drop like a rock.


Are you sure the FBI is trustworthy? The FBI never leaks information? (Queue video of James Comey: I leaked on purpose to further my political agenda.)

Aren't most murders and rapes committed by people who know the victim? Their DNA is likely to be at the crime scene already.
9   Strategist   2018 Apr 27, 7:26pm  

pwagner says
Strategist says
If everyone was required to have their DNA results stored in a database accessible only to the FBI, crime would drop like a rock.


Are you sure the FBI is trustworthy? The FBI never leaks information? (Queue video of James Comey: I leaked on purpose to further my political agenda.)

We can have checks and balances to safeguard the information. And what good is the DNA database to the FBI other than fighting crime.

pwagner says

Aren't most murders and rapes committed by people who know the victim? Their DNA is likely to be at the crime scene already.

The rest of the rapes and murders are not known to the victim.
Making it easier to catch criminals with DNA will simply dissuade criminals from committing crime in the first place. It will also prevent innocent people from being convicted. So many get released when DNA proves they did not do it.
Crime rates would drop. The need for law enforcement would go down. The court costs to convict criminals would drop. The high cost of incarceration would drop too. We would save billions in addition to preventing crimes and preventing the innocent from getting convicted.
There is no reason not to have such a database. Sure, everyone is concerned about their privacy, but privacy is a cultural need which can change over time. It's just a matter of time before DNA databases become the norm.
10   monkframe   2018 Apr 27, 8:53pm  

"Sure, everyone is concerned about their privacy, but privacy is a cultural need which can change over time. It's just a matter of time before DNA databases become the norm."
And it's way too late to worry about it. Evidence is evidence, and this insane person was caught because of improved evidence-gathering. Kudos to the cop who thought of it.
11   NDrLoR   2018 May 10, 8:38am  

Feux Follets says
Similar questions have been raised in the past about other serial offenders, killers whose innocuous and even virtuous jobs seemed to belie the horrors they committed while hiding behind a veneer of respectability.
Feux Follets says
— Top 3 Skilled Serial-Killer Occupations: 1. Aircraft machinist/assembler
Randy Kraft, born in 1945 into an upper middle class family, began his life of crime with the kidnapping and molestation of a 13 year old boy in 1973, the youngster escaped but didn't report the incident due to embarrassment--he testified as an adult during Kraft's trial in 1991. Beginning in 1974 and until caught during a routine traffic stop in 1983, Kraft would offer rides to young male hitchhikers on the California and Oregon freeways and in one instance in rural Michigan while at a computer conference, offer them drugs laced with sedatives, then when helpless be taken to remote locations where he would torture them for hours before dispatching them with a knife. Sometimes he would just throw their body out onto one of the California freeways onto which he covered hundreds of miles in always rented cars which made his capture so difficult due to lack of evidence. In Vietnam Kraft was an expert at airplane maintenance, then after the service worked in the then new computer industry with great skill and was always well-liked among his co-workers.

Feux Follets says
many killers use their employment as a pretext to acquire vulnerable victims
In an earlier era, Albert Fish (1870-1936) began his career as a sexual sadist and cannibal after developing a taste for human flesh while serving in the Merchant Marines in China in 1899 during a time of famine when anyone under the age of 12 was in danger of being killed for food. He became a house painter which gave him access to residential interiors where he scoped out potential victims. His last victim was Grace Budd whom he met in 1928 when she was 12--his original target was Grace's older brother, but upon meeting him realized he was too large for him to overpower and he instantly fell in love with Grace when she came into the room. He lured her away to an empty house, tortured her for hours, then dismembered her body which he cooked and ate over several days. In true Uni-Bomber fashion, his ego got the best of him and he wrote a letter to her parents taunting them with descriptions of her agony. The authorities were able to use the stationery he found in a hotel to ultimately trace him down in 1932 and he was electrocuted in 1936.

I always wondered why particularly the 1970's saw the proliferation of these kinds of killings when they had existed to a small degree from back in the late 19th century with H. H. Holmes.
12   RWSGFY   2018 May 10, 9:04am  

P N Dr Lo R says
Especially gratifying since I expect by this late date he thought he was home free. However, it must have been in the back of his mind after DNA came along that he knew he left samples along the way which would some day be traced to him--he wasn't as smart as he thought he was. Hope he gets death, but in California he'll die of older age before that--I don't think anyone has been executed in California for 30 years.


Not 30 for sure. There was that fuck - Tookie Williams - who practically demanded to be pardoned but was denied by Governator on the basis of his alleged "redemption" looking more like "hollow promise". The shitbird had the gall to demand pardon without even apologizing to the victim's relatives. Of course all the usual Hollywood and Berkeleya types were screaming that a gentle, innocent man has been murdered by eeeevil state once the murderous fuck was finally sent to be Satan's sex toy.
13   RWSGFY   2018 May 10, 11:19am  

Strategist says
If everyone was required to have their DNA results stored in a database accessible only to the FBI, crime would drop like a rock. It would be easy to catch criminals who leave a trace of their DNA at a crime scene, because we would know right away whodunnit. Those even thinking of committing a crime would think twice as the chances of getting caught will increase sharply. Rapes, murders, child molestations would decrease the most as DNA is almost always left in these crimes.


Yeah, yeah and before that the magic bullet was was fingerprints. And before that it was photography. But somehow the crime is still around.

Now, let's pause and think about it: is it hard to plant your face (on CCTV tape) at the crime scene were you wasn't present? Almost impossible. Is it possible to plant your fingerprints? Doable, by mighty hard and impractical. How about DNA? Easy-peasy: a strand of hair, a used paper cup or napkin gets the job done.

I say, if the government wants my DNA so badly than whoever is the President at that time can suck my dick for it. On live TV. That's the only way I'm giving it to them.
14   NuttBoxer   2018 May 10, 1:29pm  

tovarichpeter says
Instead of unsustainable police pensions, we should be funding more DNA testing. DNA does a much better job of catching the guilty and freeing the innocent and identifying the forgotten than cops and lawyers. I certainly have no objection if my DNA catches a rapist or a serial killer.


DNA is not full-proof by any means. And if you're talking about the technology that only recently been replaced, it's worse. I worked on a team that was developing next-gen sequencing SW for forensics, and will always remember two things. First thing is we had a group discussion one day where we identified an allele I believe(this is about 4 years back), that could be either male or female, and our solution wasn't granular enough to distinguish which. Our Next Gen solution. The other was that the SW engineering lead for the project said he never wanted his DNA anywhere near this, or any forensics system.
15   NDrLoR   2018 May 10, 5:03pm  

Satoshi_Nakamoto says
That's the only way I'm giving it to them.
Not if they collect your trash which is perfectly legal, or collect your utensils at a restaurant.
16   RWSGFY   2018 May 10, 5:10pm  

P N Dr Lo R says
Satoshi_Nakamoto says
That's the only way I'm giving it to them.
Not if they collect your trash which is perfectly legal, or collect your utensils at a restaurant.


But it won't be me giving it to them voluntarily - it would be them stealing it. Also the burden of proof that the DNA is really mine will be on the fuckers if it ever comes up in court.
17   NDrLoR   2018 May 10, 8:42pm  

Satoshi_Nakamoto says
it would be them stealing it.
Something that is abandoned in the public domain, such as spittle, can hardly be considered stolen.

Satoshi_Nakamoto says
Also the burden of proof that the DNA is really mine will be on the fuckers if it ever comes up in court.
Well of course it will be--that's what the forensic people do, it's not something the average layman has expertise in.
18   just_passing_through   2018 May 10, 9:16pm  

NuttBoxer says
DNA is not full-proof by any means. And if you're talking about the technology that only recently been replaced, it's worse. I worked on a team that was developing next-gen sequencing SW for forensics, and will always remember two things. First thing is we had a group discussion one day where we identified an allele I believe(this is about 4 years back), that could be either male or female, and our solution wasn't granular enough to distinguish which. Our Next Gen solution. The other was that the SW engineering lead for the project said he never wanted his DNA anywhere near this, or any forensics system.


Cool I did too! You must be talking about ydna SNPs. Yeah, parts of the y-chromosome are hard to distinguish from X. The old (still existing) tech uses STRs (short tandem repeats; repetitive non-coding sequences not within genes) and just identifies people based on the length of the repeats in about a dozen areas of the genome. NGS will allow one to use SNPs which will be way better.

Big problems come from:

1. Mixtures. Marketing really really really wanted us to distinguish say 7 individuals who all contributed to the same semen stain or similar mixtures., and I told them that's science fiction and it still is. Didn't go over well. Gang rapes get thrown out of court because of this.
2. Using the old technology (STRs) to fish people out of CODIS based on family members. Similar to how that serial killer was caught in CA recently. With STRs it's not ethical based on the statistical likelihood of making a false match (innocent) and railroading them in court. It's really only ethically used if they match the suspect AFTER they are a suspect for some other evidence and they don't really need a database for that. Something like 1:few thousand vs. 1: several billion probability difference in chance of making that mistake. Using sets of forensics SNPs (identity, ancestry, phenotypic) you CAN mine a database ethically. There is way more power in SNPs.
19   just_passing_through   2018 May 10, 9:21pm  

Strategist says
leave a trace of their DNA at a crime scene


Every couple of minutes a typical human sheds enough skin cells to cover a football field. Someday the skynet AI robots will have an easy way to find and exterminate us. We cannot hide!
20   just_passing_through   2018 May 10, 9:39pm  

WarrenTheApe says
They don't need to do that. They just need to harass people who are registered under a particular party affiliation.




They know who you are based on your online activity already using machine learning. DNA cannot be used to qualify an act of voting.
21   RWSGFY   2018 May 11, 4:12pm  

P N Dr Lo R says
Satoshi_Nakamoto says
it would be them stealing it.
Something that is abandoned in the public domain, such as spittle, can hardly be considered stolen.

Satoshi_Nakamoto says
Also the burden of proof that the DNA is really mine will be on the fuckers if it ever comes up in court.
Well of course it will be--that's what the forensic people do, it's not something the average layman has expertise in.


You completely missed the point: gathering DNA of the whole population via dumpster-diving for used condoms is not practical and very unreliable way to have a decent DNA database. So yeas, while it theoretically possible to get someone's used paper cup and summon the guy who collected it to testify in court that it was indeed the cup discarded by that person - this shit won't scale to make the wet dream "catching random criminals using DNA databases" come true. This is before the scientific challenges described in this very thread.
22   NDrLoR   2018 May 11, 7:09pm  

Satoshi_Nakamoto says
gathering DNA of the whole population
No, I meant just in an individual situation where a suspect already exists. The whole population would be idiotic.
23   Strategist   2018 May 11, 8:46pm  

Relax guys. Lets look at this scenario:
1. Every baby born will have it's DNA recorded.
2. Every person that enters the country will have their DNA recorded.
3. Every person in the country will be on camera wherever they go with facial recognition, with their DNA matched.

Crime will be obsolete, because law enforcement will always know whodunnit, and where they are. Potential criminals would not even bother to commit a crime.
Why is the above bad?
24   just_passing_through   2018 May 11, 9:07pm  

Yes, strat #1 is coming. It's getting cheap to sequence a genome and health care orgs are staring to opt in. This news is 5 days old:

https://www.geisinger.org/about-geisinger/news-and-media/news-releases/2018/05/07/12/18/dna-sequencing-to-become-part-of-geisingers-routine-clinical-care

I've read similar stuff about sequencing babies. Basically it's about to become ubiquitous. Lobby congress to strengthen and expand on the GINA legislation passed a decade ago that the Republicans were trying to roll back recently.
25   Strategist   2018 May 11, 9:25pm  

just_passing_through says
Yes, strat #1 is coming. It's getting cheap to sequence a genome and health care orgs are staring to opt in. This news is 5 days old:

https://www.geisinger.org/about-geisinger/news-and-media/news-releases/2018/05/07/12/18/dna-sequencing-to-become-part-of-geisingers-routine-clinical-care

I've read similar stuff about sequencing babies. Basically it's about to become ubiquitous. Lobby congress to strengthen and expand on the GINA legislation passed a decade ago that the Republicans were trying to roll back recently.


It's just a matter of time. The issue is privacy vs safety. Our privacy has been compromised since the camera was invented, but it helped catch criminals, and today no one cares about cameras in public areas like 7-11. Facial recognition and DNA, and technology to pinpoint where every person is, is just a matter of time. Eventually no one will care, because your privacy is in a computer that no one cares about unless a crime was committed.
26   NDrLoR   2018 May 12, 8:36am  

Strategist says
1. Every baby born will have it's DNA recorded.
They already have their foot prints.
27   NDrLoR   2018 May 12, 9:26am  

Strategist says
1. Every baby born will have it's DNA recorded.
Will also save lots of money for paternity tests. The way some people sleep around today, it would prevent some gal from claiming No. 3 was the father when it was really No. 5.
28   RWSGFY   2018 May 12, 9:53am  

P N Dr Lo R says
Strategist says
1. Every baby born will have it's DNA recorded.
Will also save lots of money for paternity tests. The way some people sleep around today, it would prevent some gal from claiming No. 3 was the father when it was really No. 5.


Tell this to that guy who was found to be liable for child support for a kid whom a DNA test shown to be not the guy's biological son.
29   Strategist   2018 May 12, 10:52am  

Satoshi_Nakamoto says
P N Dr Lo R says
Strategist says
1. Every baby born will have it's DNA recorded.
Will also save lots of money for paternity tests. The way some people sleep around today, it would prevent some gal from claiming No. 3 was the father when it was really No. 5.


Tell this to that guy who was found to be liable for child support for a kid whom a DNA test shown to be not the guy's biological son.


Poor guy. He was a victim of a very stupid and unjust law.
No one should mind eliminating these laws.
30   NuttBoxer   2018 May 14, 11:37am  

just_passing_through says
2. Using the old technology (STRs) to fish people out of CODIS based on family members. Similar to how that serial killer was caught in CA recently. With STRs it's not ethical based on the statistical likelihood of making a false match (innocent) and railroading them in court. It's really only ethically used if they match the suspect AFTER they are a suspect for some other evidence and they don't really need a database for that. Something like 1:few thousand vs. 1: several billion probability difference in chance of making that mistake. Using sets of forensics SNPs (identity, ancestry, phenotypic) you CAN mine a database ethically. There is way more power in SNPs.


Man, you just brought back a ton of memories with that vocab. Something else I think we learned during the project, which is more common knowledge, but very important to remember with any lab evidence. The labs are paid for convictions, not acquittals. Let me repeat that. The people responsible for handling the DNA evidence have a financial incentive to find you guilty whether you did it or not!
31   NuttBoxer   2018 May 14, 11:43am  

Strategist says
Crime will be obsolete, because law enforcement will always know whodunnit, and where they are. Potential criminals would not even bother to commit a crime.
Why is the above bad?


Because the evidence is not always conclusive, and sometime flat out wrong. When we were developing our product to replace the DNA tech that has been around since the 70's, it was very apparent we still had a LONG way to go before this would be consistently accurate, reliable tech. Not just my company(think big), but any company in the field. The industry expert we had consulting on our team would be asked questions by me during my testing, and her response would often be "I don't know, no one has ever done this before."
32   RWSGFY   2018 May 14, 11:57am  

NuttBoxer says
The people responsible for handling the DNA evidence have a financial incentive to find you guilty whether you did it or not!


More reasons to guard you DNA and not willingly give it anyone unless absolutely neccessary. Definitely not to some "ancestry" sites for "fun".
33   NuttBoxer   2018 May 15, 11:36am  

Hassan_Rouhani says
Definitely not to some "ancestry" sites for "fun".


Especially when it's recently come out that ancestry sites are sharing DNA with police.

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