patrick.net

Big brother is here.

I was thinking about this after hearing a "23 and Me" ad. It got me wondering if these people realize that they might be abandoning their DNA. Kind of like when the police suspect someone and they follow him around until he throws out his coffee cup... and they dig it out of the trash and run a DNA test. Except, we're making it even easier. Then, I started thinking about if there are any rights protecting people who give up their DNA (for entertainment purposes)... I was pretty shocked to find that the police are using these databases without restriction. So now they don't even need a warrant to get your DNA if you give it up to one of these sites. Imagine you cut your finger in a place right near where someone else murders someone later that day... You could end up getting investigated, or worse falsely arrested.... or worse falsely convicted based on the DNA you innocently sent off to Ancestry.com 3 years ago... that was used as proof of guilt of a crime you didn't commit. And they are using it for familial DNA searches, too. That's crazy!

"So it is with considerable dismay that I read the Electronic Frontier Foundation's report which details how Ancestry.com turned over client genetic test results to police in Idaho without requiring a warrant. Reopening a 20-year old rape and murder case, the police sent a semen sample to be scanned and compared to results in Ancestry.com's Sorenson Database. EFF reports:

Sorenson found 41 potential familial matches, one of which matched on 34 out of 35 alleles—a very close match that would generally indicate a close familial relationship. The cops then asked, not only for the “protected” name associated with that profile, but also for all “all information including full names, date of births, date and other information pertaining to the original donor to the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy project.”

As it happens, familial genetic matching turned up a 62 year-old client who didn't fit the murderer's profile, but the police thought it could fit his son 36 year-old soon. The son was lured to Idaho where a warrant was issued requiring him to submit to genetic testing, partially on the grounds that as a filmmaker he had produced videos depicting murders. His DNA did not match."

http://reason.com/blog/2015/05/06/ancestrycom-hands-over-client-dna-test-r

I suppose this is next:

Next up in America’s privacy wars when it comes to law enforcement… baby DNA! If that sounds like an odd pairing to you then you might be in my somewhat older age group. Traditionally, hospitals have kept foot impressions of infants but beyond that there isn’t much in your average birth record beyond the name, weight, size and gender of the child. In recent years, however, hospitals across the country have taken to obtaining blood samples and doing DNA testing on infants in an effort to improve their long term health prospects. This unfortunately leads to the default libertarian question of what happens to the blood samples and DNA records after that? (AT&T News)"

http://hotair.com/archives/2016/05/15/should-we-be-storing-the-dna-of-newborns-indefinitely/

Clearly there are benefits to testing babies for genetic issues... as well as for paternity where there's a question... But this database concept is a little concerning. Talk about creating a police state. God help you if you happen to leave DNA near a place where someone else commits a crime.

Sounds like an indictment of ancestry.com and possibly the Mormon church project as well as the law enforcement rules.

YesYNot says

Sounds like an indictment of ancestry.com and possibly the Mormon church project as well as the law enforcement rules.

These things never start out with bad intentions. The technology has developed faster than the laws/rights. And that rarely turns out well. On the one hand, we all want to see the bad guy get caught... But Ancestry doesn't have to follow strict evidence collection rules... They aren't trained crime scene investigators. If the police are relying on this kind of data to solve crimes, I think you're going to have a lot of innocent people being hassled. And the worst part of all this is that we've been taught that DNA is infallible. Juries will make assumptions when DNA evidence is presented. I would make assumptions when DNA evidence is presented. But this practice now calls all that into question.

turtledove says

But the well-publicized success stories obscure the fact that familial DNA searches can generate more noise than signal. “Anyone who knows the science understands that there’s a high rate of false positives,” says Erin Murphy, a New York University law professor and the author of Inside the Cell: The Dark Side of Forensic DNA

The solution is simple. Every false positive results in a large fine levied against police pensions and paid to the person falsely accused and harassed. As long as there is a cost associated with subjecting innocent people to evasive procedures and interrogations, such actions will not be taken lightly. Right now there is no cost to police for putting you through the ringer so they always choose to do so regardless of how improbable it is that you did anything wrong.

Also, the state should have to pay the legal costs of all accused up front so that people can hire decent lawyers. The accused only pays the state back for these costs upon conviction by trial on all charges, not conviction by plea bargains or after charges are dropped, juries are hung, or juries vote not guilty.

turtledove says

Your Relatives DNA Could Turn You Into a Suspect

It will also get you on a no-fly list and a terrorist watch list. There may have been no reported incidents of this happening yet, but you know it has already occurred.

turtledove says

The grilling continued downtown until one of the three men—an FBI agent—told Usry he wanted to swab the inside of Usry’s cheek but wouldn’t explain his reason for doing so, though he emphasized that their warrant meant Usry could not refuse.

And now his DNA is permanently in multiple databases. He has no recurse to have this information removed, and any of his relatives can be falsely accused of crimes based on this information.

Eventually the state will simply require all children at birth to submit to genetic recording and fingerprinting. They'll market it as protecting children from predators.

Dan8267 says

Eventually the state will simply require all children at birth to submit to genetic recording and fingerprinting

That's already happening. We're testing newborns for genetic defects after they are born. Where does that blood sample go? I'm not saying that they are cataloguing it now, but it wouldn't be too difficult to start collecting those samples taken every day from every kid born in every hospital in every state in the country.

turtledove says

Except, we're making it even easier. Then, I started thinking about if there are any rights protecting people who give up their DNA (for entertainment purposes)... I was pretty shocked to find that the police are using these databases without restriction

Yeah, just like Facebook, minus the DNA part. People giving up personal info for "entertainment purposes" and making it super easy for law enforcement and federal agencies to track you without a warrant

Dan8267 says

Eventually the state will simply require all children at birth to submit to genetic recording and fingerprinting. They'll market it as protecting children from predators.

Haven't there been Hollywood movies peripherally related to this? People think it's entertainment, when it's really propaganda meant to desensitize us to the future.

MMR says

Yeah, just like Facebook, minus the DNA part. People giving up personal info for "entertainment purposes" and making it super easy for law enforcement and federal agencies to track you without a warrant

Yep. You're also providing free content at your own time and expense to a company in order for them to sell targeted advertising to you and your friends, and give them data to better market you. Anything you put in facebook goes on a database.

Big Data is King:

Today, campaigns realize they have to look elsewhere for their intelligence, which has caused a major change in how the political industry functions. In the past, an entire campaign’s data and infrastructure would go poof after Election Day. Now Civis and similar firms are building institutional memory with permanent information store­houses that track America’s 220 million–odd voters across their adult lives, noting everything from magazine subscriptions and student loans to voting history, marital status, Facebook ID, and Twitter handle. Power and clients flow to the firms that can build and maintain the best databases of people’s behavior over time.

I'm so embarrassed. My DNA showed I was 2 percent Obama, and the police just told me to go golf.

thunderlips11 says

noting everything from magazine subscriptions

Good God! So for our male patients who must provide a "sample" in the collection room prior to IVF... I'm being databased as a connoisseur of extremely varied porn? Of course, we have all types of patients. The "spermatorium" is an awkward experience. Just providing materials to get their minds off of how ridiculous it is to jerk off in a clinical setting (not that we care, but to the patient it's a new experience). So no good deed goes unpunished. According to some database, we're into every race and sexual preference imaginable. That's just B-E-A-utiful!

What bothers me more about this is the police abuse which is their MO. I.E. wear the person down and coerce a confession from them instead of doing honest work.

Look at the shooter in the gay club in Fla, the FBI was aiding that guy to set him up for arrest.

http://www.activistpost.com/2016/06/orlando-shooter-ties-to-the-fbi.html

thunderlips11 says

http://www.wired.com/2016/06/civis-election-polling-clinton-sanders-trump/

From article,

Polling is misrepresentative: An elderly white woman is 21 times more likely to answer a phone poll than a young Hispanic male.

An elderly white woman is likely to have a landline and no caller ID. Anyone under 50 probably uses just a smart phone and never answers a call from a number not in its address book.

When was the last time you answered a call from "unknown" or a phone number you didn't recognize?

This is also why phone call surveys have fewer people responding in general.

turtledove says

I'm not saying that they are cataloguing it now, but it wouldn't be too difficult to start collecting those samples taken every day from every kid born in every hospital in every state in the country.

The next obvious step is to query which genes are prevalent in arrestees, convicts, protesters, etc., and then to place anyone with these genes on a watch list. The watch list can be purchased by companies for hiring decisions. Eventually voting rights will be curtailed for people on the watch list.

They likely were using outdated DNA analysis techniques since NGS (Next Generation Sequencing) has yet to be widely adopted, although the transition is in progress. The old DNA techniques reached the limit of what they could do in the late 70's, and are about as good as shooting in the dark. Coupled with lab's being paid for convictions(conflict of interest), results are highly suspect.
I spent a few years working for an industry leader in DNA sequencing and analysis, the last year on a project for DNA forensics. I remember my lead saying about halfway through the project how he never wanted his DNA anywhere near any forensics labs. Even though our technology dug in to a level unheard of in the industry, I remember having a conversation about how we still weren't going deep enough to distinguish a certain marker as definitively male or female.

DNA evidence is no smoking gun.

I bet they can create fake DNA from the database, so they wont even need to steal your DNA to frame you for a crime.

So for example the CIA could frame a whisle blower in hiding by planting the fake dna on a false rape 'victim'.

In the future they will take down people like Assange and Snoden this way. Just one more tool really.

There are already machines that can "print" DNA to match a known sequence. Cost about $10K and can churn out whatever you can dream up - or steal!

Well, if I ever go off the rails, I'm going to bring some biohazard waste from my office and a couple of different packages of shredded human hair extensions.... and really make them work for it.