View Full Forums : Should the Government Be Cataloging Its Citizens' DNA?


Tudamorf
05-14-2007, 05:56 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/14/nyregion/14dna.html<b>New York Plan for DNA Data in Most Crimes</b>

Gov. Eliot Spitzer is proposing a major expansion of New York’s database of DNA samples to include people convicted of most crimes, while making it easier for prisoners to use DNA to try to establish their innocence.

Currently, New York State collects DNA from those convicted of about half of all crimes, typically the most serious. The governor’s proposal would order DNA taken from those found guilty of any misdemeanor, including minor drug offenses, harassment or unauthorized use of a credit card, according to a draft of his bill. It would not cover offenses considered violations, like disorderly conduct.

In expanding its database to include all felonies and misdemeanors, New York would be nearly alone, although a handful of states collect DNA from some defendants upon arrest, even before conviction. Mr. Spitzer is also seeking mandatory sampling of all prisoners in the state, as well as all of those on parole, on probation or registered as sex offenders.

Some civil liberties groups oppose broader collection of DNA samples, out of concerns about how they might be used beyond the justice system. “Because DNA, unlike fingerprints, provides an enormous amount of personal information, burgeoning government DNA databases pose a serious threat to privacy,” said Christopher Dunn, associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “They must include strict protections to assure that DNA is collected and used only for legitimate law enforcement purposes, such as exonerating the innocent or convicting the guilty.”

New York has had a DNA database since 2000. Originally, it included samples from people convicted of sex offenses and only certain felonies. But it has been expanded twice in the last three years to include all felonies and some misdemeanors, aides to the governor said.In addition to privacy concerns, I'd be worried about the risk of tampering. Since juries are likely to see DNA evidence as a smoking gun, it increases the chance of tampering by police and third parties.

Panamah
05-14-2007, 06:20 PM
I think collecting DNA and storing it from convicted felonists would be ok. Misdemeanors... no way.

BTW: The methods they use for identifying people is different from how they identify what diseases people are likely to have. If they're storing the ID fingerprints (which comes from junk DNA if I recall correctly) of people it isn't likely they're storing the entire genome map of an individual. So I wouldn't be concerned about it being used for some other purpose, like medical discrimination.

I just finished reading a book about DNA and they described how forensic DNA work is done, versus how DNA is used for identifying diseases, etc.

Also, if police are going to implant DNA evidence, they've got to have your DNA in order to do it, just having your alleles in a database isn't going to help them. Certainly nothing stops them from doing that now.

Tudamorf
05-14-2007, 06:28 PM
Also, if police are going to implant DNA evidence, they've got to have your DNA in order to do it, just having your alleles in a database isn't going to help them. Certainly nothing stops them from doing that now.But the DNA database makes it far more likely that someone else will be suspected. Without the database, the police will have to have a separate and plausible reason for suspecting someone else.

Anka
05-14-2007, 06:33 PM
making it easier for prisoners to use DNA to try to establish their innocence.

They're implementing an expensive database of personal information to lower the conviction rate? I wish they would just be honest and say that they want to make arrests based on finding DNA in that database.

MadroneDorf
05-14-2007, 06:56 PM
Personally, I'd have no problem with everyone having their DNA in a database.

That wont happen though, so I have no problem with all criminals getting their DNA in database either.

Fyyr Lu'Storm
05-15-2007, 06:29 AM
Have a friend.

A two striker.

His solution if he were ever to do another felony would be to collect hair clippings from the trash of a beauty solon or barbershop(a couple dozen or so). And sprinkle them at any crime scene.

I'm sure one could think of novel ways of obtaining epithelials and sperm cells if one were to think about it.

Tinsi
05-15-2007, 08:49 AM
He needs to update his plan, afaik you'll need the hairSACK for dna, a clipping won't do. :)

Thicket Tundrabog
05-15-2007, 10:32 AM
I'm sure there are laws and limitations on fingerprint data. Scratch out the word 'fingerprint' and replace it with 'DNA'. If you don't do anything else, like expanding the criteria, then there shouldn't be a problem.

Klath
05-15-2007, 10:46 AM
I'm sure one could think of novel ways of obtaining epithelials and sperm cells if one were to think about it.
If the prospect of spending hours at the local gloryhole "collecting samples" doesn't deter him from committing future felonies, nothing will. On the up side, at least it will prepare him for prison life.

Panamah
05-15-2007, 11:06 AM
LOL! Good one.

And Tinsi... sssh! We need to keep the criminals dumb. Don't go tell them HOW to commit the crime. Sheesh!

Tinsi
05-15-2007, 01:30 PM
And Tinsi... sssh! We need to keep the criminals dumb. Don't go tell them HOW to commit the crime. Sheesh!

Long as you practically wrap lethal weapons in the flag, tie a bow on it and give them to them for christmas, I think it's safe to say that my contributions won't amount to much ;)

Tudamorf
05-15-2007, 03:30 PM
Long as you practically wrap lethal weapons in the flag, tie a bow on it and give them to them for christmas, I think it's safe to say that my contributions won't amount to much ;)Americans don't care about preventing crimes so much as catching the criminals and executing them.

Tudamorf
05-15-2007, 03:32 PM
I'm sure there are laws and limitations on fingerprint data. Scratch out the word 'fingerprint' and replace it with 'DNA'.It's a lot easier to obtain and plant DNA than to obtain and plant fingerprints. The standards should NOT be the same.

Anka
05-15-2007, 05:11 PM
It's a lot easier to obtain and plant DNA than to obtain and plant fingerprints. The standards should NOT be the same.

Presumably you don't need to plant DNA. The lab report just needs to come back with a chosen name.

Palarran
05-15-2007, 05:51 PM
I wonder if it would be possible to calculate and store some type of "hash" of someone's DNA rather than the DNA itself (or the information that it encodes). Password based authentication systems--including vBulletin logins--typically do this.

When you set a password, a hash of that password is calculated and stored. Then, when you enter your password, rather than simply comparing it to a stored copy of the password, the hash of the password you entered is calculated and then compared to the stored hash. The system is designed such that it is easy to calculate the hash of a password, but very difficult to recover the original password from the hash. That way, the hash can be used to _verify_ that someone knows the password, while providing very little useful information about the password itself.

A one-way function serves a similar purpose, except that there is typically a 1:1 mapping between the input and output of the function--there is no chance of hash "collisions", where two different inputs result in the same hash. An example of a one-way function might be the multiplication of prime numbers. It's easy to compute that 11 x 13 = 143, but it takes much more effort to start with 143 and find the prime factors 11 and 13. Yet if you ask two people to pick any two primes and multiply them together, and both of them say that the product is 143, you can be 100% certain (barring arithmetic errors and such!) that both of them started with the same primes.

Tudamorf
05-15-2007, 05:56 PM
Presumably you don't need to plant DNA. The lab report just needs to come back with a chosen name.You're talking about internal planting. I'm talking about external planting. Both are risks, however.

Tudamorf
05-15-2007, 05:58 PM
I wonder if it would be possible to calculate and store some type of "hash" of someone's DNA rather than the DNA itself (or the information that it encodes).That's a very interesting suggestion. But it presupposes that the DNA can be expressed mathematically in an error-free way, which I doubt, given the current state of testing at least.

Anka
05-15-2007, 09:39 PM
I wonder if it would be possible to calculate and store some type of "hash" of someone's DNA rather than the DNA itself (or the information that it encodes). Password based authentication systems--including vBulletin logins--typically do this.

In our worst case situation, the authorities will be the same people accessing and storing the information. They could find a way to falsify the data no matter how the database is used (unless the database is governed by a third party).

Panamah
05-16-2007, 01:17 PM
I want to read this when I have time: http://www.scientific.org/tutorials/articles/riley/riley.html

It is about forensic DNA testing.