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ICE Collected Nearly 1M People's DNA Last Year–Including Young Children

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Re: ICE Collected Nearly 1M People's DNA Last Year–Including Young Children

#31

Post by assimpleaspossi »

alistairSH wrote: post #26
voidUpdate wrote: post #5

IF there was a secure and trustable way that a trusted government could retain DNA information, then I feel like people having a DNA test at birth or on becoming a citizen could be useful, both medically ("your sample indicates you may have a higher risk of dementia") and from a policing standpoint ("we found DNA on this woman's clothes and immediately matched it to this man who hasn't committed a crime before" or "w…

How close does a DNA "match" have to be to get somebody tossed in jail? Do they actually require 100%, or is a "match" something less? What's the false-positive rate? Would a non-twin sibling's DNA "match"? Yes, I'm aware that, in theory, DNA is unique. As is the theory for finger-prints. But, I'm also aware that theory is rarely reality.

Remember that one still needs proof. My DNA on a victim's clothes does not mean I committed the crime.

Re: ICE Collected Nearly 1M People's DNA Last Year–Including Young Children

#32

Post by voidUpdate »

alistairSH wrote: post #26
voidUpdate wrote: post #5

IF there was a secure and trustable way that a trusted government could retain DNA information, then I feel like people having a DNA test at birth or on becoming a citizen could be useful, both medically ("your sample indicates you may have a higher risk of dementia") and from a policing standpoint ("we found DNA on this woman's clothes and immediately matched it to this man who hasn't committed a crime before" or "w…

How close does a DNA "match" have to be to get somebody tossed in jail? Do they actually require 100%, or is a "match" something less? What's the false-positive rate? Would a non-twin sibling's DNA "match"? Yes, I'm aware that, in theory, DNA is unique. As is the theory for finger-prints. But, I'm also aware that theory is rarely reality.

According to wikipedia, "the theoretical risk of a coincidental match is 1 in 100 billion (100,000,000,000) although the practical risk is actually 1 in 1,000 because monozygotic twins are 0.2% of the human population", so it looks like some twins will cause an issue for DNA-based convictions, but I think a non-twin sibling is probably diverse enough? I have different eye colour, ears, food intolerances to my brothers, so I feel like our DNA is pretty different ("pretty" on a scale of human to human comparisons, since 99.9% of DNA is identical between humans or something like that).

I'd argue that while a DNA match could be a very good starting point for a conviction, other evidence should also be presented, for the reasons you suggest. For example, there is the case of the Phantom of Heillbron (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_of_Heilbronn), where European police found DNA evidence of a woman being at many diverse crime scenes, but it turned out the cotton swabs used for testing were contaminated by at worker at the factory (The swabs weren't certified for police work)

Re: ICE Collected Nearly 1M People's DNA Last Year–Including Young Children

#33

Post by tremon »

voidUpdate wrote: post #5

IF there was a secure and trustable way that a trusted government could retain DNA information, then I feel like people having a DNA test at birth or on becoming a citizen could be useful, both medically ("your sample indicates you may have a higher risk of dementia") and from a policing standpoint ("we found DNA on this woman's clothes and immediately matched it to this man who hasn't committed a crime before" or "w…

> IF there was a secure and trustable way that a trusted government could retain DNA information

How long does that government need to stay trusted and secure? For the lifetime of the born person only, or should that requirement also extend to the offspring of said person? Can you point to any current government that has been consistently trusted and secure for the past 100 years? How much are you willing to risk on the theory that a government (your choice, pick one) will stay trusted and secure for the next 100 years?

Re: ICE Collected Nearly 1M People's DNA Last Year–Including Young Children

#34

Post by kelnos »

voidUpdate wrote: post #5

IF there was a secure and trustable way that a trusted government could retain DNA information, then I feel like people having a DNA test at birth or on becoming a citizen could be useful, both medically ("your sample indicates you may have a higher risk of dementia") and from a policing standpoint ("we found DNA on this woman's clothes and immediately matched it to this man who hasn't committed a crime before" or "w…

Your argument boils down to "if people were 100% just, fair, and good, we could do this", so I'm not sure what the point of it is.

(Entertainingly, if people were 100% just, fair, and good, we wouldn't need this database... or police or militaries for that matter.)

At any rate, even if I could ensure, in perpetuity, that my DNA would not be used inappropriately (where I get to decide what that means), I would still not want it collected and database'd. People deserve to have privacy in their bodies.

Re: ICE Collected Nearly 1M People's DNA Last Year–Including Young Children

#35

Post by estearum »

assimpleaspossi wrote: post #31
alistairSH wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How close does a DNA "match" have to be to get somebody tossed in jail? Do they actually require 100%, or is a "match" something less? What's the false-positive rate? Would a non-twin sibling's DNA "match"? Yes, I'm aware that, in theory, DNA is unique. As is the theory for finger-prints. But, I'm also aware that theory is rarely reality.

Remember that one still needs proof. My DNA on a victim's clothes does not mean I committed the crime.

In principle.

In reality, juries often hold evidence like this (and also-very-unreliable eye witness testimony) in high regard, based on how it's positioned into the narrative.

Re: ICE Collected Nearly 1M People's DNA Last Year–Including Young Children

#36

Post by kelnos »

voidUpdate wrote: post #14
sidewndr46 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are several European countries that do this from what I understand

Slightly biased because I'm a european, but I think a european country is more likely to be trust-able with a country-wide DNA database. Only slightly more though, I still wouldn't trust them to actually do it right

Even if the government remains perpetually trustworthy (good luck with that), it's inevitable that the database will be hacked by a bad actor, if the information is valuable.

Re: ICE Collected Nearly 1M People's DNA Last Year–Including Young Children

#38

Post by jvanderbot »

tremon wrote: post #33
voidUpdate wrote: post #5

IF there was a secure and trustable way that a trusted government could retain DNA information, then I feel like people having a DNA test at birth or on becoming a citizen could be useful, both medically ("your sample indicates you may have a higher risk of dementia") and from a policing standpoint ("we found DNA on this woman's clothes and immediately matched it to this man who hasn't committed a crime before" or "w…

> IF there was a secure and trustable way that a trusted government could retain DNA information How long does that government need to stay trusted and secure? For the lifetime of the born person only, or should that requirement also extend to the offspring of said person? Can you point to any current government that has been consistently trusted and secure for the past 100 years? How much are you willing to risk on…

Right, and that's why it's preposterous to even imagine this happening. In no time you'd have an administration that was providing that DNA evidence to defense contractors for Top Secret clearance, background checks, etc.

"We're sorry your job application was rejected because we found you were 4% less maximally conscientious than the median applicant"

I've had job applications (albeit in secured projects) rejected for similarly vague bullshit ("Insufficiently candid")

Re: ICE Collected Nearly 1M People's DNA Last Year–Including Young Children

#39

Post by [deleted] »

jackmott42 wrote: post #16
kardianos wrote: post #13

They don't mention this, but one major reason for this is to validate claims of family units and prevent trafficking. This is, I suspect, a good thing. The article never states any downsides, other then nebulous claims. Yes, DNA is like finger printing someone, which is routinely done for arrests, but has the benefit of assisting in claims of family relations, which is at the heart of many ICE concerns.

[flagged]

[deleted]

Re: ICE Collected Nearly 1M People's DNA Last Year–Including Young Children

#40

Post by alistairSH »

assimpleaspossi wrote: post #31
alistairSH wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How close does a DNA "match" have to be to get somebody tossed in jail? Do they actually require 100%, or is a "match" something less? What's the false-positive rate? Would a non-twin sibling's DNA "match"? Yes, I'm aware that, in theory, DNA is unique. As is the theory for finger-prints. But, I'm also aware that theory is rarely reality.

Remember that one still needs proof. My DNA on a victim's clothes does not mean I committed the crime.

Are you willing to trust 12 random schmoes to make that call correctly? Especially in the face of an overzealous prosecutor?
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