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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31811 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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Are there any good discussions on the ethics of using public genealogy databases to catch criminals? The idea of using a 23andMe or Ancestry.com database to test against DNA left at a crime scene went mainstream a few years ago when police used a public database to find and track the Golden State Killer. Now, police from Moscow, Idaho have done it again in tracking Bryan Kohberger, who is accused of killing four University of Idaho students:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/idaho-murder-suspect-arrest-genealogy-b2254498.html

I am a bit conflicted on how I feel about this. On the one hand, obviously the police should do everything in their power to catch murderers. But there is a certain amount of dystopian doom in being able to access such a database. The problem is you don't even need to have your DNA uploaded to the database for the cops to find you. A fourth or fifth cousin's DNA gives the police enough information to create a family tree and zero in on a particular suspect.

I have a couple problems with this, the first of which is that it doesn't seem like it should be legal that the government essentially can track me by my DNA without any sort of consent. The second problem I have is that DNA evidence is not nearly as reliable as people seem to think. Hair and touch DNA are constantly contaminating crime scenes. Hairs can be picked up anywhere, from the police who investigate the scene, to techs, to medical examiners, to the bodies of the victims themselves. Granted this is not as applicable if the suspect's blood is at the scene, but nevertheless, DNA evidence is not foolproof, yet juries seem to convict as if it is.

I tend to lean a bit more anti-authoritarian, so perhaps this is my own personal bias, but it seems we need to regulate this type of DNA testing.

I could see a carve out for not allowing this sort of policing. It seems a lot like Priest not being able to testify or psychologists. I think it’s quite easy to make arguments that their are large positive externalities to databases of dna and for people to test themselves for all sorts of genetic diseases. Removing a fear of future prosecution because your in a gene bank would greatly enable this technology.

That being said I don’t think we have any laws on the books right now against it or that theirs an obvious unethical issue with police using dna banks.

The USA will, of course, go to the worst of both worlds- just enough use of this technology to deter people from using such genetic testing, but not nearly enough to actually affect catching criminals.

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