What Will We Do With Innocent People's DNA?
Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/21/1937206 Posted by: timothy, on 2005-03-21 23:11:00 from the if-you-have-nothing-to-hide dept. [1]NevDull writes "As creepy as it may be to deal with identity theft from corporate databases, [2]imagine being swabbed for DNA samples as a suspect in a crime, being vindicated by that sample, and never even being told why you were suspected. This article discusses a man, Roger Valadez, who's fighting both to have his DNA sample and its profile purged from government records, and to find out why he and his DNA were searched in the BTK case. DA Nola Foulston said, 'I think some people are overwrought about their concerns.' -- convenient as she wasn't the one probed without explanation. The article then mentions that 'In California, police will be able in 2008 to take DNA samples from anyone arrested for a felony, whether the person is convicted or not, under a law approved by voters in November.' What will be the disposition of the DNA of the innocent?" References 1. http://www.funkytests.com/ 2. http://wireservice.wired.com/wired/story.asp?section=Breaking&storyId=1007713 &tw=wn_wire_story ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Easy to see where that's headed: 1. Joe Cypherpunk is doing 54 on Rt 95. 2. "Cops" (or guys in a black car claiming to be local cops) stop Joe, make arrest based on "speeding" or what have you. 3. Cops take DNA sample. 4. 2 weeks later Noam Chomsky is murdered. 5. Hey! Joe Cypherpunk's DNA has been found all over the scene of the crime. 6. Joe Cypherpunk is executed...that bastard! Murdering such a valued member of society....MIT professor and all that. Papers report that Cypherpunk Joe had once tried to become an MIT professor but never got on the tenure track. Clearly, he had a vendetta. -TD
From: Eugen Leitl <eugen@leitl.org> To: cypherpunks@al-qaeda.net Subject: What Will We Do With Innocent People's DNA? Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 15:48:19 +0100
Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/21/1937206 Posted by: timothy, on 2005-03-21 23:11:00
from the if-you-have-nothing-to-hide dept. [1]NevDull writes "As creepy as it may be to deal with identity theft from corporate databases, [2]imagine being swabbed for DNA samples as a suspect in a crime, being vindicated by that sample, and never even being told why you were suspected. This article discusses a man, Roger Valadez, who's fighting both to have his DNA sample and its profile purged from government records, and to find out why he and his DNA were searched in the BTK case. DA Nola Foulston said, 'I think some people are overwrought about their concerns.' -- convenient as she wasn't the one probed without explanation. The article then mentions that 'In California, police will be able in 2008 to take DNA samples from anyone arrested for a felony, whether the person is convicted or not, under a law approved by voters in November.' What will be the disposition of the DNA of the innocent?"
References
1. http://www.funkytests.com/ 2. http://wireservice.wired.com/wired/story.asp?section=Breaking&storyId=1007713 &tw=wn_wire_story
----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net
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On 2005-03-22T15:48:19+0100, Eugen Leitl wrote:
Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/21/1937206 Posted by: timothy, on 2005-03-21 23:11:00
from the if-you-have-nothing-to-hide dept. [1]NevDull writes "As creepy as it may be to deal with identity theft from corporate databases, [2]imagine being swabbed for DNA samples as
When they take DNA samples, they use a handful of restriction enzymes and then blot the resulting dna chains. How do they digitize that to enable automated searching? What kind of tolerances do they use? Do they shift the blots vertically and compress or expand one of them to get the best match? What kinds of error margins does the digitization process introduce? I think privacy advocates are going overboard. I don't like DNA collection either, but there's no way a criminal can use southern blot profile data from a database to either compromise the individual's privacy or plant evidence at another crime scene. What's disturbing is that most entities that collect DNA keep the original tissue samples in storage. How long will it be until full DNA sequencing becomes cheap enough that they use it in serious cases (murder)? Craig Venter still has a standing offer to sequence wealthy individuals' DNA for $1 mil, doesn't he? Or was it a few million... I don't recall. They'd only need to sequence one chromosome, too, which should reduce costs. What's the actual cost of sequencing, per kb or mb (basepair, not bit)? -- Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter. --Hemingway, Esquire, April 1936
Thus spake Tyler Durden (camera_lumina@hotmail.com) [22/03/05 16:12]: : Easy to see where that's headed: : : 1. Joe Cypherpunk is doing 54 on Rt 95. : 2. "Cops" (or guys in a black car claiming to be local cops) stop Joe, make : arrest based on "speeding" or what have you. : 3. Cops take DNA sample. : 4. 2 weeks later Noam Chomsky is murdered. : 5. Hey! Joe Cypherpunk's DNA has been found all over the scene of the crime. : 6. Joe Cypherpunk is executed...that bastard! Murdering such a valued : member of society....MIT professor and all that. Papers report that : Cypherpunk Joe had once tried to become an MIT professor but never got on : the tenure track. Clearly, he had a vendetta. Uh-oh. Does this mean that my tinfoil hat isn't good enough anymore? Will I have to don a complete neoprene suit to make sure I leave no trace of myself anywhere from now on?
Hey...had an interesting idea I've been discussing. Actually, no way it's crypto but it's certainly markets/anarchy, so read on if you wish. I'm thinking that that Drug Trafficking in the Golden Triangle might actually be a form of arbitrage. Let me explain... China pegs it's currency to US currency. With the dropping dollar, this means that there's going to be a larger and larger gap between 'reality' (as measured in the true cost of goods in a free market) and the pegged rate. On Cypherpunks do I need to explain the idea that this difference will inevitably give rise to a big black market to exploit that difference? (I had a hard time explaining this to some younger Wall Street folks here.) An interesting though I had last night was that the Drug trade in the Golden Triangle (Burma, China, Thailand, etc...) might exist for precisely this reason...in other words, as a form of arbitrage of sorts between the actual local cost of goods and services and manpower and exchange rates of the US dollar. Heroin is an ideal medium for arbitrage, as it's price is almost a pure function of supply and demand (as opposed to cost of material). It can fluctuate with the currency markets and as a result forms a sort of 'common denominator' for translating local wealth back into international, 'real' wealth. In other words, the drug trade is a direct result of government intervention in the currency markets. Of course, if May were here (may his soul roast in the hell of lesser lists) he'd say this was 'obvious'... Is it? -TD -TD
-- On 23 Mar 2005 at 10:27, Tyler Durden wrote:
China pegs it's currency to US currency. With the dropping dollar, this means that there's going to be a larger and larger gap between 'reality' (as measured in the true cost of goods in a free market) and the pegged rate.
On Cypherpunks do I need to explain the idea that this difference will inevitably give rise to a big black market to exploit that difference?
There will be no black market as long as the chinese government is prepared to buy US dollars from all comers at the official rate. The black market can only happen if they start saying "well, you are just a regular person, not a proper registered business, so we will not buy your dollars, unless you give us a good explanation of how you came to have them." In my opinion the official chinese rates are pretty much in line with reality, are reasonable and realistic. The chinese government is prepared to buy and sell unlimited dollars at the official rate, because it thinks that dollars are reasonably cheap at the official rate, and they are reasonably cheap, because they can be used to buy stuff that chinese want, and stuff that the chinese government wants. And if the official rates are not reasonable and realistic, there will be no black market until the chinese government is simultaneously unwilling or unable to buy unlimited dollars at the official price, and also unwilling to change the official price. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG HsbCTO3R0hDvTi4O2HOi/0Y0UtIUZ/LWAkI3C0Wg 4aRr/HrQ9ZtcE0cqgSbp57xoZ1X3xpgldD4zNHi5M
participants (5)
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Tyler Durden