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The Orange County Register reports:
[...] one of California's most prolific serial killers and rapists was caught by using online genealogical sites to find a DNA match, prosecutors said Thursday. Investigators compared the DNA collected from a crime scene of the Golden State Killer to online genetic profiles and found a match: a relative of the man police have identified as [the suspect, who was arrested.]
[...] Authorities didn't give the name of the site, one of many, like Ancestry and 23andMe, that allow people to send in their DNA and find long-lost relatives. [...] Contacted Friday, representatives of both Ancestry and 23andMe.com said the sites weren't involved in the case.
takyon: Also at NYT, The Sacramento Bee, NPR, and CNN, which added:
When police announced they had finally caught the Golden State Killer, Bruce Harrington had a simple message for the politicians who fought his tireless efforts to expand the California's criminal offender DNA database. "You were wrong," he said.
Harrington, whose brother and sister-in-law were killed in 1980, spent years in front of public safety committees, pleading with them to embrace DNA technology. "And frankly I ran into a buzz saw of opposition."
Many state elected officials and rights groups fiercely opposed any attempt by the state to expand its DNA collection database. Critics cited the privacy rights of people in police custody and questioned the constitutionality of allowing the state to gather DNA samples without evidence of guilt.
In 2004, California voters passed Proposition 69, known as the "DNA Fingerprint, Unsolved Crime and Innocence Protection Act." It gave the state broader powers to collect DNA. Now, it could get samples from anyone not just convicted of a felony, but even arrested for one. In some cases, authorities could also collect DNA from misdemeanor arrests.
Say goodbye to your genetic privacy. We have killers to catch.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday April 27 2018, @02:45PM (18 children)
DNA collection laws have captured a serial killer! Let's expand the laws, and see what else we can catch! I'm so breathless with anticipation! I mean - DNA evidence can never be wrong, right? It can never be misused, right?
Funny the same logic isn't applied to guns. "OH, Old Lady Bancroft scared off a burglar with her pistol! Let's get everyone a pistol!" Nope, the old woman is likely to be sent to jail for possession of an unregistered firearm.
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Friday April 27 2018, @02:54PM (8 children)
Serial killer barber, collects the hair of customers he doesn't like and scatters some at the crime scenes! What could go wrong?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 27 2018, @02:58PM (1 child)
Easy to distinguish hair cut from hair that fell out.
And why a barber? In situations where fences make better neighbors (and there are millions) I would worry more from that neighbor than a barber. Assuming this was a good method. It isn’t.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Friday April 27 2018, @05:47PM
It actually IS a good method.
First thing a barber does is run a comb through your hair. He gets several hairs with roots still attached. Golden.
Same as on your hair brush, easily spotted by prowling neighbor.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday April 27 2018, @02:58PM (1 child)
That's an awesome idea. I really like it. I think I'll start working on my barber's license.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 27 2018, @07:54PM
Is your sig a super soaker?
*grin*
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Friday April 27 2018, @04:44PM
Except now all that random DNA collected at the crime scene has one thing in common.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 27 2018, @05:34PM (2 children)
Won't work anyway. They need the hair root to DNA test, so cut hair is useless.
Although, if you leave enough of it you could confuse the investigators a bit.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Friday April 27 2018, @05:58PM (1 child)
You are behind the times:
2003 https://www.isfg.org/files/61bebd1f8e4d5e47364077a5adee68b15529d225.02005824_896084102010.pdf [isfg.org]
2013 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0069588 [plos.org]
2017 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28993934 [nih.gov]
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 27 2018, @06:40PM
Interesting. Thanks.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 27 2018, @03:27PM (4 children)
Alleged. Alleged serial killer.
I agree with you in principle, but every time people jump to the crime like it's decided, we reduce the ability for our court system to do its job. Let's please not try people for murder in the court of public opinion. There's no direct DNA evidence here, and as you say DNA is not foolproof.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday April 27 2018, @03:38PM
But, the court of public opinion is the only court in which I have a voice! What are you, a heretic?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 27 2018, @05:27PM
I thought there was. They got a clue to a person via the DNA submission, then searched his relatives' garbage to find DNA samples until they got a match.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday April 27 2018, @06:00PM (1 child)
You need to read more closely.
He raped and murdered people for decades. Plenty of samples from plenty of crime scenes all pointing to one source.
Once they got it narrowed down to him, they followed him around till he discarded something with his DNA on it. BANG: Direct DNA Evidence.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @01:53AM
Allegedly.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @12:57AM (2 children)
snowball.
Think about how long it took Germany to round up the Jews, the Romas, the Gays, the Socialists, and any other group that they considered societal undesireables. Now thing how long it would have taken them if they had a nice convenient database of social media posts, combined with DNA, so you can not just purge a specific undesirable individual, but their entire bloodline going forward or backward as far as is necessary to get your 'perfect members of society' or 'Ubermensch' individuals working towards the perfect 'Aryan' race.
And that is ignoring the pragmatic approach, that we are soon going to have far less unskilled jobs to soak up the mentally incapable/uneducated amongst us when automation and machine learning reach full swing, leaving large swaths of the population as an unnecessary economic risk to the 'productive classes' status quo.
Any way you look at it, these DNA databases WILL fall into the wrong hands, and when they do the current genocides in the world will pale in comparison to the targetted ethnic cleasing that 'civilized' society will be capable of, whether among its own individuals, or those of undesirable foreign lineage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @01:59AM (1 child)
(source [telegraph.co.uk])
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @11:53AM
Do you really think hypocrisy matters to people who think like that? Black and white thinking is a sign of delusion unless you're talking about math. Pointing out the logical errors only makes them double down on dumbass.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 30 2018, @05:28PM
Indeed. Today it's a killer, tomorrow it's a dissident.