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posted by janrinok on Wednesday December 04 2019, @11:32PM   Printer-friendly

Submitted via IRC for chromas

China Uses DNA to Map Faces, With Help From the West

With a million or more ethnic Uighurs and others from predominantly Muslim minority groups swept up in detentions across Xinjiang, officials in Tumxuk have gathered blood samples from hundreds of Uighurs — part of a mass DNA collection effort dogged by questions about consent and how the data will be used.

In Tumxuk, at least, there is a partial answer: Chinese scientists are trying to find a way to use a DNA sample to create an image of a person's face.

The technology, which is also being developed in the United States and elsewhere, is in the early stages of development and can produce rough pictures good enough only to narrow a manhunt or perhaps eliminate suspects. But given the crackdown in Xinjiang, experts on ethics in science worry that China is building a tool that could be used to justify and intensify racial profiling and other state discrimination against Uighurs.

In the long term, experts say, it may even be possible for the Communist government to feed images produced from a DNA sample into the mass surveillance and facial recognition systems that it is building, tightening its grip on society by improving its ability to track dissidents and protesters as well as criminals.

Some of this research is taking place in labs run by China's Ministry of Public Security, and at least two Chinese scientists working with the ministry on the technology have received funding from respected institutions in Europe. International scientific journals have published their findings without examining the origin of the DNA used in the studies or vetting the ethical questions raised by collecting such samples in Xinjiang.

[...]Sketching someone's face based solely on a DNA sample sounds like science fiction. It isn't.

The process is called DNA phenotyping. Scientists use it to analyze genes for traits like skin color, eye color and ancestry. A handful of companies and scientists are trying to perfect the science to create facial images sharp and accurate enough to identify criminals and victims.

The Maryland police used it last year to identify a murder victim. In 2015, the police in North Carolina arrested a man on two counts of murder after crime-scene DNA indicated the killer had fair skin, brown or hazel eyes, dark hair, and little evidence of freckling. The man pleaded guilty.

Despite such examples, experts widely question phenotyping's effectiveness. Currently, it often produces facial images that are too smooth or indistinct to look like the face being replicated. DNA cannot indicate other factors that determine how people look, such as age or weight. DNA can reveal gender and ancestry, but the technology can be hit or miss when it comes to generating an image as specific as a face.

Phenotyping also raises ethical issues, said Pilar Ossorio, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The police could use it to round up large numbers of people who resemble a suspect, or use it to target ethnic groups. And the technology raises fundamental issues of consent from those who never wanted to be in a database to begin with.

"What the Chinese government is doing should be a warning to everybody who kind of goes along happily thinking, 'How could anyone be worried about these technologies?'" Dr. Ossorio said.


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by krishnoid on Thursday December 05 2019, @12:48AM (1 child)

    by krishnoid (1156) on Thursday December 05 2019, @12:48AM (#928296)
    • You could just direct them to what IBM did for the Nazis [wired.com] in WWII
    • On the other hand, the technology itself isn't incarcerating people yet
    • But you could easily spread the rumor that "This is some of the technology they used to identify and track Sarah/John Connor" and see how many people believe it
    • And on the third hand, narrowing down suspects maybe means cops in some countries won't stop every single [ethnic] person based on a vague description -- or maybe they still will

    I think they should just use it as part of a joint marketing campaign for the next Terminator movie.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 05 2019, @04:49AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 05 2019, @04:49AM (#928357)

    The entire point of the exercise is to enable and justify police cracking down harder on minorities. That is also why the West is interested, our political masters here are jealous of such power.