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Cousin Took a DNA Test? Courts Could Use it to Argue You are More Likely to Commit Crimes

posted by martyb on Wednesday January 22 2020, @03:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the 60%-likely-is-40%-unlikely dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

MedicalXPress:

How similar do you think you are to your second cousin? Or your estranged great aunt?

Would you like to have people assess your behaviour from what your great aunt has done? How would you feel if courts used data gained from them to decide how you are likely to behave in the future?

Scientists are making connections between a person's DNA and their tendencies for certain kinds of behaviour. At the same time, commercial DNA databases are becoming more common and police are gaining access to them.

When these trends combine, genetic data inferred about offenders from their relatives might one day be used by courts to determine sentences. In the future, the data from your great aunt could be used by a court to determine how severely you are punished for a crime.

[...] A Florida judge recently approved a warrant to search a genetic genealogy , GED Match. This American company has approximately 1.3 million users who have uploaded their personal genetic data, with the assumption of privacy, in the hope of discovering their family tree.

The court directly overruled these users' request for privacy and now the company is obliged to hand over the data.

[...] This might be used by the prosecution to make the case for a longer sentence. In some jurisdictions and circumstances, the prosecution may have a means of obtaining a sample of DNA directly from the offender. But where this is not legally possible without the offender's consent, the inference from relatives might fill a gap in the prosecution's case about how dangerous the offender is.

Your ability to be granted bail may hinge on your genes.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @08:48PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @08:48PM (#948603)

    I'll respond to the thought experiment above - here I want to respond to this exact tangent. There is macro and micro-level evidence against what you've said here about free stuff for everybody would make things better. The micro-level evidence is social psychology stuff. Currently, some degree of struggle in early life is associated with far better late life outcomes. It probably builds character. My early life was pretty awful, but I wouldn't have had it any other way because I think it played a large part in shaping who I am today in a very good way. I've no doubt the same is true of folks like Musk. Okay, but social psychology is not so useful. The much more striking evidence is the macro-level.

    Life on the equator on Earth is pretty awesome. There tends to be tremendous vegetation and wildlife with relatively little variation in temperatures. If there was a natural paradise, at least as far as human needs go, it would be on the equator. Yet there is an extremely strong correlation between IQ and distances from the equator. Not hard to see why. When life is hard, you get smart - or you die. When life is easy, even idiots can survive without a cause in the world and they tend to massively overbreed. Even if you want to reject IQ, as is the trend today among some today, the same holds true by every other metric as well. For instance you see a similar pattern among GDP [forbes.com]. And again it's not hard to see why. You start building, storing, and developing - or die. On the equator? Who cares, free food for everybody with no problems.