Should genealogy websites be cooperating with law enforcement?

Interesting article in The Atlantic about a battle I didn't know existed.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/...ations/599005/

At the time the Golden State Killer was caught via one of those DNA sites, I had thought that the sites were fully cooperating with law enforcement. After all, why wouldn't they want to help catch murderers and rapists?

Turns out that the various genealogy sites have different policies on law enforcement cooperation, and there's a huge, angry debate within that community whether their databases should be used for law enforcement or not. Some feel it's a violation of privacy and counter to what they were attempting to establish in the first place.

On one hand, I understand their point. They built these sites to bring families together, not as a law enforcement tool, and they are resenting their work being coopted for that reason.

However, I feel this is too important of a law enforcement resource to deny access, and that if they can help catch rapists and murderers with the databases, it should be done.

Opinions?

US to collect DNA of all undocumented migrants

That way the U.S. government can hunt them down and kill them or deport them.


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...vector.svg.png

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Originally Posted by TheXFactor

US to collect DNA of all undocumented migrants

That way the U.S. government can hunt them down and kill them or deport them.


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...vector.svg.png

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Its already common practice to obtain DNA Samples from all felons and certain misdomenors.. But the real reason that shit is being done with the illegals is that a large percent (upwards of 30%) are being proven to be lying about the fact they are related to these children coming over with them.. Its fraud plain and simple and raises the law breaking from an illegal entry to deliberate attempt at fraud which is a felony.. The stories seem to be showing kids are repeatedly showing up at the border with different adults and thus this is an attempt to catch these fraudulent attempts to claim familial bonds with children who aren't related to them.. ICE and CBP have already found hundreds of cases in AZ alone where the same child has shown up with numerous different "family' members none of which shows even a remote familial dna link.. Its a con job plain and simple and this is being done to put a stop and yet another attempt to deliberately fuck with the immigration system as their orginal plans to just mass invade and overwhelm the system eventually failed when they were stopped in Mexico from entering the USA.. X please put a bandaid on that heart of yours because its bleeding allover the place man its unsightly..

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bethba...amily-n2545986

Since you believe it so important to give police such private personal information to fight crime, how do you feel about a national gun registry that would allow the police to search through a database of gun ballistic “DNA” to help identify potential suspects in gun crimes?

Hell no they shouldn't cooperate with law enforcement UNLESS they clearly and obviously state so ahead of time -- in which case you could obviously just not send them your DNA.

I'm ok with it, as long as they put a special mark on anybody with Jewish ancestry.

The law enforcement angle only slightly bothers me presently, but I don’t want some company having a genetic profile on me.

Reading a bit on what can be forecast from dna, and I saw this excerpt from an article.

“Browsing through the health and trait reports the company provides, Diamond reached the locked reports, which contain information about genetic variants that increase risk for developing breast cancer, Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s. Customers have to choose to “unlock” that information since it can bring upsetting news.”

You’d think that’s protected information, but what if the company ends up being another Theranos who ends up selling your information or gets hacked and it ends up with health and life insurance companies, or some employment background check company. The cold cases being solved are really awesome, but it seems some type of comprehensive legislation should be passed before these companies get too free with this information. It doesn’t much bother me at my stage of life, but I wouldn’t be thrilled to have mine or some family members dna in the hands of some corporation if I had another 80 years of life expectancy.

Assume the Nazis had this technology back in the 1920s.

good thread, complicated issue.

you dont want higher insurance because your family has a history of heart disease.

but you do want serial killers/rapists caught.

factor in that a lot of early clients of these services signed away all their rights to privacy and in doing so, provided genetic blueprints for all their relatives at the same time, entirely without their consent.

the lawyers are going to get fucking rich off this for years to come.

My brother bought 23andme for my parents last Christmas and I thought it was kind of funny, because it was essentially having us submit our DNA to a database that will outlast all of us. Later on I found law enforcement have been successfully using it to solve crimes, especially murders and heinous crimes which is fine. Don't go out committing serious crimes, because in this day and age you will get caught. One way or another, society is so advanced, and technologically sound the margin of error for criminals is almost nill, barring a miracle.

Why not imo, don't go out committing serious crimes and you have nothing to worry about. Now id change my position if down the road they start using these databases to solve any crime, even minor ones. Then id have a problem with it, but seems they mostly rely on all of this in the most serious of cases, so its fine imo.

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Originally Posted by Dan Druff

Opinions?

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Their databases should be available to authorities when the authorities have a warrant, and only then.

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Originally Posted by Crowe Diddly

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Originally Posted by Dan Druff

Opinions?

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Their databases should be available to authorities when the authorities have a warrant, and only then.

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warrants are ridiculously easy to get, so that won't assuage any real concerns.

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Originally Posted by garrett

My brother bought 23andme for my parents last Christmas and I thought it was kind of funny, because it was essentially having us submit our DNA to a database that will outlast all of us.

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Thought you were going to say your father wasn't actually your father.

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Originally Posted by Tellafriend

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Originally Posted by Crowe Diddly

Their databases should be available to authorities when the authorities have a warrant, and only then.

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warrants are ridiculously easy to get, so that won't assuage any real concerns.

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true, but its still miles better than companies opening up their databases without regard for one. That's a recipe for endless privacy violations without any oversight at all.

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Originally Posted by MumblesBadly

Since you believe it so important to give police such private personal information to fight crime, how do you feel about a national gun registry that would allow the police to search through a database of gun ballistic “DNA” to help identify potential suspects in gun crimes?

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JohnCommode: I'm in. Wouldn't infringe on the right to own a gun but would help catch dirtbags.

John, my question was directed towards Mr. Dan “We can’t increase gun control because the Dems will slippery-slope us into taking our guns from us” Druff.

This is an easy one.

If you or your kin are slow enough that you’re uploading your DNA to the internet you’re fair game.

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Originally Posted by garrett

My brother bought 23andme for my parents last Christmas and I thought it was kind of funny, because they don't talk to me anymore. Later on I found law enforcement have been successfully using it to solve crimes, like beating up your dad type crimes.

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FYP

Yes. The various genealogy sites should cooperate with law enforcement. It just saves time since all of this information is available to the relatives anyway.

Today, in fact, my father's-in-law grandson just did a genealogy test and found that he was only a half-nephew to his uncle and not related at all to his grandfather. Seems his dad was a bastard. That's why these sites care this warning when submitting your DNA for testing:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/arrest-ma...wtab&type=icon

The only reason that I opened up this thread for this case was because of what appears to be an incredibly shoddy original investigation combined with the leniency and consideration shown to him by the state of Arkansas. If my understanding of this is correct, he was convicted of rape in Arkansas, served only 4 years, and was released out-of-state on parole to Denver. Didn't local PD check on convicted rapists on parole in their area? Maybe Arkansas didn't notify Colorado Probation about his presence, but that seems unlikely to me as they would have wanted a Denver government contact to keep tabs on him. God knows what else he did in the next 40 years. It's unlikely that he became a model citizen.

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Originally Posted by JohnCommode

https://www.yahoo.com/news/arrest-ma...wtab&type=icon

The only reason that I opened up this thread for this case was because of what appears to be an incredibly shoddy original investigation combined with the leniency and consideration shown to him by the state of Arkansas. If my understanding of this is correct, he was convicted of rape in Arkansas, served only 4 years, and was released out-of-state on parole to Denver. Didn't local PD check on convicted rapists on parole in their area? Maybe Arkansas didn't notify Colorado Probation about his presence, but that seems unlikely to me as they would have wanted a Denver government contact to keep tabs on him. God knows what else he did in the next 40 years. It's unlikely that he became a model citizen.

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For whatever reason (maybe you remember because you're older than me), there was a shocking amount of leniency regarding violent criminals in the 70s. This included a federal ban on the death penalty (since lifted, obviously), and bans on life without parole in states such as California (also since lifted). There were tons of light sentences where the perpetrator was either under-sentenced or given leniency because of some factor such as a rough childhood.

This continued somewhat in the 1980s, though not quite as bad, until a backlash in 1994 finally sent it back the other way. Part of the Republican midterm election success in 1994 was due to the crime issue (which was at an all time high in the early 90s), and the leniency Democrats still wanted to show violent criminals.

I'm sure this guy committed more rapes over the years, though probably not all that many (or at all) in the last 2 decades or so, because many rapists tend to lose a lot of the desire to do this as they pass 40. There are various theories on this, but the prevailing one is that the declining testosterone does it.

The only thing we should be on the look out for is a family member who is strongly against a close relative doing a ancestry DNA kit.

Odds are that family member was involved in a crime where DNA could catch them and now they must kill you to stop getting caught! I think I just started the plot to a Netflix original!

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/sons-forme...wtab&type=icon

Every time I want to leave these genealogy threads I run into a case that seems to involve investigative incompetence again. In this one, a football coach in 1981 raped and strangled the mother of one of his players. The cops got DNA and prints off of the window that he used to enter. The DNA was virtually useless then and the prints did not come back to anyone in the system. However, this guy was arrested in 1984 in an unrelated case and printed. The problem was that nobody checked the prints until recently. Even when cases go cold you have to check prints every couple of years to see if the guy got entered into the system. Genealogy finally got him but he had all these years of freedom. At least Florida is a death penalty state. All that was required of this police department was to have a list of their most serious cold cases that needed to have prints and later DNA to be checked annually for system hits. It's not rocket science.

totally understandable now why you refuse to show your hands

:knife


:shock


:crowd


:siren


:noose


:applause

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Originally Posted by Dan Druff

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Originally Posted by JohnCommode

https://www.yahoo.com/news/arrest-ma...wtab&type=icon

The only reason that I opened up this thread for this case was because of what appears to be an incredibly shoddy original investigation combined with the leniency and consideration shown to him by the state of Arkansas. If my understanding of this is correct, he was convicted of rape in Arkansas, served only 4 years, and was released out-of-state on parole to Denver. Didn't local PD check on convicted rapists on parole in their area? Maybe Arkansas didn't notify Colorado Probation about his presence, but that seems unlikely to me as they would have wanted a Denver government contact to keep tabs on him. God knows what else he did in the next 40 years. It's unlikely that he became a model citizen.

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For whatever reason (maybe you remember because you're older than me), there was a shocking amount of leniency regarding violent criminals in the 70s. This included a federal ban on the death penalty (since lifted, obviously), and bans on life without parole in states such as California (also since lifted). There were tons of light sentences where the perpetrator was either under-sentenced or given leniency because of some factor such as a rough childhood.

This continued somewhat in the 1980s, though not quite as bad, until a backlash in 1994 finally sent it back the other way. Part of the Republican midterm election success in 1994 was due to the crime issue (which was at an all time high in the early 90s), and the leniency Democrats still wanted to show violent criminals.

I'm sure this guy committed more rapes over the years, though probably not all that many (or at all) in the last 2 decades or so, because many rapists tend to lose a lot of the desire to do this as they pass 40. There are various theories on this, but the prevailing one is that the declining testosterone does it.

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http://freakonomics.com/2005/05/15/a...d-you-believe/

Here’s another explanation for the rise and gradual decline of violent crime. IMO, the death penalty has never been a deterrent. There is no statistical evidence that murder rates in states that enforce it (like Texas and Florida) are lower than other states.

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Originally Posted by Jayjami

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Originally Posted by Dan Druff

For whatever reason (maybe you remember because you're older than me), there was a shocking amount of leniency regarding violent criminals in the 70s. This included a federal ban on the death penalty (since lifted, obviously), and bans on life without parole in states such as California (also since lifted). There were tons of light sentences where the perpetrator was either under-sentenced or given leniency because of some factor such as a rough childhood.

This continued somewhat in the 1980s, though not quite as bad, until a backlash in 1994 finally sent it back the other way. Part of the Republican midterm election success in 1994 was due to the crime issue (which was at an all time high in the early 90s), and the leniency Democrats still wanted to show violent criminals.

I'm sure this guy committed more rapes over the years, though probably not all that many (or at all) in the last 2 decades or so, because many rapists tend to lose a lot of the desire to do this as they pass 40. There are various theories on this, but the prevailing one is that the declining testosterone does it.

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http://freakonomics.com/2005/05/15/a...d-you-believe/

Here’s another explanation for the rise and gradual decline of violent crime. IMO, the death penalty has never been a deterrent. There is no statistical evidence that murder rates in states that enforce it (like Texas and Florida) are lower than other states.

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I've never sad that the death penalty is a deterrent. Few conservatives say that. These are words that anti-death-penalty leftists and libertarians like to put in conservatives' mouths in order to feel smart.

The death penalty is simply an appropriate punishment for some crimes. However, it also has a utilitarian purpose in getting life-without-parole pleas, since many murderers fear it so much that they will plea to life-no-parole in order to take it off the table. Without the death penalty, you don't get those pleas, and these people have a chance to either get paroled or beat the charge entirely. This is a hugely overlooked benefit of the death penalty.

Regarding the article you posted linking abortion to the decline in violent crime, yes, that's possible. Or it's possible that it's one of many factors. Regardless, longer sentences for violent criminals will definitely bring the crime rate down, because it literally takes these people off the streets to where they can't commit crime.

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Originally Posted by Dan Druff

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jayjami

http://freakonomics.com/2005/05/15/a...d-you-believe/

Here’s another explanation for the rise and gradual decline of violent crime. IMO, the death penalty has never been a deterrent. There is no statistical evidence that murder rates in states that enforce it (like Texas and Florida) are lower than other states.

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I've never sad that the death penalty is a deterrent. Few conservatives say that. These are words that anti-death-penalty leftists and libertarians like to put in conservatives' mouths in order to feel smart.

The death penalty is simply an appropriate punishment for some crimes. However, it also has a utilitarian purpose in getting life-without-parole pleas, since many murderers fear it so much that they will plea to life-no-parole in order to take it off the table. Without the death penalty, you don't get those pleas, and these people have a chance to either get paroled or beat the charge entirely. This is a hugely overlooked benefit of the death penalty.

Regarding the article you posted linking abortion to the decline in violent crime, yes, that's possible. Or it's possible that it's one of many factors. Regardless, longer sentences for violent criminals will definitely bring the crime rate down, because it literally takes these people off the streets to where they can't commit crime.

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You are idiotically assuming that the authorities never use the threat of the death penalty to get innocent suspects to plea to a lesser charge just to avoid getting railroaded into being found guilty in a trial prosecuted by corrupt authorities. And given the ridiculous number of wrongful convictions in the US that have been documented over the past few decades, I truly mean “idiotically”. Not “naively”. You are too old to be that naive.

The DoD is telling their people to steer clear

https://www.yahoo.com/news/pentagon-...173304318.html