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A comment on Cops are asking Ancestry.com and 23andMe for their customers’ DNA. Parent comment

Re:Cops are asking Ancestry.com and 23andMe for their custom... by anigbrowl on Friday October 16, 2015 @06:20PM (#10402387)
I totally agree, but one reason to do so anyway* is because of the non-zero probability that someone who attracts a rape accusation from one person may well predate upon others, sequentially or in parallel. A topical example would be Bill Cosby, who's now accused by some 50 women of sexual assault, many of whom said they kept silent for years because he was so famous and they thought nobody would believe them.

* which is fraught with its own ethical pitfalls re. DNA storage, but is in line with current US legal mores, if not your or my personal ideals on privacy.

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Re:Cops are asking Ancestry.com and 23andMe for their custom... by caseysoftware on Friday October 16, 2015 @11:20PM (#10403290)
An accusation alone is not grounds to keep your DNA information around forever. A conviction is another matter.
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Re:Cops are asking Ancestry.com and 23andMe for their custom... by newjersey on Saturday October 17, 2015 @03:31AM (#10403695)
Playing the devils advocate here but why keep convicts' DNA forever? Should ex convicts not have a right to privacy? I can imagine they might need some way to keep track of inventory in the prison system but once you've served the time, why keep the DNA? Just to make the cops' jobs easier? If there is a false positive on an ex convict's DNA, it still means we got the wrong guy.
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Re:Cops are asking Ancestry.com and 23andMe for their custom... by caseysoftware on Saturday October 17, 2015 @03:38PM (#10405746)
Since there's an actual conviction, that's a separate matter but I tend to agree.
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Re:Cops are asking Ancestry.com and 23andMe for their custom... by gohrt on Saturday October 17, 2015 @01:25AM (#10403492)
How would DNA storage of rape kits help the Cosby case at all? The police can collect Cosby's DNA if he is a suspect in a case.
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Re:Cops are asking Ancestry.com and 23andMe for their custom... by anigbrowl on Monday October 19, 2015 @04:02PM (#10415309)
It wouldn't. I mentioned that case in the context of (apparent) serial predation and information asymmetry.
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Re:Cops are asking Ancestry.com and 23andMe for their custom... by fyolnish on Saturday October 17, 2015 @03:58AM (#10403742)
Just think about it for a second
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