I am sure your case was above board but, being born in a totalitarian state, I do not trust law enforcement too much and prefer to err on the side of not solving some crimes. My 2c.
So my solution is to avoid attracting any attention in meatspace. Not doing anything that could generate troublesome records. Such as leaving DNA around. I mean, I certainly leave DNA around, when I go out for stuff. But there's nothing involved that I need to hide.
I also make no effort to hide anything that I do online as my meatspace persona. Because that would attract attention. I do use a VPN service, but that's not at all unusual where I live. And I do torrent some, even when I'm not really after anything. Just as cover.
Anything potentially troublesome, I do via nested VPN chains and Tor. Mirimir just uses nested VPN chains. But then Mirimir just writes about stuff, so hey.
Off to google the term “meatspace” now.
And then Terry Bisson's "They're Made Out of Meat", published in 1990:[0]
> "They're made out of meat."
> "Meat?"
> "Meat. They're made out of meat."
> "Meat?"
> "There's no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."
So yeah, it's a term that we old geeks use.
Recent usage by John Markoff:
> "True Names" by Vernor Vinge (1981): "The basic premise of that was, you had to basically hide your true name at all costs. It was an insight into the world we’re living in today … We have to figure it out. I think we have to go to pseudonymity or something. You’re gonna participate in this networked existence, you have to be connected to meatspace in some way."
And yes, we "have to go to pseudonymity or something". If we care about privacy, anyway.
0) http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html
1) http://renaissancechambara.jp/2017/06/14/oprah-time-true-nam...
Goes back to the earliest days of online existence, to distinguish the two.
I’d like to subscribe to your RSS feed of magnet: links.
I am afraid it could cause wrongful convictions as well. Let's say there is a 1 in a million chance of a false positive, if you have an enormous database there is a large probability of a false positive even though your individual risk is low. As far as I understand DNA evidence is often damaged or incomplete, meaning this could be a serious risk.
If ratio of solved crimes is not high enough -- society tolerates wrongful convictions -- because without risking wrongful convictions it is hard to make any convictions at all.
Because DNA testing increases the ratio of solved crimes, it decreases the chances of wrongful convictions.
"The scientists fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva. They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person." [0]
Oh wow. Really??? Any experts in this field reading this? Would love to hear someone with pertinent authority tell us this isn't true. (Please don't be true)
Genotyping works as follows: there are thousands of regions of “junk” dna in the human genome that don’t code for anything. There is no evolutionary pressure to preserve the exact length of these regions. (They probably help the chromosomes fold up in ways that encourage/suppress the activity of certain genes, help the molecule be more robust, etc).
Since there is no evolutionary pressure to preserve the regions, they tend to be full of hard to copy junk like ATAT..... that tends to change every few generations.
Genotyping works by isolating a bunch of these regions, and using PCR to create millions of copies of each region (with ~one sample per region).
Finally, you put a drop of the each sample and some die on a electrophoresis gel, and apply some current. Different sized molecules move at different rates, so this gives you a crude measurement of the length of each molecule.
To fake a match, all you need to do is produce something that will trick the first step of all this into grabbing molecules of your choice of length, which will fool the rest of the process. If you want to see how that would work, read up on “pcr primers”.
Source: I used to work in a genotyping/sequencing lab as a bioinformatician, and worked on algorithms that did exactly this sort of analysis (not the forgery bit though).
So you could fake everything. Video surveillance, DNA samples, testimony from dishonest informers and investigators, etc. This is just a tweak to parallel construction. And outright framing.
Instead CSI has taught your average juror that it is irrefutable proof of guilt.
Don't underestimate DNA transfer. Your DNA can end up in locations you have never been:
If you're already a "convenient suspect" the police wish to build a case against, they don't need to find you on a consumer genetics database to be able to obtain a sample of your DNA or strongly hint that they expect to be able to use DNA evidence (truthfully or otherwise) to send you away for a very long time if you're not willing to consider moving to plea bargaining territory.
Consider a public bathroom: how much DNA is at that location? How much is relevant to the event?
Consider a corrupt lab tech: The DNA at the event might be reported as DNA from their database. Does a defense attorney get to see the untainted sample?
Consider a corrupt/hacked DNA database: The database might report that the DNA belongs to one individual when it actually doesn't. Does a defense attorney even get to see the source code?
In these scenarios, the link to any individual is either of little consequence, or fraudulent.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/annie-dookhan-chemist-at-mass-c...
What if it's something we can't quite agree on, or tyranny of the majority? Joe McCarthy happened once, and he didn't give a shit about ex post facto. Presuming someone like him will never come along again is a road to pain and suffering.
Spend ten minutes reading about what Crypto-Judaism is and why it is even a thing. Then look at abuse of power (I've known 2 people who have had LEOs as stalkers). A big part of warrant law is the premise that you don't give people information they don't need 'just because'. Very similar to the computing concept of Principle of Least Power. They prove they need it, you give it to them, but not a moment before, because who knows what they'll get up to.
What's an LEO? My first thought is Low Earth Orbit, but obviously that's not right. Googling "leo" and "leo stalker" doesn't bring up much apart from horoscopes.
Likewise we should develop principles for information which when combined with other information can be used to transgress against 3rd parties' enjoyment of their own privacy.
DNA cannot be thought of any other way whilst we continue to use it for personal identification.
We don't have another mechanism for protecting something uniquely identifying from tyranny.
Perhaps we should, especially as in this case others privacy may be co-dependent on myself, as you noted.
For instance, there's no need to get a warrant to follow you around and pick up something that you discard and then examine that object for DNA.
DNA is also shared, however. A relative can currently choose to reveal private information in their DNA that also reveals information that you consider private in your DNA. This is the way in which DNA has a shared or commons aspect.
My point is that the shared nature of DNA means we have to look outside of individual actions to preserve the privacy rights that many seem to want preserved. In other words, I shouldn't be able to use my DNA to reveal private information about anyone else.
That Dropcam stream Google flagged your facial fingerprint on...not so much.
Music for example. The same poool of musical notes in 100% of compositions. Just arranged in different ways, like DNA
FWIW I can see where he was coming from.
Lol, what planet do you live on? Sounds dope.
The battles to price externalities into markets here on Earth are all hard fought. By default if you can’t see it you don’t pay for it. Anything beyond that needs to be pounded out in the political ring.
It’s incredibly empowering for abuse and completely disrespectful to the individual. The assymetry is staggering.
My understanding is they asked everyone they could find in a specific ethnic community if they would volunteer a sample for a kind of dna dragnet.
The killer was related to one of the many people sampled.
That's how a local cold murder case was solved last year.
DNA from a 25-year-old crime scene was run against the samples in one of these genealogy databases, and they found a familial match. Police set up a sting to covertly collect DNA from that person's immediate family. They got their DNA match with a brother's water bottle police took from a trash can after he worked a DJ gig at a school.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/26/us/christy-mirack-slaying-upd...
The now-confessed killer was the DJ at my wedding. He never would have been caught if his brother hadn't done one of these genealogy tests. He wasn't even a suspect in the initial investigation.