News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Working with the FBI. Parent comment

Re:One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Worki... by mikeash on Friday February 01, 2019 @04:54PM (#19059096)
What about accidental harm because your DNA or a relative’s DNA managed to end up at a crime scene, or bad lab procedures produce a false match?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Worki... by kilo_bravo_3 on Friday February 01, 2019 @05:07PM (#19059213)
>Most notoriously, Brandon Mayfield, an American lawyer, was wrongly linked by four fingerprint experts to the 2004 Madrid train bombing. He was arrested and detained for two weeks, before investigators realised that an Algerian man, Ouhnane Daoud, was the real source of the print.

https://theconversation.com/fingerprinting-to-solve-crimes-n...

Should law enforcement be prohibited from fingerprinting objects found at crime scenes?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Worki... by Pharmakon on Friday February 01, 2019 @05:28PM (#19059386)
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171005111100.h...

Fingerprints lack scientific basis for legal certainty More research into validity of fingerprint comparisons needed Date: October 5, 2017 Source: Carnegie Mellon University Summary: A new report on the quality of latent fingerprint analysis says that courtroom testimony and reports stating or even implying that fingerprints collected from a crime scene belong to a single person are indefensible and lack scientific foundation.

http://theconversation.com/fingerprinting-to-solve-crimes-no...

Fingerprinting to solve crimes: not as robust as you think

https://californiainnocenceproject.org/issues-we-face/finger...

The main problem with fingerprint analysis is one consistent with many other areas of forensic science: subjectivity. Instead of relying on tested scientific methods, the process is mostly based on the subjective beliefs of the analyst... Despite this subjectivity, fingerprint analysts also typically testify in terms of absolute certainty.

https://issues.org/mnookin/

Fingerprints: Not a Gold Standard

So to answer your question: Should law enforcement be prohibited from fingerprinting objects found at crime scenes?

You tell me.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Worki... by jimnotgym on Friday February 01, 2019 @05:47PM (#19059523)
Which is why DNA and fingerprint evidence is so valuable as corroborating evidence (person x dna was at the scene and their car was seen at the area), and so hopeless as a dragnet. If everyone in the USA was in a DNA database almost every test would show multiple matches.

Then there is the issue of transference. Person x dna found on housemate y's underwear... rape or shared washing machine?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Worki... by pfdietz on Sunday February 03, 2019 @09:45PM (#19073584)
It wouldn't be that hard to increase the number of DNA features needed to make the chance of accidental match in the database exponentially small.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Worki... by fucking_tragedy on Friday February 01, 2019 @05:42PM (#19059489)
Fingerprinting is a notoriously inaccurate pseudoscience along with polygraph testing.

As was seen on HN[1], consumer DNA tests are also inaccurate. In fact, up to 40% of gene variants on consumer DNA tests are false positives[2]. False positives happen with criminal investigations and DNA testing[3]. And now, consumer DNA databases are generating false positives[4] that upend and potentially ruin innocent people's lives.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18938750

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/gim201838

[3] https://gizmodo.com/when-bad-dna-tests-lead-to-false-convict...

[4] https://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/article_1b3a3f9...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Worki... by kilo_bravo_3 on Friday February 01, 2019 @06:43PM (#19059875)
Fingerprinting is inaccurate.

DNA tests are inaccurate.

Witness statements are inaccurate.

Confessions are inaccurate.

Thanks to deepfakes, video is inaccurate.

Someone steals your car, eyewitnesses claim they saw them in possession of it, their fingerprints are in it, their hair is in it, a gas station security camera recorded them in it, cops found them in it, and they confessed.

"Your honor that evidence is, in order, a stress-induced misrecognition, a flawed analysis, pseudoscience, tampered with, a setup, and coerced."

What remains?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Worki... by mikeash on Friday February 01, 2019 @08:26PM (#19060375)
What remains is an understanding of statistics and probability applied to scientifically studied accuracy rates of the various evidence available. Combining error-prone evidence can give fairly certain results.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Worki... by ndnxhs on Friday February 01, 2019 @09:47PM (#19060688)
Any one of those could be wrong but all of them together are almost impossible to fake. The source of the video is also important. What incentive does a petrol station have to fake a car theft? If you can prove that the station owner is somehow involved then that changes things.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Worki... by mikeash on Friday February 01, 2019 @05:34PM (#19059434)
Maybe. The more relevant question here would be: would you pay some company to get yourself fingerprinted and have them put your prints in a big database for police to use when solving crimes?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:One of the Biggest At-Home DNA Testing Companies Is Worki... by pfdietz on Sunday February 03, 2019 @09:46PM (#19073592)
The difference is, fingerprints would only finger you. Your DNA can finger thousands of distantly related people who are not you.
[ Parent | on HN ]