The “Water Cooler” is a feature on Claycord.com where we ask you a question or provide a topic, and you talk about it.
The “Water Cooler” will be up Monday-Friday at noon.
Today’s question:
A genealogy website/DNA database led police to the Golden State Killer, the man who was responsible for at least 45 rapes and 12 murders.
Do you have a problem with police using genealogy websites/DNA databases to try and solve cases, or do you think it’s an invasion of privacy?
Talk about it….
HMM, how to get general public to voluntarily surrender their DNA so it can be data mined and sold ? ? ? If advertising is correctly psychologically crafted and repeated often you can actually get people to even pay while surrendering their DNA.
How long before DNA is used to deny life insurance or possibly health insurance ? ?
Wonder if same people craft advertising to con voters into passing propositions here in CA ? ?
The problem is: We all know that this will not only be used for that.
If some high bidder has need for an organ……There’s their database.
I agree. Organ database central.
Nope, it’s game on for these creeps who thought they could get away with these severe crimes with impunity. Think again!
All these cracked cases will greatly chill those thinking of heinous crimes, and society benefits!
Alan, Well said.
Not all that different from using DNA, just takes longer to get around to the right offender.
Whatever it takes to turn the crank.
My privacy concerns went out the window with the happy thought that this sadistic loser will get to spend the rest of his life behind bars vs. sitting at home.
You can’t put the toothpaste back in the bottle after the genie is out.
@Martinezmike. With the old metal toothpaste tubes, yes, it was quite difficult. But I’m sure we’ve all had the experience with the plastic ones where the toothpaste does in fact jump back into the tube when you relax the pressure that extruded it in the first place. With this turkey baster action I believe a patient and determined myth buster could put ALL the toothpaste back into the tube.
Btw nice mixed metaphor. You should have went for a triple and thrown Pandora’s Box in there.
That was a really nice job of ridiculing Martinezmike. Too bad that Rolaids lost all credibility by using “went” instead of “gone.”
@ Karma. Good catch! But ALL credibility? Tough crowd!
This is why you shouldn’t give your personal data up so easily.What’s next? An employer buys the data from these places to check if a potential employee has any underlying medical conditions and decides to not hire them? Or insurance uses it to deny coverage? Just watch the movie Gattaca and see where this could all lead. These companies should be regulated and should not be allowed to sell the information to 3rd party vendors.
Paranoia. We’re are still a country with privacy laws. Think HIPPA.
Gattaca is a fictional movie, not a documentary.
Privacy laws? Really? You know, there’s laws against speeding, taking/making/possessing illegal drugs, jaywalking, etc. etc. and that doesn’t stop anyone. Trump’s campaign was spied on. So was Hannity, Tucker Carlson, etc…..where were your privacy laws then?
That’s not what’s happening here. This information is only available to law enforcement through a subpoena signed by a judge. They don’t sign those without probable cause that a crime has been committed. The information is not “sold” to law enforcement.
According to Wikipedia on Surveillance, “Records for one carrier alone (Sprint), showed that in a given year federal law enforcement agencies requested customer location data 8 million times.” And that data is 10 years old so probably is worse now.
I don’t have any problem with it at all. Only the most heinous of crimes get investigated with searches through dna databases. If I have a serial killer or serial rapist in my extended family, I hope I can help catch him (or her). I’ve uploaded my Ancestry.com dna information to GEDmatch and specified that police are welcome to use it. GEDmatch is the site that was used to track down the Golden State Killer.
It is not an invasion of privacy when people accept the terms of conditions of some of the genealogy sites that have an open data base.I have my DNA on Ancestry and they will not share any of the information with law enforcement authorities with out a court order for specific information. The requesting parties must also provide a very good and legal reason to make a request.
I am not a criminal so I really don’t care 🙂
I have no problem with police using these websites. If one feels this is an invasion of privacy then they should not go and put their DNA into the databases.
Eugenics. Now they got all you suckers with the fake COVID tests
Let me see. 6000 years plus of oral tradition. Oh a little bird told me.
The above comments about Health and Insurance are just false for a regular Genealogy DNA test, which is an Autosomal DNA test and shows only your ethnicity. You can then expand at more cost to get a “Y” or “X” DNA test, or a Health DNA test. It is like everything else on the internet, if you put it out there someone will find it.
I think most of us have seen the sci-fi classic Gattaca with all star cast, including Uma Thurman, Jude Law, Ethan Hawke, and many more. Genetic Discrimination is definitely a possibility, if these technologies are allowed to get out of hand without boundaries. We must start asking questions and determine how far we are willing to go with their uses.
This is all great until Big Government starts using DNA for other purposes – some of which we have no idea about but it will occur in the future.
If anyone thinks it won’t – just look at people being freed from Prison because of technology that didn’t exist when they were put in – which is a good thing
Kinda makes one wonder how many people are in prison today that are innocent and a future technology will prove it.
NO. Whatever tools to solve crimes.
Same logic for fingerprints.
NO. Use every tool to catch the criminal.
Same logic for fingerprints.
No, not the same logic as fingerprints. Though there are some genetic aspects to fingerprints, same with hair color, those are no where near as useful for matching family members as DNA. I have never heard of a suspect being identified because they had his third cousin’s thumb print. DNA can link you to anyone with a common ancestor going pretty far back, not so with fingerprints.
Nope. I don’t mind. now I just need to remember not to commit any crimes, since I’ve submitted my DNA.
The problem with that strategy is that what is considered criminal behavior changes over time. Yesterday’s saint can be tomorrow’s felon. The definition of good guy/bad guy changes, your DNA doesn’t. For your system to work, you have to be willing to conform to any changes put forth by whatever group is in charge, since they’ve already got your number. You have also placed this condition on your extended family, did you ask them first? This includes people not born yet.
Sure, use it.
DNA is such complex technology; it’s amazing it was developed. Yet we still can’t seem to find, and agree on a humane way to put murderers to death.
Genealogy based DNA research has helped solved not only the Golden State Killer case, which is horrific, but many other unsolved murders and has brought justice and peace to the families. Hunt them all down.
I may be wrong, but isn’t your DNA present and collected during covid test??? Sweet dreams everyone..
That’s preposterous, and it’s “you’re”.
Fist it would be used for popular things, like catching heinous criminals. Then the overton window moves and they’ll start, and indefinitely continue, to use it for something else.
I have no trust in the government to not blatantly abuse it.
Someday you might be deemed guilty by your betters. Just sayin’.
I’m glad that monsters like The Golden State Killer and others are being caught, but I think it comes at a bigger expense than most people realize. We have basically thrown the 4th Amendment out the window.
Having our private DNA and health data, on top of everything that Google, Facebook, and your cellular and home internet providers collect, sell and share, points towards a terrible future for privacy. I know there is no Constitutional Amendment giving us a specific right to privacy, but it is implicit and does exist in a nexus of several Amendments.
I wish our Congress would take action and create one, but they are already wholly owned subsidiaries and perpetrators in the theft and death of privacy. My hopes for action are not high.
Uh..there is a right to privacy. Its a basic human right and the ability of the government to invade it is limited by the Fourth Amendment. What the problem is, is that so many don’t cherish their own privacy and give it away without thinking or for getting some token freebie in exchange for it.
The point I was trying to make is that the 4th Amendment protects from illegal search and seizure, but it is not respected by government and citizens alike, let alone the corporations that control it for profit. It also does not protect us digitally as it should in regards to our personal data.
Most people do not know the extent to which their activities are tracked, even if they aren’t using all of the services. For example, the Facebook app would come preinstalled on many phones, and collect data even if you never signed in to it.
Citizens have the right to be informed on when and what of their data is being collected, and who it is being sold and disseminated to, and for how much. Google, Facebook and Apple are at the top of our economies, and their product is us. Now we are dealing with our genetic information being treated the same way.
I’m glad a few killers face justice, but I still think their 4th Amendment rights were violated along with the rest of ours. We need a digital bill of rights in regards to our personal data. First we need a competent Government not beholden to corporate or foreign influence.
I’m somewhat concerned about privacy, except what do I have to hide? That I smoked a little pot in the sixties, (never did much for me) did some cocaine in the eighties and nineties ( very infrequent, did not want to get hooked) partied too much at times, I think that would be about it, so if they can catch a horrendous serial killer or rapist more power to them.
Fair enough, and thank you for your candor. What I think you and others are failing to grasp is that these technologies, which will only get exponentially more powerful as DNA science improves and DNA data bases grow, will work just as well for ANY correlation, not just catching serial killers.
The genealogy website GED is in the public domain and accessible to all from what I understand, other genealogy sites may have a privacy clause.
If you are a criminal, better hope that you can keep your kinfolk away from these sites, sooner or later, you will be found out!
Of course, in the case of the Golden State Killer, he would probably have a difficult time preventing all his 1st, 2nd and 3rd cousins once removed from giving up their DNA because he probably did not know them anyway?!
This is probably the only good usage of this kind of data. The big looming privacy issues still remain. So many people have used these services that it’s now possible to track or profile people who opt out. Improved technology and big data query techniques have made it possible to profile those who value their privacy. To me, that’s the big issue.
Governments aren’t going to be able to do much with DNA registries, but corporations? A couple of people here have mentioned insurance costs. It could get worse than increasing costs. With efforts to toss out Obamacare and the ban on pre-existing conditions, it could be possible to create a permanently uninsurable segment of the population.
Nothing short of massive lawsuits can stop companies like Ancestry from selling your data, and by extension, your family members’ either. I’m not comfortable with anyone having that kind of access by proxy to my DNA. But it’s not like I really have a choice anymore. Odds are that distant cousins have used these services have taken that from me.
While I do not fully agree with the powers that be using our info on Ancestry and other such sites, the laughable Democrats, liberal and socialist government we are now facing does nothing to enforce laws and just looks the other way, using Ancestry, etc., may be what we need to resort to in order to get criminals off the streets.
Keep in mind that Kamala Harris pushed for AB 47 to go through that allows the entitlement crowd/protesters to not be prosecuted for thefts not totally $950. Personally, who would vote for someone who backs this type of lawlessness?
This liberal has major issues with genetic profiling. In fact, the left has been highly critical historically about genetic information issues.
Several progressives have been outspoken for decades now about the ability to patent DNA, especially in the agricultural industry (Jim Hightower’s opposition to Monsanto in the early 2000s comes to mind). A lot of the late 90s/early 2000s demonstrations against NAFTA/WTO have involved GMOs and genetic patenting. A lot of discussion in left/liberal circles involved the possibility of some corporation getting patents to the human genome.
Intellectual property issues have also been an issue in the more liberal parts of the tech community– especially the FOSS/Open Source circles.
Where we are now has been discussed for quite a long time and has faced significant opposition on the left. I’m not so sure also that most of the commenters here who say they have nothing to hide are liberal at all. “Nothing to hide” has been the rationale for privacy invasion since the Bush Jr. administration’s establishment of Homeland Security. Some of us still bristle at the argument– well, I do anyway 😉
Thank you for responding but I find your response rather frustrating. You seem to say democrats are on the correct side of civil liberties, but give disturbing reasons. Your reasons are about the money involved in corporations capturing the value of genetic information with patents. Republicans, I believe anyway in general, see this as a civil rights issue and about how the government is expanding surveillance of its citizens. At least speaking for myself, I don’t much care about which pharmaceutical captures the most patents. That is more of a Hillary Clinton concern.
YES, use it and put them down!