this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024

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B.C. police secretly took DNA from Kurdish community in tea-cup sting to solve murder (bc.ctvnews.ca)

submitted 10 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

18 comments fedilink hide all child comments

B.C. police secretly took DNA from Kurdish community in tea-cup sting to solve murder::Undercover police investigating the murder of a 13-year-old girl in British Columbia disguised themselves as tea marketers to secretly collect the DNA of about 150 Kurdish community members, court recordings reveal.

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[–] tabular@lemmy.world 25 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Do they destroy they record of not-guilty people's DNA?

[–] xor@sh.itjust.works 13 points 10 months ago

https://i.giphy.com/D2kFkQwMzFcVq.webp

[–] Mycatiskai@lemmy.ca 4 points 10 months ago

If they randomly decided on checking the Kurdish community for a suspect then it might be more questionable but they had DNA from sperm found in the dead body of a 13 year old that matched markers found in Kurdish people.

I'm more surprised that they didn't find that the DNA had matches to the victim since they were siblings but they didn't mention anything about that in the article.

[+] CaptainBasculin@lemmy.ml -10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I wouldn't care if someone did a racial scan to a group involving me to find a murderer of a 13 year old. Fuck child murderers.

[–] Cosmonauticus@lemmy.world 26 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Maybe you like your privacy being violated but the rest of us don't

[–] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 9 points 10 months ago (6 children)

i get that you think your dna is private. really, i do.

but you broadcast it 24/7. it is only a matter of time until the entire planet is easily mapped genetically. we're half way there now, and a huge chunk of those people 'did not opt in'. a human can be mapped in minutes, if not seconds.

you send your genetic code out into the open 24 hours a day 7 days a week in every space you occupy and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

i understand not wanting that information used against you, hence all the genetic laws.... but it is public. your dna is not going to be some secret you get to keep in perpetuity any more than your hair color or marital status.

[–] imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works 7 points 10 months ago

That's actually a really good point that I hadn't previously realized. Collecting genetic information from any living human is incredibly trivial to do without them ever consenting or even knowing that it happened.

[–] AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If your definition of privacy is "Information that cannot be obtained", you have a shit definition of privacy.

Privacy is a legal issue. Nobody should be keeping records of our DNA, or any other information, regardless of how easy that information is to acquire.

[–] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 0 points 10 months ago

at no point did i say it should not be regulated in use.

its like getting pissed when your exact image is captured on camera. it it illegal? mostly, no. can it be? yep, depends.

[–] Alteon@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Would it be okay if I traced every bit of public data about you, including your name, address, cellphone, familial information, work history, and online social media history etc, put it into a nice little package and put it online? I mean, I'd only be doxxing you with publicly available information that was easily linked from your profile. Would it be okay if I go the next step and gather your DNA from a publicly available location? All I need is a quick strand of hair.

I mean it's public. Anyone can find this information with a little effort....or do you feel have some sort of right to privacy? I understand not wanting any of this information broadcast to the public....but it is public information.

[–] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com -1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

do you really think there arent entities accumulating this information on you, right now??

and hair? you dont need hair to get a dna sample. you breathe it out constantly.

you should have no expectation of privacy to the sequence of your dna.

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 3 points 10 months ago

your dna is private

I'm a twin. No such illusions for us. It's not even exclusively mine! He's dumped his into nexus and fast pass and 20 different crime databases as he hoped from job to job, so they've all got it now.

[–] Rev3rze@feddit.nl 2 points 10 months ago

a human can be mapped in minutes, if not seconds.

Purely from a technical standpoint I'm wondering what you're referring to here. Most of my work is DNA sequencing using different techniques and while we can do it blisteringly fast if necessary it still takes at minimum a few hours to isolate dna, prep the dna for sequencing and then running for 24 hours followed by data analysis. That's for bacterial DNA, I don't have experience with sequencing human genomes but I imagine it is more complicated than bacteria. But, I haven't kept up with literature on this subject lately so now I'm wondering if I've missed some breakthrough technique that speeds up the process to minutes.

[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

I knew I shouldn't have masturbated on that ceiling fan in the food court...

[–] Tangent5280@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I hope they atleast got a warrant to run the operation and have protocols to destroy genetic details unconnected to the case after its done.

[–] circuscritic@lemmy.ca 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

"We know the murderer is a human, so we got a warrant to take blood samples from every human. Which of course makes that a legal and moral decision."

"Obviously we'll destroy all of those samples afterwards. We're the police, you can trust us"

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The part these crusaders don't understand is that such a plan was bold, rare, and signed-off by a judge after some debate.

Painting is as 4 rogue cops in a sea of comicbook-villian cops sure is neat for the homeroom edge lords, though.

[–] jqubed@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

Was it?

It's not clear if a warrant was sought or obtained, and police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

I really don’t know what to think of it overall. Obviously I’m happy they were able to eventually identify and convict someone who raped and murdered a child. The way they went about the large sweep was deceptive, but if there’s a warrant and supervision and protections in place for the innocent people who had no connection to the crime maybe it’s okay. I know I’d be feeling deceived and probably a little violated if I was one of the innocent people who was caught in the sweep, though.