Coming Soon to a Police Station Near You: The DNA 'Magic Box'

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: January 21, 2019 at 9:59:30 PM GMT+9
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Coming Soon to a Police Station Near You: The DNA 'Magic Box'
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> Coming Soon to a Police Station Near You: The DNA ‘Magic Box’
> With Rapid DNA machines, genetic fingerprinting could become as routine as the old-fashioned kind. But forensic 
> experts see a potential for misuse.
> By Heather Murphy
> Jan 21 2019
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/21/science/dna-crime-gene-technology.html>
>
> BENSALEM, Pa. — They call it the “magic box.” Its trick is speedy, nearly automated processing of DNA.
>
> “It’s groundbreaking to have it in the police department,” said Detective Glenn Vandegrift of the Bensalem Police 
> Department. “If we can do it, any department in the country can do it.”
>
> Bensalem, a suburb in Bucks County, near Philadelphia, is on the leading edge of a revolution in how crimes are 
> solved. For years, when police wanted to learn whether a suspect’s DNA matched previously collected crime-scene DNA, 
> they sent a sample to an outside lab, then waited a month or more for results. 
>
> But in early 2017, the police booking station in Bensalem became the first in the country to install a Rapid DNA 
> machine, which provides results in 90 minutes, and which police can operate themselves. Since then, a growing number 
> of law enforcement agencies across the country — in Houston, Utah, Delaware — have begun operating similar machines 
> and analyzing DNA on their own. 
>
> The science-fiction future, in which police can swiftly identify robbers and murderers from discarded soda cans and 
> cigarette butts, has arrived. In 2017, President Trump signed into law the Rapid DNA Act, which, starting this year, 
> will enable approved police booking stations in several states to connect their Rapid DNA machines to Codis, the 
> national DNA database. Genetic fingerprinting is set to become as routine as the old-fashioned kind.
>
> Law-enforcement officials said that the device had provided leads in hundreds of cases, helping to facilitate arrests 
> and exonerate falsely accused individuals. Members of the Rapid DNA team in the Orange County, Calif., district 
> attorney’s office said that some robbers were identified so quickly that they were caught still holding stolen goods. 
> Rapid DNA machines were used to help identify victims of the recent wildfires in Northern California.
>
> But already many legal experts and scientists are troubled by the way the technology is being used. As police 
> agencies build out their local DNA databases, they are collecting DNA not only from people who have been charged with 
> major crimes but also, increasingly, from people who are merely deemed suspicious, permanently linking their genetic 
> identities to criminal databases. 
>
> [Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]
>
> “It’s a lot harder to resist the temptation just to run some people’s DNA, just to see if there’s anything useful 
> that you get out of it,” said Erin Murphy, a law professor at New York University and author of “Inside the Cell: The 
> Dark Side of Forensic DNA.” That approach challenges the “fundamental way we’ve structured liberty in our 
> constitutional order.”
>
> A sign in the Bensalem Police Department reminds officers to ask for a DNA sample from anyone they arrest. Most 
> people give consent.Mark Makela for The New York Times
>
> Moreover, there is little agreement on which types of genetic material should be run through the device. Valuable 
> genetic evidence is likely to be rendered useless if handled by nonexperts, critics say, and police officers risk 
> being misled by the results of Rapid DNA analysis.
>
> “There are not the same standards and rules and safeguards that are in place for the national database,” said Michael 
> Coble, the associate director of the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification. “Who is going to 
> change that? I don’t know.”
>
> If the Rapid DNA system has flaws, now is the moment to address them, many experts argue. Peter Stout, president of 
> the Houston Forensic Science Center, was left with concerns after completing a Rapid DNA pilot program with the 
> Houston Police Department last February.
>
> “We need fast and cheap,” said Dr. Stout. “It also needs to be right.”
>
> [snip]
>
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