FC: Wearable police computers, and a final word on DNA sniffing

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

[Now watch some enterprising law enforcement agency combine the "Digital 
MP" system with DNA sniffing... --Declan]

*********

http://www.dtic.mil/armylink/news/Nov2000/a20001113digitalmp.html

Soldiers test `Digital MP System'

   by Trish Warrick

   FORT POLK, La. (Army News Service, Nov. 13, 2000) Military Police
   could see around corners, through trees and in the dark as they tested
   the Army's new "Digital MP System" this month at Fort Polk, La.

   Patrolmen wore eyeglass-mounted miniature cameras providing "streaming
   video" to their partners. Viewing screens in the eyeglasses also
   allowed the MPs to check the faces of suspects they stopped against
   digital mug shots of known offenders.

   Fort Polk's 91st Military Police Detachment soldiers became the first
   MPs to test the system Oct. 30 to Nov. 3. Representatives of the U.S.
   Army Soldier Systems Center in Natick, Mass., brought the Digital MP
   System to Fort Polk. They were joined by members of the Defense
   Advanced Research Projects Agency and a number of contractor teams
   wanting to see how the system would work on real soldiers.

   The Digital MP is a durable, lightweight, wearable communications and
   information management system designed to help carry out
   reconnaissance, checkpoint security, anti-terrorism operations and
   other MP missions, said program manager Henry Girolamo, Natick
   Soldiers Center.

   The backbone of the Digital MP is a wearable computer developed by ViA
   Inc., MicroOptical Corp and Honeywell Inc. and tailored to the mission
   requirements of the MP soldier, Girolamo said. The Digital MP's
   support features include a hands-free, voice-operated interface and a
   battery that provides day-long power on a single charge. It features
   peripherals such as:

     * An audiovisual system with built-in miniature camera for face
       recognition and image display plus a noise-cancelling microphone
       and bone-conduction microphone/earphone for voice recognition, all
       incorporated in a pair of normal-size eyeglass frames
     * A BDU-pocket-sized "military e-book" readable even in strong
       sunlight or pale starlight (with night vision goggles) that emits
       no light to give away a soldier's position
     * An electronic glove that can function like a computer mouse with
       the e-book and translate hand signals into words on other
       soldiers' eyeglass-mounted viewers
       The Digital MP system can connect a military police team
       wirelessly and in ways never before possible, officials said.
       The eyeglass-mounted camera provides streaming video, which means
       "it can transmit to me what another MP is looking at even though I
       can't see him," said Sgt. Michael Sauer, Special Reaction Team
       noncommissioned officer in charge, 91st MP Det.
       An MP making a traffic stop or manning a checkpoint can take live
       videos which are checked against digital mug shots stored in the
       National Crime Interdiction Center database, Sauer said, so he's
       quickly alerted if the person stopped has a criminal record. On
       deployment, the system can warn him that he's dealing with a
       suspected terrorist or war criminal.
       An MP on patrol can use the e-book to quickly help others locate
       what he sees. "Say he's on recon, looking at the terrain," said
       Sauer. "He sees enemy tanks." Using traditional methods, the
       soldier plots coordinates on a paper map, calls the TOC on the
      radio and another soldier plots the coordinates on another map.
       With Digital MP, "He puts the icon on the map and sends it to the
       operations center," Sauer said.
       With the electronic glove, MPs separated by thick woods, buildings
       or darkness can still communicate silently with the familiar hand
       signals for "Suspect armed!" and other vital information.
       The adapted Nomex flight glove, with bend sensors in each finger
       and in the wrist, pressure sensors in the index and middle
       fingertips and 2-degree tilt sensors, renders preprogrammed
       gestures as words in fellow MPs' eyeglass display monitors. The
       glove works when the signaler doesn't have line of sight
       communication with the others and doesn't want to give away his
       position by speaking, said Sauer.
       The glove also functions like a mouse with the e-book, guiding the
       cursor with the tilt sensor and using the pressure sensors as
       right and left clicks. When silence is necessary, as on patrol,
       the glove can override the voice-operated system.
       The Digital MP can be programmed to continuously translate speech
       from English to another language and vice versa with only a
       five-second lag. Presently it can handle Spanish, Korean, Arabic,
       German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Thai and Turkish, and
       officials said they plan to add "militarese" -- translating the
       soldier's "clicks" into the civilian's "kilometers," for instance.
       (Editor's note: Trish Warrick is editor of the Fort Polk
       Guardian.)

*********

> From: "Phil Cormier" <pcormier () world std com>
> To: <declan () well com>
> Subject: RE: More on DNA sniffing and whether it can reliably identify you
> Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 14:11:59 -0500
>
> Mitochondrial DNA testing is alive and well in the law enforcement arena.
> While it is not as discriminating as nuclear DNA, it is a very powerful
> tool, especially in terms of excluding innocent people who have been
> unjustly accused or convicted.  Our firm has two cases in which we hope
> MtDNA testing will help prove our clients' innocence.  Further, mtDNA
> testing can be utilized in situations where the size of the sample is
> extremely small, old or degraded and can also be used to better identify
> hairs left at crime scenes which typically are not suitable for nuclear DNA
> testing.  Since the mtDNA is derived from the mitochondria one can actually
> run the extractions on the hair shaft.  It is used extensively by forensic
> anthropologists, including successful extractions from Neanderthal
> skeletons.
>
> Phil Cormier
> Silverglate & Good
> 83 Atlantic Avenue
> Boston, MA 02110

*********

> From: "Richard Wilson" <richard_j_wilson () hotmail com>
> To: declan () well com
> Subject: Re: FC: More on DNA sniffing and whether it can reliably identify you
> Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 02:10:01 GMT
> X-OriginalArrivalTime: 15 Nov 2000 02:10:01.0947 (UTC) 
> FILETIME=[298622B0:01C04EA9]
>
> Declan
>
> To understand one possiblity from implementation of skin flake sampling 
> for DNA, you need only to watch the film GATTACA. Incidentally, the name 
> of the film is based on the initials of three of the four amino acids that 
> comprise DNA - Guanine, Adenine and Tyrosine. Cytosine misses out.
>
> Cheers
> Richard

*********


> Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 10:58:40 -0800 (PST)
> From: "Bradley K. Sherman" <bks () emf net>
> To: declan () well com
> Subject: Re:  FC: More on DNA sniffing and whether it can reliably 
> identify you
>
> <URL:http://expertpages.com/news/wsj121997.htm>
>
>     --bks

*********

> Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 17:45:31 -0800
> To: declan () well com, politech () politechbot com
> From: David Honig <honig () sprynet com>
> Subject: Re: FC: More on DNA sniffing and whether it can reliably
>   identify you
>
> At 01:21 PM 11/14/00 -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> >Hugh below writes that mitochondrial DNA may not carry enough
> >differentiating information to be useful to police. I welcome other views,
> >but here's an excerpt from the National Commission on the Future of DNA
> >Evidence report saying it can, or can soon:
>
> >>From: "Hugh D. Hyatt" <hughhyatt () crosswinds net>
> >>IIRC, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) comprises a relatively short sequence
> >>of [A, C, G & T] amino acids and is passed directly from mothers to
> >>their children, with fathers having no contribution whatsoever.
> >>Consequently differences among different mtDNA lines occur relatively
> >>rarely.  I would think, though I could easily be wrong, that because of
> >>this, there would be relatively little information that could be use to
> >>law enforcement.
>
> Agreed: 1. there's less of it, 2. it doesn't mix like other things you
> get from your parents (forensic genetic markers, major histocompatability
> proteins, immune system genes).  All your mitochondria are descendents of
> those floating in the egg that ended up cypherpunk.
>
> However, If there's enough diversity in the mitochondral population you
> could show that John Doe (or his siblings or maternal line) were there.
> And there certainly is some variation; IIRC some of the Lucy pedigrees were
> based on tracing mitochondrial genes.  (Besides, you can't copy error free
> [1],
> and the mito genes are not *so* 'densely coded' that a point mutation =
> death, ergo, you'll see some variation)
>
> There are probably some bio usenet groups where
> such questions would be welcomed, and answered by practicioners,
> quantitatively even.  But you asked here :-)
>
> Of course, if you were to sequence the whole thing (NOT how forensic DNA
> analysis is done now, which looks for presence-or-not of short strings
> chosen because they tend to vary between people) you'd get better evidence
> --but that's rather too much today (e.g., the entire civilized world is
> working on sequencing one or two people these days).  And if you could
> sequence that much, you'd probably sequence some of the genes in the
> regular ol' nucleus.
>
>
> [1] see Shannon on noise, bandwidth, error rates, coding, etc; note that
> this implies that you'll eventually (in the  mathematical sense) die of
> cancer (ie a few somatic mutations in the right places) if nothing else.
*********

> Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 18:09:38 +0100
> To: declan () well com
> From: "Charles Arthur, The Independent" <carthur () independent co uk>
> Subject: Re: mitochondrial DNA: not enough to convict
>
> Hi Declan...
>
> At 1:21 pm -0500 on 14/11/00, you wrote:
>
> >Hugh below writes that mitochondrial DNA may not carry enough
> >differentiating information to be useful to police. I welcome other views,
>
> I don't think there could be many other views. mDNA (as it's called) can
> produce "results" - you can say that someone is directly related to a
> 3,500yo skeleton found in a cave (I did a story about this) because as Hugh
> said the mDNA is passed down from the mother - it lies outside the nucleus
> of the cell (where the 26 chromosomes lie) and "powers" the cell.  For some
> reason which I don't know it survives long periods after the cell death far
> better than nuclear DNA. (Maybe because it's not involved in cell death..)
>
> mDNA is used to follow the "ticking clock" of evolution, based on how
> quickly mutations arise. But although you could likely rule someone *out*
> of a crime based on mDNA, I don't think it would be sufficient - or at
> least, any decent combo of lawyer and expert witness should be able to
> argue persuasively that it's insufficient - to convict.
>
> DNA in the UK is taken from swabs from the inside of the mouth, which is
> then used to create the fingerprint from the nuclear DNA.
>
> Have a look at
> http://www.themacdonaldcase.org/accuracy_of_new_dna_test_is_call.htm which
> reprints a WSJ article from ..it doesn't say when.. about this.
>
>         Charles
>
>  -------------------------------------------------------------------
> The Independent newspaper on the Web: http://www.independent.co.uk/
>         It's even better on paper
> Live in the US? Get a new worldview: http://www.independenceavenue.com

*********

> Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 10:58:00 -0500
> To: declan () well com, politech () politechbot com
> From: Duncan Frissell <frissell () panix com>
> Subject: Re: FC: DNA sniffing and identification based on your breathing
>
> Time to start work on skinsuits to block this sort of thing.  They could 
> easily become trendy.
>
> DCF

**********




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