dna
Obama Supports DNA Sampling Upon Arrest
Josh Gerstein over at Politico sent Threat Level his piece underscoring once again President Barack Obama is not the civil-liberties Knight In Shining Armor many were expecting. Gerstein posts a televised interview of Obama and John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted . The nation’s chief executive extols the virtues of mandatory DNA testing of Americans upon arrest, even absent charges or a conviction.
Continue reading »DNA Testing Firm Goes Bankrupt; Who Gets the Data?
An Icelandic firm that offers private DNA testing to customers has filed for bankruptcy in the U.S., raising privacy concerns about the fate of customer DNA samples and records, according to the Times of London. DeCODE Genetics, a genetics research firm, began offering personalized DNA testing through its deCODEme website two years ago. A customer mails in a sample taken from the inside of his cheek, and the service calculates the subject’s genetic risk for disease — cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, heart disease.
Continue reading »Anonymized genetic research data still carries privacy risks
Up until recently, looking for the changes in DNA that contribute to human genetic diseases was a laborious process that involved tracking the changes through the generations of individual families. The completion of the human genome has changed all of that, allowing researchers to check for hundreds of thousands of individual DNA changes in large populations, and to identify those changes that are associated with specific genetic diseases—as the number of people genotyped grows, data sharing might be able to increase the statistical power of these experiments. But researchers are now cautioning that sharing the data might allow someone to learn about the people who contribute DNA samples to these studies.
Continue reading »FBI ‘Going Dark’ with New Advanced Surveillance Program
The proposed 2010 Justice Department budget published last week reveals the development of a new FBI advanced electronic surveillance program dubbed “Going Dark.” The program is being budgeted $233.9 million next year. According to the published budget summary (.pdf), the program “supports the FBI’s electronic surveillance (ELSUR), intelligence collection and evidence gathering capabilities, as well as those of the greater Intelligence Community.” An FBI spokesman told ABC News , which first reported the information, that the program’s name, Going Dark, “does not refer to a specific capability, but is a program name for the part of the FBI, Operational Technology Division’s (OTD) lawful interception program which is shared with other law enforcement agencies.” He added that “The term applies to the research and development of new tools, technical support and training initiatives.” The program is designed to help the agency address challenges with conducting surveillance over newish technologies, such as VoIP. The program is also doing research on automated link analysis to find connections between subjects of surveillance “and other investigative suspects.” The budget report also discusses a Biometric Technology Center that is being developed jointly by the FBI, Defense Department and Justice Department in conjunction with the University of West Virginia for research and development of biometric technologies.
Continue reading »Zodiac Killer’s ‘Unmasking’ Lacks Cryptographic Proof
The Southern California women who claimed Wednesday that her deceased father was the famed Zodiac killer says she can prove it in part by providing the secret key to the murderer’s encrypted messages — with one rather serious caveat. San Francisco was abuzz this morning with Deborah Perez’s claim that she was present as a 7-year-old girl when her father committed a string of seven confirmed murders that paralyzed San Francisco in the late 1960s. But Perez’s 20 minute press conference turned out to be sadly devoid of solid evidence of her claims.
Continue reading »
