[Dismas]

There have been cases of police, in San Francisco and elsewhere, mishandling DNA. In some cases this resulted in unrelated or false convictions.

This week we learned that San Francisco Police used a woman’s own DNA—collected years earlier as part of an investigation into her sexual assault—to charge her for an unrelated property crime. What’s worse—it appears the S.F. police routinely search victims’ DNA in criminal investigations.

This practice is possible because San Francisco has been storing DNA gathered from rape survivors in the same local database where it stores DNA from rape assailants and other suspects. The San Francisco District Attorney stated the database potentially includes thousands of victims’ DNA profiles, with entries over “many, many years.”

This is not the first time San Francisco has had problems with its DNA crime lab. In 2010, the SF Weekly reported the same lab concealed DNA mixups and lacked proper security practices to prevent contamination. And in 2015, a lab technician was found to have improperly analyzed DNA evidence in a murder trial, which caused the police to reexamine 1,400 criminal cases that were prosecuted in part based on that same technician’s DNA work.

The San Francisco police chief asserted this week that the lab’s collection practices “have been legally vetted and conform with state and national forensic standards.” However, local DNA databases like San Francisco’s are not held to the same strict laws and regulations as state and federal-level DNA databases like the FBI’s CODIS database. This means that there is nothing to prevent local police and the DA from storing—and searching—DNA from nearly anyone who might interact with the criminal justice system. This includes crime victims, potential suspects who are never arrested or charged, people who have consented to have their DNA collected to rule themselves out as suspects, and even people whose DNA has been collected without their knowledge.

Read More: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/02/no...rching-dna

[Geofront]

Man, I think only unprefossional people admit this sort of mistakes

[Boudica]

Man, I think only unprefossional people admit this sort of mistakes

Oddly, I'd argue the exact opposite. I think transparency is much more professional than secrecy and cover ups.

It sounds like the issue was moreso related to how the data is stored, than the actual evidence itself. I've actually also heard a crazy story whereby the same woman's DNA was picked up for multiple crimes all over the US (I think). Turns out it was someone's DNA from a place where the cotton swabs were manufactured. They found the cotton swabs used for DNA testing were contaminated at the point of manufacturing. How bizarre!

On the note of police access to DNA - I'll be truthful, I expected DNA & fingerprinting to be available to any relevant part of a government system the moment it's recorded by any of their entities. E.g., I'd expect border recordings of my fingerprints to also be on record alongside any DNA if I were tested by police for anything. I would assume that any part of the criminal justice system would be able to access that DNA when running DNA matches for any open case. In theory, it's very useful to have that quantity of data to narrow down a case.

Naturally the concern is the repercussions when this goes wrong. However, I'd argue this is an incredible rarity.

[Geofront]

you might be right, but I still have another opinion

[elwoodb]

Storing victim's DNA and using it to catch them doing something illegal? sure why not