[ExI] 23andme again

[Mirco Romanato]

Il 03/07/2013 07:03, spike ha scritto:

> We know that crime is already changing as a result of the proliferation of
> security cameras and home security alarm systems.  As technology advances,
> citizens are empowered to solve crimes, more than the cops are in a way.
> Reasoning: as ever more homes get sophisticated security systems that take
> photos and store them on the internet, burglary becomes ever less profitable
> and practical.  Since fewer people carry currency now, I would think mugging
> must be declining; less profitable.  So the result is that we need fewer
> cops.  So the ones remaining aren't all that terribly motivated to capture
> and haul away their declining pool of clients: the sleazebags.  So we have
> too many cops, and we need to lay off some of them.

No.
They will just multiply the laws, so the cops will have something to
find about you anyway.

If you look at the recent decades the number of laws in the western
democracies have ballooned in a way or another.

You could be arrested and / or prosecuted for any reason or no reason.
With or without evidences supporting the charge.
And, at least in Italy, they can found you guilty of something with no
direct proof, witness or anything (just read about the last trial of
Berlusconi). And this is about someone able to defend himself; spending
something like 300 M € in lawyers to defend himself from the prosecutors
for 20 years and was always found not guilty or the statute of
limitation kicked in.

A common guy like me and you would land in jail. End of story.
You could be innocent like Jesus and you would end on the Cross willing
or not.

> At the same time, we are getting all these new tools for catching bad guys,
> among them 23andMe.  We also know that there are a hundred ways to do
> amateur sleuthing with a DNA signature.  Envision a crime victim who somehow
> recovers the perp's DNA, sends it in, opens an account, then starts a
> 23-forum where the victim announce to everyone there: "Account Perp-66 is an
> unknown bad guy.  A crisp K-note to the first person who can identify him,
> and provide some compelling evidence."

> I might take a shot at that for a thousand bucks, and I might even work at
> developing a collection of scripts which would do the tricks I have learned.
> The point is that we enter an era when we might be able to catch way more
> bad guys for a very reasonable price.  We can easily imagine crime victims
> putting up a hundred bucks to enter the perp's DNA into the database and a
> thousand for identifying who it is.  What I don't know is what the legal
> system will do if a private citizen catches the bastard; probably nothing.


> Enforcement doesn't want competition in the enforcement business.

This is because the government hate the Mafia.
They are in the same business: protection (for a fee) of the people
doing business in the territory the control, or else...

The problem, in my vision, is the bad guy you are thinking, people
leaving DNA traces around, is not the most brilliant dude. He could be
violent, but he will not be a great threat for a large number of people.

The problem is the large number of high level psychopathics in charge of
institutions. Their crimes do not leave DNA samples around, but wreck
the economy and the lives of people on a massive scale.

Mirco