Horror: Recall the unreliability of electronic voting machines ordered installed after the 2000 elections? Now how 'bout the national DNA databases deemed totally definitive proof of guilt? Think that it would be possible to jimjam the system? Well, as it turns out, the DNA signatures are not as unique as asserted by the FBI.
And guess what? The FBI is fighting to prevent searches of their databases which would exonerate and would demonstrate the fallibility of their toy... on the grounds that these searches violate the privacy rights of convicted offenders (smirk, smirk, like we believe they are concerned about Americans' privacy? Does anyone listen to this crap and take it seriously? Well, some judges...)
Excerpt: State crime lab analyst Kathryn Troyer was running tests on Arizona's DNA database when she stumbled across two felons with remarkably similar genetic profiles.
The men matched at nine of the 13 locations on chromosomes, or loci, commonly used to distinguish people.
The FBI estimated the odds of unrelated people sharing those genetic markers to be as remote as 1 in 113 billion. But the mug shots of the two felons suggested that they were not related: One was black, the other white.
In the years after her 2001 discovery, Troyer found dozens of similar matches — each seeming to defy impossible odds. ...
In a typical criminal case, investigators look for matches to a specific profile. But the Arizona search looked for any matches among all the thousands of profiles in the database, greatly increasing the odds of finding them.
As a result, Thomas Callaghan, head of the FBI's CODIS unit, has dismissed Troyer's findings as "misleading" and "meaningless."
He urged authorities in several states to object to Arizona-style searches, advising them to tell courts that the probes could violate the privacy of convicted offenders, tie up crucial databases and even lead the FBI to expel offending states from CODIS — a penalty that could cripple states' ability to solve crimes.
In one case, Callaghan advised state officials to raise the risk of expulsion with a judge, then told the officials that expulsion was unlikely to happen, according to a record of the conversation filed in court.
In an interview with The Times, Callaghan denied any effort to mislead the court.
The FBI's arguments have persuaded courts in California and other states to block the searches. But in at least two states, judges overruled the objections.
The resulting searches found nearly 1,000 more pairs that matched at nine or more loci. ...
Three years later, Bicka Barlow, a San Francisco defense attorney, came across a description of Troyer's poster on the Internet.
Its implications became clear as she prepared to defend a client accused of a 20-year-old rape and murder.
A database search had found a nine-locus match between his DNA profile and semen found in the victim's body. Based on FBI estimates, the prosecutor said the odds of a coincidental match were as remote as 1 in 108 trillion.
Recalling the Arizona discovery, Barlow wondered if there might be similar coincidental matches in California's database — the world's third-largest, with 360,000 DNA profiles at the time. The attorney called Troyer in Phoenix to learn more.
Troyer seemed eager to talk about her discovery, which still had her puzzled, Barlow recalled. The analyst told Barlow she had searched the growing Arizona database since the conference and found more pairs of profiles matching at nine and even 10 loci.
Encouraged, Barlow subpoenaed a new search of the Arizona database. Among about 65,000 felons, there were 122 pairs that matched at nine of 13 loci. Twenty pairs matched at 10 loci. One matched at 11 and one at 12, though both later proved to belong to relatives. ...
Other crime labs have adopted the policy, and some no longer tell jurors there is even a possibility of a coincidental match.
Soon after Barlow received the results, Callaghan, the head of the FBI's DNA database unit, reprimanded Troyer's lab in Phoenix, saying it should have sought the permission of the FBI before complying with the court's order in the San Francisco case.
Asked later whether Callaghan had threatened her lab, Troyer said in court, "I wouldn't say it's been threatened, but we have been reminded."
Dwight Adams, director of the FBI lab at the time, faxed Griffith, Troyer's boss, a letter saying the Arizona state lab was "under review" for releasing the search results.
"While we understand that the Arizona Department of Public Safety, acting in good faith, complied with a proper judicial court order in the release of the nine-loci search of your offender DNA records, this release of DNA data was not authorized," Adams wrote, asking Arizona to take "appropriate corrective action."
Arizona officials obtained a court order to prevent Barlow from sharing the results with anyone else.
Moral of story: when the government plans to convict someone they don't want their phony evidence questioned by anyone, no matter how many lies they have to tell to make their case stick!
If you want evidence that the USA is in terminal decline, corruption of the courts and law enforcement are prima facie evidence that the system is in irreversible decline. They still fool around with their games, bothering to go to court to make believe that their criminal behavior is "legal", but more and more they don't even pretend what they're doing is legal — that's why everything is now "classified" for "national security", because if people knew what crimes they were committing the government would lose all authority, except the gun.
Lucy Lindblad
A curmudgeon friend of mine expressed strong doubts about DNA evidence from the beginning, from when DNA evidence was first being introduced in court, and being used exclusively to lock people up, not yet to get innocent people out of prison as it's (occasionally) used now. My friend's thinking at the time, which made pretty good sense to me, was that DNA evidence is so highly technical, it essentially cannot be explained and demonstrated to jurors — which means, it's evidence that effectively cannot be questioned. A police lab says that the evidence points to a particular defendant, and a police or police-related expert says that it's based on super-science, and the odds against an error are 86-trillion-billion-gazillion to one — but there's no way for any juror to skeptically assess what they're being told.
My friend's point. which then and now still makes perfect sense to me, was that this gave police absolute power of to present virtually unchallengable so-called evidence against anyone cops want to see behind bars.
That friend has since drifted out of my life, and when DNA evidence began being used to exonerate people instead of just to convict them, I'll admit that my own doubts receded into the background. But the more common it becomes to have DNA evidence introduced in court, the more its infallibility is taken for granted, the more there's a potential for abuse.
And now, when someone questions the infallibility of such evidence, the power of threats and punishment are brought to bear. A worker in a crime lab gets in trouble for ... obeying a court order without getting approval up the FBI chain of command? Yeah, I'd say that starts adding up to some serious skepticism about DNA evidence...
NASRO stands for "National Association of
Socially Responsible Organizations" — which
reminds me of Garrison Keillor's fiction, haha,
but the key phrase is "healthcare co-op".
Mr. Chuckles
It certainly can be done. I used to be a member of Group Health Co-Op, a Seattle-based non-profit Health Maintenance Organization that dated back to a time when 'HMO' was a radical idea and not yet a dirty word. I don't know how well Group Health has survived the utter atrocitiation of health care in America, but when I was a member as recently as the 1980s, they provided excellent care at reasonable rates.
It is just barely possible that enough people think as you do, and
who knows I might be convinced as well, that it overwhelms the
measure of the plans to steal the election. Always entertaining to
see the powerful slip on a banana peel.
Today I went out shopping. I have a zero balance on my Amex and have for years as it gets paid off in full every month. I found an item I wanted that was only 700 dollars. It was DECLINED. I owe nothing on it-haven't for months and am at a zero balance. I've purchased little things in the past but nothing major and definitely nothing over a thousand dollars though there is no limit on my card. Something smells and it isn't potpourri. Customer service hemmed and hawed and said to call back on Monday. I'm getting out my scissors. They are toast.
Sherri B.
I'd guess you're not a profitable customer for American Express, Sherri. Their corporate strategy makes them a fat profit by charging you interest fees and late fees, but if you're paying off your balance every month they're not making much if anything off you. I would guess they reduced your credit limit on purpose, because you fit their low- or no-profit profile, and having you snip up your AmEx card is exactly what they want.
I am reading an online book, The Authoritarians,
which goes a great way toward explaining a huge number of issues in the current U.S.
political scene. E.g. it helps you to understand how an elite group of people such as Dr.
Ruhs talks about here can pull off the
trick of domination with such ease.
In brief, the book discusses two groups of people,
one who want to dominate and one who want to follow, with separate personality traits
which mess well to accomplish such hideous feats as governmental torture, racial
oppression, bigotry, the rise of dictatorships, imposing views of morality on others (e.g. Chris D.'s piece) , even the hate mail which Unknown News
receives on a regular basis. You will see how an enormous number of social ills are
created by the personality some humans are endowed with. The type of personality is
called authoritarianism by social
psychologists. It is almost pointless to try to rationally argue with these people.
Emotions trump rationality in almost everyone, and especially in authoritarians. They are
specialists in compartmentalized thinking (doublethink). Here is a small part of the book
to entice you to jump to it and read it yourself:
Excerpt: You don't have to be a genius to grasp why someone would want to lead armies of people
dedicated to doing whatever he wants. So as I said in the Introduction, social scientists
have concentrated on understanding authoritarian followers, because the followers
constitute the bigger problem in the long run and present the bigger mystery. But after
Pratto and Sidanius developed a measure that could identify dominating personalities, and
as we came to understand the followers better and better, attention naturally shifted to
figuring out the leaders, and especially how the two meshed together.
Get yourself excommunicated. What a great marketing tool! Sneaky bastard. He knew
what would happen by producing it. "he's using eye-catching and unexpected images of
usually buttoned-up men to draw attention to the charitable and civic contributions of the
faith." What a crock! He's using them to sell calendars, and why not?
Yes, let's all just bury our heads in the sand — 'cause that'll make things so much better. If we turn our backs and close our eyes, it'll eventually go away. It's a scary thought that people might actually be teaching their children that philosophy, and it's the reason our country is in the shape it's in. If you don't vote/lobby/pay attention to the world around you, then your opinion is worth just as much afterward.
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