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This company says it’s developing a system that can recognize your face from just your DNA
(www.technologyreview.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2024
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The science behind this would be really interesting.
But I'm pretty sure variations like age and weight would make this useless.
Not useless if it holds up in court
And garbage science has been used in court for a long time.
It wouldn't need to hold up in court. You already have the DNA so once you identify your suspect you can DNA test them to see if it's them and normal processes continue.
This is for cases when all you have is DNA that is not in the database to help you track that person down.
Basically like when they do a sketch based on a witness's memory except using DNA.
I think it would need to hold up in court right? If someone were to be arrested as a result of this technology, even if the are guilty af, their attorney would be able to question the validity of the science and call into question the officer's probably cause for the initial arrest.
Either way if it actually becomes real tech, junk science or not, inadmissible or not, the cops will still use it. They do a bunch of junk science the courts won't accept but use parallel construction or cherry picking their evidence to support it, like polygraph tests, criminal "line-ups", etc.
No because you are just using this to generate a description based on DNA evidence you have.
All the rules that exist to determine if you can take a DNA sample from a suspect would still exist.
If you pass those it's the DNA evidence that convicts.
Again this is the same as using a sketch from a witness description to locate suspects.
That sketch doesn't need to hold up in court. Exactly the same principle.
I'm not sure I buy it. Police need a warrant to get dna evidence from a suspect, but warrants can and often are contested. If the system had any false positives or wasn't a perfect match a good attorney would be able to argue there are no grounds for the warrant.
If the fuzz had other evidence like an unverified alibi or evidence putting the suspect in the area that would probably be enough for a judge to issue a warrant, but if the dna photo was the only evidence I'd say it's dicey at best if tested.
Exactly. So this just gives them a potential suspect to investigate. Nothing more. Then they investigate them to get what they need for a warrant. This doesn't get the warrant.