UK-Developed 'DNA Spray' Marks Dutch Thieves With Trackable Water 191
eldavojohn writes "In Rotterdam, there's a new technology in place that dispenses a barely visible mist over those around it and alerts the police. The purpose? To tag robbers and link them back to the scene of the crime. From the article, 'The mist — visible only under ultraviolet light — carries DNA markers particular to the location, enabling the police to match the burglar with the place burgled. Now, a sign on the front door of the McDonald's prominently warns potential thieves of the spray's presence: "You Steal, You're Marked."' Developed in Britain, it's yet to nab a criminal but it will be interesting to see whether or not synthesized DNA will hold up as sufficient evidence in an actual court of law." So it's not just for copper thieves.
Beware my tiger repellant rock (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see any burglars, so it has to be working.
Re:Water? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually I'd expect it to be even worse, thanks to the CSI effect. Basically the same blind belief that if it's some hi-tech shit, then it's more infallible than the Pope and those scientists 100% thought of and prevented every possible problem or false positive, that you can see in the GP post.
Someone _will_ get sent to jail by some idiot jury because the real burglar -- who, for example, is an employee and didn't even need to synthetise anything: he just nicked the bottle that the PHB cleverly hid in his desk drawer -- sprayed them with it.
That's actually the important part: often when it looks like there's some impossible hurdle like synthetising DNA, there are often _much_ simpler ways to plant it, _and_ you can rely on some idiots still thinking that only the really complicated way exists. E.g., people have already planted DNA at a crime scene by just taking a cigarette butt from a bus station and dropping it there. Here you don't even have to do that.
Or as an even more trivial example, if a co-worker you really don't like leaves his coat behind and his wallet in it, spray the coat and banknotes in the wallet, steal the same amount from the cash register, tip someone off that you saw them stealing again. Double profit. You got the money, and got rid of that guy or gal you don't like.
Yeah, they'll end up having to convince a jury that those scientists and their hi-tech solution are fallible after all. Good luck with that in a world being told the opposite by PR. And where they saw on TV every week that you can take a hair you found on a carpet and know exactly that it belongs to the killer (and not, say, to one of the guests the victim had two days before that, or some guy in the bus leaving hair on her coat) and run a DNA analysis to tell you exactly what the killer looks like. Or that you can take a two by two pixel image of the back of someone's head from a security camera, enhance it to a clear 1600x1200 image and, with a couple more mouse clicks, turn it around to see the culprit's face.
Seriously, we're already at the point where some juries acquit because you didn't do that, or conversely people who spent time on the death row because some pseudo-science mumbo-jumbo must be 100% correct and accurate like on CSI.
Re:Water? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm very sceptical about DNA evidence being used to convict. I'm a lot less sceptical about evidence like this being used to build a compelling case alongside other evidence, or to narrow enquiries. You can, never, ever, 100% prove someone committed a crime even if they admit it, did it in public and on CCTV. You can however be confident the odds of a false conviction are vanishingly small, requiring any more that isn't plausible.
Re:Water? (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe we're overestimating the intelligence of people who'll walk past a big orange sign in broad daylight and rob a McDonalds.
Re:Water? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a pretty massive 'if'.
I think you overestimate the sort of person who robs McDonalds, if they had a second brain cell to keep the first one company they wouldn't be doing it.
Masterminding some sort of DNA-resequencing plan? Not so much.
Re:Water? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just think of it as a marker that contains a guaranteed unique identifier. backed up by a system that records which company is associated with that uniique identifier, and records to prove that they were the only company who has access to that identifier.
Many people have already pointed this out here, but since apparently it is too hard for you to understand I'll point it out again: no system of identification is more secure than its weakest link. In the case of SmartWater and other similar systems, the weakest link is the end user. Unless you can prove beyond reasonable doubt that no one in the shop in question has had any access to the source bottle, and you can further prove that no one who has been sprayed has ever transfered any of the material to anyone else, ever, you have a very poor identification system.
The number of people in this discussion who are telling us it is possible to amplify minute traces of this stuff for forensic purposes as if that was a good thing--rather than an open door to false conviction due to accidental transfer of minute traces of this stuff--is depressing.
This is just another insane scheme by ignorant people who think that "zero" is a tolerance, and it will fail for the same reasons. Every American $100 bill purportedly has non-zero traces of cocaine on it. In a few years of widespread use every person will have a few dozen DNA traces on them, including many from places they have never been due to accidental transfer.
This isn't that hard to understand, surely?