Cops Used DNA to Predict a Suspect’s Face — and Tried to Run Facial Recog. on It \ stacker news ~security

Cops Used DNA to Predict a Suspect’s Face — and Tried to Run Facial Recog. on It www.wired.com/story/parabon-nanolabs-dna-face-models-police-facial-recognition/

2582 sats \ 10 comments \ @0xbitcoiner 23 Jan security

Police around the US say they're justified to run DNA-generated 3D models of faces through facial recognition tools to help crack cold cases. Everyone but the cops thinks that’s a bad idea.

In 2017, detectives working a cold case at the East Bay Regional Park District Police Department got an idea, one that might help them finally get a lead on the murder of Maria Jane Weidhofer. Officers had found Weidhofer, dead and sexually assaulted, at Berkeley, California’s Tilden Regional Park in 1990. Nearly 30 years later, the department sent genetic information collected at the crime scene to Parabon NanoLabs—a company that says it can turn DNA into a face.

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21 sats \ 1 reply \ @jgbtc 23 Jan

They might as well just pick a random person and declare them guilty.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @0xbitcoiner OP 23 Jan

If they catch someone, they should compare it with the DNA used. It couldn't be any other way.

21 sats \ 5 replies \ @xz 23 Jan

"The face of the murderer, the company predicted, was male. He had fair skin, brown eyes and hair, no freckles, and bushy eyebrows. A forensic artist employed by the company photoshopped a nondescript, close-cropped haircut onto the man and gave him a mustache—an artistic addition informed by a witness description and not the DNA sample"

5 sats \ 4 replies \ @0xbitcoiner OP 23 Jan

Guess Who?

great throwback

11 sats \ 3 replies \ @xz 23 Jan

Once, I went to a party with a group that made face masks of the characters from Guess Who. It was one of the most surreal things in my life that I can remember.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @0xbitcoiner OP 23 Jan

great idea !

11 sats \ 1 reply \ @xz 23 Jan

Back to the topic in hand. Your post got me thinking about how this kind of look could work for street-level enhanced privacy. Garbage in, garbage out for surveillance.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @0xbitcoiner OP 23 Jan

11 sats \ 1 reply \ @9 23 Jan

What could go wrong?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @0xbitcoiner OP 23 Jan

I'm not so sure about this technique either