Interesting Links for 03-09-2012

[andrewducker]

• Republican Official Says NM Governor Disrespected Custer by Meeting American Indians
  (tags: republicans racism usa )
• The man behind some of the most iconic movie posters of all time.
  (tags: video art movies )
• Police lock up innocent man for 8 months over partial DNA match. System failing investigations.
  (tags: forensics dna police )
• HP'delays

Comments

[reverancepavane]

I remember a nice little incident at a conference on policing and forensics where police investigating a staged burglary discovered irrefutable evidence that it was the NSW police commisioner who was guilty of the crime, after having cut himself on the smashed glass door and left behind DNA evidence irrefutably "proving" his guilt.

It was set up by a noted forensic scientist and biochemist who pointed out how trivially easy it was to obtain a viable DNA sample, replicate it, and contaminate the scene of a crime. Whilst it required expert knowledge to know what to do, it is not a process that requires expert knowledge to perform, and he raised the possibility that black market DNA replication kits may in fact already be available.

Until this is actually shown to police by doing this sort of thing on a regular basis (and no, the police commisioner did not voluntarily provide a sample), police don't understand how using exactly the same techniques that make forensic examination of the crime scene possible with a limited sample can also be used to utterly hide any evidence that is left behind (especially since the standard battery of forensic tests don't look for evidence of this sort of tampering and are simply concerned with obtaining a DNA match of certain critical markers.]