Stuff You Should Know - How will the future crime database work?

Episode Date: November 10, 2009

The US and England have databases containing DNA from millions of citizens. Originally only criminals were included, but as the programs expanded many more people were added. Learn how these databases work -- and why they were built -- in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Under 17 at a middle without parent. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know. From HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.

With me as always is Charles W. Bryant. Hi Chuck. I'm here, Josh. Oh wait, this isn't the Halloween episode. No, no, that already came out. That was good though. I appreciate that. Yeah, that was really good.

Well truthfully, it's almost Halloween so I'm just in the spirit. Are you? Yeah. In the spirit? Yes. Dude, I have been punning lately left and right and it just, it makes me sick.

You haven't been punkin' though, have you? Good one, Chuck. That reminds me, we've been talking about this punkin' chunkin' thing pretty hard. Let's do it again. Yeah, time, let's say it again. Okay. So the Mothership of Discovery Channel

has asked us to mention a show that's coming out, a special, actually a pair of specials that's coming out on Thanksgiving night on the Science Channel. Yep, 8 p.m. You got, there's two shows, like you said, The Road, The Punkin' Chuckin' and Punkin' Chuckin'.

Punkin' Chuckin' itself. And again, that begins at 8 p.m. Eastern time because I believe it takes place in a town in the east, which is appropriate enough. Somewhere in Delaware. On the Science Channel, yeah. So Chuck. Yes, Josh.

You want a podcast? Yeah, let's do it for real. Okay, so Chuck, have you ever seen Minority Report? I have, sure. Steven Spielberg and The Cruise. Did he direct it? Yeah. I knew Tom Cruise was in it,

I didn't know Spielberg directed it. Yeah, I thought it was okay. It kind of lost me in the third act. Did it? Yeah, big time. Oh, you know, it was based on Philip K. Dick, I think novel. Short story.

Short story, was it? Yeah, it was called The Minority Report. Ooh, yeah, that's Hollywood for you. They're always changing things. Yeah, but okay, so you know that it's about a, I guess a crime section, anti-crime section, law enforcement, some people call it, that arrests people based on information given to them

by this group of people who have precognition. Yes, and that would be the office of precrime. Right. Which is who The Cruise was, a precrime officer. Right, we have a real dearth of people with genuine precognition. It's kind of tough to find three that, you know, you can really reliably count on,

who can send you images from their brain of crimes that are about to happen. Yeah, they had a bad off in that movie, too. They really did, they were pretty much tormented, yeah. We are, however, it seems like working on a database that will be able to predict crime. And if so, humanity is screwed. Personal rights, is that what you're getting at?

Yeah, there's a lot of problems with this. We'll get to this later. But yeah, so there's a database that, there's several databases already around, right? There's all kinds of databases. When I was a kid, my dad took me to get my fingers printed. Really? Just in case I was abducted,

and I wouldn't talk to him on the way home, I was all like, you ratted me out, dad. I thought you were gonna say, just in case you got arrested, your dad would just forward that and say, here you go. No, no, he had a mug shot ready for him. No, like it was put into this database. So, yeah, ostensibly so if I ever was kidnapped,

and my brain was washed and I lost my identity, they'd be able to fingerprint me if I ever wandered up onto the street, and they'd be like, oh, it's Josh Clark. The chances of that are slim to none. The chances of me committing a crime, we're talking like near 100%. See, I was a kid during the Atlanta child murders,

the famous murders, Wayne Williams, remember that? Yeah, oh yeah. So my mom was like, go, you know, go play by the dump of the creek. Don't worry about finger printing. Your mom didn't love you? Yeah, go get the mail down by the street. Get the neighbor's mail.

Right. Get all the neighbor's mail. Geez. Like, you know where your children are? My mom never knew where I was. Wow. Yeah, that survived, though. Well, yes, clearly you did.

But so fingerprinting is just one database, right? Yeah, that's one. There's another one that's a little more advanced, a little more sophisticated, that is called the National Crime Information Center, right? Yes. You ever watch the movie, or the show, The First 48? No.

Dude. I heard it's good. It is good. I sleep with a hammer next to my bed now because of that show. What's the concept there within the first two days is when all the evidence is like hot, and that's when you should get all the evidence.

If they don't close a homicide within the first 48 hours, the chances of them ever closing it drop dramatically. Oh, close it. Oh, wow. Yeah, so sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Well, that's depressing. But it's a real-life show, and it follows real-life cops on the beat

after a homicide, and the stuff that people do to each other is just chilling. My favorite is this bald guy who works in Memphis. He's awesome. Squibby? It's not Squibby. He would bust Squibby, though. I can tell you that.

Probably so. But they often access on this show the National Crime Information Center. So it's got all this information on people who have committed crimes, but it's more than just their fingerprints. It can be like their street name. They're always using it to look up

like somebody's street name. Sure. It also has people who are members or suspected members of gangs, terrorist organizations. Child molesters. Yeah. What else? Rollies.

Yumi has this iPhone app that's disturbing. It's a locate a sex offender? Yeah, I've seen the website. Well, they have an iPhone app for it now, and sure enough, there's a lot of sex offenders around our place. And the weird thing is they aggregate. Like, you'll look at several of them,

and they'll all have the same address, except like number six or number 13 or whatever. So it's clearly an apartment building that's been designated like a sex offender can live here because it's not by a school or anything like that. Yeah, I remember that article I sent you recently about the, they told the ones in Georgia to camp out. Uh-huh.

That they quickly, once they hit the news, they were like, okay, you can come back inside now. Yeah, we'll find a place for you. Yeah, yeah. So, okay, so we've got those two databases. There's another one, and here's where we start to reach the crux of this podcast finally after like 70 minutes.

The one in England? And here. Oh, well, you talking about the national DNA database? Yeah. Yes, that started in England in 1999, and initially it was just people who had been convicted of crimes that they would get their DNA and keep that on file.

Yeah. But that changed, didn't it? It did change, and I think 2003, they expanded it to include anyone who's ever been arrested. Right. So basically, if a cop goes, I'm gonna take you, they can arrest you and let you go on a spot.

Sure. But if the cop can collect a sample right there, if he's got a mobile sample kit, they can take your blood. Even if you didn't do anything. Yeah, even if they're like, oh, sorry, buddy, I had, yeah, exactly. And you can't say, can I get that swab back?

And they'll, you know, break your arms. And before 2006, I think, that was still, most people weren't getting arrested, but that year, Britain expanded the list of arrestable offenses. Yeah, including wearing a seatbelt. Or more of the point, not wearing a seatbelt. Well, you're under arrest for wearing a seatbelt.

Spit into this Petri dish. So I mean, that's, yeah, and I imagine that's how they do it too, right, is a swab. I don't know about the mobile kits. Probably, I can imagine somebody going like, you're not freaking me. Right. Yeah, so, but yeah, so now in England,

if you, Jay Walker, if you are not wearing a seatbelt, they can collect a sample of your DNA that they intend to keep on file indefinitely. Yes, four million strong. Yeah, which makes it the second largest database in the world, DNA database in the world. Second largest, second to ours, I would imagine, of course. That was in 2007, by the way, the four million entries.

That same year in the US, we have a national DNA index system, NDIS, that's maintained by the FBI. And we had 4.5 million profiles that year. I looked and all I could find were estimates, like FBI funding estimates. Right. These numbers are probably high,

but for 2009, they estimated that this thing would have 14 million samples. Now, ours isn't just if you're arrested, right? Isn't it if you're a felon? Or does it, it differs from state to state? That's how it started out. Okay. And then in 2004, California,

always on the leading edge of whatever's going on. Yeah, I'm kidding. They passed Prop 69. Controversial. To say the least, yeah. Basically, what it says is that law enforcement can take your DNA. Right, if you've been arrested.

For a felony and some misdemeanor. Right. And it's just arrested. Yeah. And illegal immigrants, which they kind of just tossed in there, I'm sure. I'm sure. And children even.

Let's see, how can we unfairly target illegal immigrants? Oh yeah, we'll just take their DNA for no reason. Well, there's kids in there too. Yeah, the one here and in England. That's causing a huge stir, is kids are, when they're arrested, they can have their DNA taken. Sure.

So you can imagine that just having your DNA taken, just having a swab stuck in your mouth by a police officer. Right. Is enough to really raise the ire of some people. Yeah, obviously a lot of human rights advocates have problems with this, which we'll get into in a second, unless we're getting into that now.

We can if you want, I mean, yeah. Well, the first thing that kind of got, besides the implementation of the program in England was last year in 2008, when it was revealed that half a million names in the database are just flat out wrong. That was, that caused a big stir. Yeah, either just incorrect or misspelled,

it might have been typo, but some of them are just wrong. Yeah, that's clearly, I mean, just having DNA samples of four and a half, four million people in England. And then saying, oh, and by the way, half a million of them are wrong. We don't know who's they are. We think they're yours, but they're not.

That's a problem. But I mean, is there really a problem with just maintaining a database of DNA? What are they doing with it? Well, it depends because DNA is not like a fingerprint. There's a lot of information contained in your DNA that's not just identified the person. Right.

Your genetic code, your family history. There's a program called DNA Witness made by a company called DNA Print Genomics. And it can locate ancestry markers and basically say, oh, you found some DNA, well, we can narrow it down to this person is probably being Hispanic. Well, yeah, it's all the deal with racial breakdown. Right, so I mean, there's, racial profiling

is about as hot button and issue as anything else. Sure. Because the problem is, is as it stands now, racial profiling is based on past statistics. Right. If you include DNA into the mix, does it become more finely honed or even more egregious? Right, or does it open itself up?

Who knows? Here's the problem with DNA profiling, Chuck. We have not in this country or the UK from what I can imagine had any real discussion about doing it. Right. So we've never really come together and said, okay, do we want a crime-free society

or as close to a crime-free society as we can get? If so, then yes, everybody needs to turn in a DNA sample. If we all agree that that's what we want. If we decide that we would rather live with crime and combat crime under the techniques that we have now to maintain our privacy, then DNA sampling has to stop. DNA profiling has to stop. Right.

And the problem is we've never had that conversation either way, right? Well, the public certainly hasn't had any say. So, but it's been continuing along. And then when you talk about the half a million names wrong, it's like, well, you're doing this without our consent or even asking us and you're not even doing it right. Right.

The thing is though, I don't even know, even if they hone this down, can you really prevent crime? I mean, even cops will tell you, there's no such thing as preventing crime. Cops go after criminals after they've committed a crime, but unless it's just dumb luck, how many times has a cop come upon a crime before it happens and stopped it?

Well, there are two different groups, one in the UK and one in America, which apparently are the two leading countries in DNA profiling for crime prevention that say, no, we do need to do that and we're trying to. Is that the homicide prevention unit in London? Yeah, think about the name of that. Right.

Homicide prevention unit. And they're doing it by forecasting crime. Yeah. Well, psychological profiling too, which they've done for a while and that's a little less hinky and invasive than obviously DNA profiling. Right, but what about when you combine the two?

Why would you combine DNA with a psychological profile? To catch the bad guys? I guess to an extent, but at the same time, what we're talking about is looking at DNA to find out if we can find a genetic defect in somebody that suggests that maybe they have a short temper or that they're sociopathic or whatever. If you combine that with a psychological profile.

But where does that profile come from? Maybe records from mental health workers or maybe your insurance records or your doctor or dental records. I mean, they're not doing that now, but who knows what could happen? That's the point. If this database gets big enough,

or I should say if it gets accurate enough, then yeah, people will probably start getting leaned on to provide information to be contributed to this database for use by law enforcement. It's kind of scary. Once you have enough information and you are confident enough that you can prevent a crime,

or if you can say this person is probably going to kill somebody one day. But what do they do though? That's what I want to know. Do they just start, it's obviously not gonna happen like Minority Report in that film and the story, Tom Cruise knocks on your door and says you're under arrest for the future murder

of your wife. They're clearly not talking about that. Because that's impossible in the stuff of science fiction. But will they just monitor someone or tail someone? So basically, potentially dangerous people will just be under surveillance at all times. I guess so, but what if you've never committed a crime in your entire life and don't intend to,

but you've got the cops breathing down your neck every night. Anywhere you go, there's a cop following you. You go on a date, there's a cop following you. You take your mother out for dinner. There's a cop following you. I mean, if you've never committed a crime in your life, how fair is that? Well, right, and plus if someone's tailing you,

and I don't know, I could see a scenario where some renegade cop trumps up a traffic violation and pulls you over and shakes you down. And it's not like police, I mean, trust me, I'm not dragging on the police to do a great job, but there are cases where people are framed and weapons are planted. And if some guy they think is a really bad person

waiting to happen, what's to stop a cop from trailing him and doing just that? So not only that, but what happens if somebody gets access to this, if this information in the database is disseminated, and then you've got somebody who's like, well, you know what, I'm gonna take it upon myself to rid society of these people who may commit a crime.

You know, I can't say most, but there's a lot of serial killers out there who once caught, say that they were doing a service to society. Dexter, you ever seen that? I haven't yet, but I am aware. Same scenario. I love Six Feet Under.

Nate dies, by the way. The killer, John Wayne Gacy, expected that he was going to get a wrap on the knuckles because what he'd done is just rid society of some bad kids. That's what he said. That's what he said. I remember in the, I guess it was the 80s or was it 70s? The New York subway?

Yeah, he won all Charlie Bronson on everyone and he was the subway vigilante. He definitely was. But he's a serial killer is what he is. I thought he just killed some guys once. Did he kill more than one time? Yeah, I think so. Wow.

I might be wrong. We'll hear from it. But okay, so yes, there's a possibility of vigilantism. There's a possibility of police harassment. Right. There's also another possibility called the well-self-fulfilling prophecy. Sure.

Remember when we talked about kids getting their DNA taken, minors getting their DNA taken if they're ever arrested for anything. And there's also a push, I guess, to round this database out as much as possible for any kid who has a behavioral problem or maybe gets in trouble at school for the school to provide information about that kid

so that they can say, we're gonna keep an eye on you for the rest of your life because you're starting to fit this profile of somebody who might kill somebody later. Or maybe he just has ADD. Or maybe the teacher doesn't like him. Who knows? Yeah, exactly.

The problem is is if you know that if you're six and somebody's like, you might kill somebody someday, what is it like to grow up for the next 30 years or so, thinking that people assume that you're gonna kill somebody one day? Well, did they tell you, though? I don't know. There's gotta be something.

It might not be that explicit. Both children parents are probably notified at the very least. Right. And if the parents say, oh, you're a bad kid, that's why they're watching you, well, why wouldn't the kid go be a bad kid? There's a lot of concerns here, right?

Indeed. In the US, we talked about the homicide prevention unit in the UK. By the way, the senior criminal psychologist, Laura Richards, has said that her vision is to know who the top 100 people, most potentially violent people in London are at any given time. You know, Squibby's on that list.

Sure. And you know, when they keep like most wanted lists, gangs especially, love getting at the top. And I should probably take the opportunity right here to save our lives. It's MS-13, I understand, not MS-12, right? Yeah, we've referred to a gang as MS-12 in the witness protection show and it is MS-13

and we got that wrong. Agreed. Over here in the US, there's a guy named Richard Burke who's the University of Pennsylvania sociologist and statistician. Yeah, I don't mind this one as much. No, it's much more innocuous. Yeah, well, it's not invasive

because they're not actually taking your DNA or fingerprints. He was at University of Pennsylvania. He's a crime criminology professor and he has actually developed an algorithm using 30 different variables from, you know, when a kid was young and as they grow up if they have offenses or if they were abused

and he determines a lethality score, which, I don't know, it's a little more, I can accept this in a way. I can too, but at the same time I was a little, well, I'm still put off by the idea of forecasting crime in an effort to prevent it from ever happening. But I did go on and check out some of this guy's stuff and he has another thing called crime regimes

where he's taking into account, see that lethality score is all centered around the individual and there's a movement of foot where sociology is making a huge move to take crime completely away from psychology. I talked to a sociologist who's like, psychology's completely failed at explaining serial murderers.

Really? Sociology's time to explain it, right? So this guy's taking in into account time of day, day of the week, area, like the location, is the drug trade there stable? If so, then there's probably gonna be less crime because there's not gonna be turf wars, things like that. And even larger stuff needs to be taken into account too,

like the economic situation. That always creates more crime. But for a group or an area and not in individuals, that what you mean? I imagine that this guy will probably eventually try to put both together. So if you've got a lethality score, a guy with a lethality score

and he's living in a high risk area, then all of a sudden the cops might wanna go, we should really keep an eye on that guy. So it makes it a little more hunt. The problem is this would probably be eventually compiled with the NDIS here in the States. Yeah, if it turned out to be a pretty good algorithm and it was pretty accurate,

I'm sure the government would get their mitts on it soon enough. So yeah, and it's not like, we were talking about mental health workers being leaned on to give up information. Right, or doctors disclosing their med records. Insurance companies. And census information.

Did not know this. I didn't either, which is funny because we're about to talk about population in about five minutes. Yeah, apparently the census records, the public doesn't have access to those for 72 years after it's taken. I guess some aspects of it because it's,

I've definitely accessed census statistics that are a lot less than 72 years old. Right, I think you can access the numbers, but I think all of the information is available. Oh, gotcha, yeah, yeah. But the FBI routinely gets that information if they want it. The Japanese, Japanese-Americans were identified using census statistics

or census information during World War II for the internment camps. And that was, I guess, kind of against the grain, maybe, usually, we don't usually do that, I understand. Hinky? I think we do it done in Texas these days with Hispanics. They try to make it across the border. Interesting.

So, rights violations all over the place then, right? Yes, but apparently it's having an effect on crime. Yeah, I guess so. Supporters in England will say that more than twice as many crimes have been solved using the DNA samples in the year 2005 as were solved six years before that. So, you know, maybe it has an effect. It does.

They have the cameras over there, too. Oh, yeah, did you see those thugs in whales? They got beat up by the cross-dressing cage fighters. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, it's so great. That was the best thing I've ever seen. Yeah, if you haven't seen it yet, I guess typing cross-dressing cage fighters, thugs, whales,

and it should bring out the video. Yeah, these English thugs were just drunk and walking down the street really just causing trouble and they were picking on this cross-dresser. And it turned out that it was an MMA cage fighter and the dude just killed him. Wasted him. It was great.

It's inspiring. And I'll prevent the reader male right now, Chuckman Welsh, and he knows it. Yes, whales. So, I guess everybody in the future look for a crime database that includes psychological profile, DNA, hopefully your correct name, or unless you're a criminal, then not your real name,

retinal scans, facial scans, medical history, pretty much anything. I got one more thing. Okay. I saw that the United States has a project that was originally called Project Hostile Intent. They've since renamed it Future Attribute Screening Technologies, and it's one of these deals

where they're gonna make it a mobile unit like a trailer truck that you walk through before you go into the football game and it reads your pulse, your breathing rate, your eye pupil dilation, and supposedly to predict if you're like shifty or angry. Think about that. Yeah, I heard they're using We Fit.

Oh, really? Boards now to make people standard. They're talking about it, and they were gonna make people stand on it because they think that terrorists are literally shittier than other people. So, they would be shifting their weight more because they know something's about to go down. Things like that don't take into account fear of flying.

Well, there's a lot of problems with stuff like that. Just what kind of mood you're in that day if you and your wife just had a fight on the way to the airport? Because Emily and I have a long-standing tradition of fighting before any plane flight. Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah.

It's a good thing. And then, of course, once this is in place, one of the guys called what we would see is security theater, which is not being shifty or acting like you're going to Hawaii on a vacation. So, trying to trip up the machine. Sure. So, look forward to that, too.

Yeah. The end. The end. So, if you want to learn more about our colleague, Shana Freeman's predictions for future crime databases, you can probably get away with just typing in futurecrime in the search bar at howstuffworks.com. Also, try typing in unicorn.

See what comes up. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. And shock, I said, search bar, which means it's time for listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this, I had no idea that we had a official listening club. That's what I'm going to call it. This is on the blog, but I'm going to read this.

And this is kind of blew me away. There are some US-Americans living in South Korea. And they actually formed a little listening club. And they get together. And they listen to our show. And they said, during the assemblies, we listened to YouTube ponder various interesting topics. And then discuss them further by offering our own thoughts

and experiences, and compliment our sessions with libations of the alcoholic variety. So they formed a drinking game to our show. Let me tell you what they drink to, and they're listening now. So we're going to really get them hammered at this point. Every time there's a new statistic quoted, which I believe we do on four out of five shows.

At least. And when we refer to our producer, Jerry. Over here, there's Jerry. Hey, Jerry. So we've said Jerry like four times. It's probably about four shots. You said Jerry? I said Jerry.

We refer to our producer, Jerry. When someone shares any of our first names, so if they're in the club and we say their first name by half instance, they drink. And I know who wrote this was Richard. So we're going to say Richard like four more times. Richard. Yeah.

And Jerry. And also, when you say Chuckers. I don't know that I said that in this one, did I? You could say no. Chuckers. And the final thing Josh, they drink to, I think you're going to like this, is they're getting your back, dude.

The whole I, me thing that we've been hearing about for the past 160 shows. Whenever you actually correct yourself now with the I, me, is when they drink. So he writes and says they drink soju, by the way, which is a rice wine. They say on the soju, Josh, they say, sip casually, the rice wine is not without its merits.

But done our way, it all but guarantees a regrettable late night phone call to a co-worker or former lover. Tearful platitudes, mutual admiration, or some form of public nudity later in the evening. So Josh, sir, I beseech you, stop hyper-correcting, let it fly. Pleadingly, Richard, tired of being hungover in Korea,

Richard, Richard. Well, thanks, Richard, for sending that in. Chuckers liked it, Jerry liked it. Richard clearly liked it. Richard clearly liked it. And I and me, and I'm sorry, I shouldn't say that. I should correct myself. Well, if you want to send Chuck and I an email,

I'm sorry, Chuck and me an email, or Chuckers. Chuckers an email. And Jerry. And me. You can send that to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Want more HowStuffWorks?

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