Facial recognition and DNA can’t tell identical twins apart. (Well, not unless you can detect somatic mutations.) Even Santa can’t tell.
And fingerprints don’t work because everyone at the North Pole wears gloves.
Tag Archives: dna
When Technology Catches Up: 1980 Murderer of Michelle “Missy” Jones Just Convicted
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported this in September 2020:
“The Fontana Police Department in San Bernardino County, California, said it arrested Leonard Nash, 66, of Las Vegas on a warrant charging him with murder in the July 5, 1980, slaying of Michelle “Missy” Jones. The young woman was found slain in a grapefruit grove in Fontana.”
So why did it take 40 years to arrest Nash?
“Police said forensic evidence was collected during Jones’ autopsy, but technology at the time did not allow it to be connected to an offender.”
In 2020, the Riverside/San Bernardino CAL-DNA Laboratory successfully obtained a profile, but it did not match the DNA profile of any known offender. Nash, a person of interest, was matched to the profile via “discarded DNA.”
Anyway, Nash was convicted this month, but the news stories that described his conviction are inaccessible to you and me.
“The Woman in Pink” Identified via INTERPOL’s “Identify Me”
It’s challenging enough to identify a unknown deceased body found in the person’s home city.
It’s more challenging to identify one somewhere else in the person’s home country.
And when the body is found outside the person’s home country…that’s when organizations such as INTERPOL step in.
“Identify Me is a public appeal to identify women whose bodies were found in six European countries, many of whom are believed to have been murdered.
“Most are cold cases; women who died 10, 20, 30 or even 40 years ago. They were found in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, or Spain.
“Despite extensive police investigations, these women were never identified, and evidence suggests that some of them could have come from other countries. Who they are, where they are from and why they were in these countries is unknown.”
INTERPOL issues a variety of colored notices to its member countries, including the “Black Notice” to seek information on unidentified bodies. The “Identify Me” program is a public appeal for a small subset of these people.
Here’s one of INTERPOL’s success stories, “The woman in pink“:
“On 3 July 2005, the body of a woman was found at the 84 km mark on the Vila road in the town of Viladecans (province of Barcelona). The woman had been dead for less than 24 hours; the cause of death was suspicious….
“A breakthrough came in 2025 when police in Türkiye ran the fingerprints associated with ‘The woman in pink’ through a national biometric database, resulting in a match with Russian national Liudmila Zavada, aged 31 at the time of her death. The match was subsequently confirmed through kinship DNA analysis using the DNA of one of Liudmila Zavada’s close relatives.”
So follow the trail:
- There was a woman from Russia.
- A deceased woman’s body was found in Spain.
- Decades later, the deceased women was identified as the Russian woman via biometrics (fingerprints) in Türkiye.
- The identification was confirmed via DNA analysis.
A true case of cross-national collaboration.
Two-year Old Cold Cases of Israelis (and Gazans) Killed After October 7, 2023
The Jerusalem Post recently published a story about Israel’s Institute of Forensic Medicine and how it identifies deceased bodies.
“From the moment the remains arrive at the institute, identification is conducted through three methods: dental records, CT scans, and DNA testing.
“Even if we identify the remains using one method, it’s not enough until we have definitive identification. In most cases, whenever possible, we perform all three methods to get a final result.” According to Kugel, this is because the “findings” often arrive in an unorganized manner, and no one knows to whom they belong.”
Oh, and there’s one additional complication. Some of the bodies died as long as two years ago. Some of these remains were returned from Gaza after the latest cease fire. I don’t know how many of these people died after October 7, 2023, but it’s possible that some of them may have.
“It’s important to understand that our daily work is to examine bodies that arrive within hours or a few days in rare cases. Here, we’re dealing with a two-year period, and that makes a significant difference in how the remains were preserved, under what conditions, and how that affects the identification process.”
But they aren’t just identifying Israelis.
“Identifying former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was a defining moment for Kugel.
“‘Once you’re with the body and examining it, you don’t think at that moment that you’re examining someone very significant. We also had to understand what caused his death. Obviously, he had a head injury, but we tried to understand what preceded what.’
“When we finished, a colleague said to me: ‘Do you understand who you’ve examined now? The man who is responsible for the massacre of thousands of people.’ You don’t think about it while working, just as with the good people who were killed in the war, you just check and identify. After that, at home, you continue to read about him and his family; it goes with you, and then you process what you go through at the institute.”
This is a common challenge in forensics. Identification of a particular person may result in a number of emotional responses, whether it is a criminal or a victim. But the forensic professional’s job is to simply examine the evidence. The grief comes later.
DNA and…Coal?
Rosalind Franklin was one of a quartet of people who were researching DNA in the 1950s. And she is popularly known…sort of.
“Since her early death at the age of 37, Rosalind Franklin has become mythologised as the victim of male prejudice, the unsung heroine who took the crucial X-ray photograph enabling James Watson and Francis Crick to build their double helix model of DNA, and was unjustly deprived of a Nobel Prize.”
A powerful story…but just a story.
“She would neither have recognised nor endorsed this soundbite description. Franklin regarded herself first and foremost not as a woman, but as a scientist, and her DNA research occupied a relatively brief period in her successful career working on a variety of topics. In particular, on top of her famous investigations into DNA, she also made foundational contributions to modern understandings of coal, graphite and viruses.”
Read about Franklin here.
(Picture from Wikipedia, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology • CC BY-SA 4.0)
Communicate with the Words of Authority
Biometric marketing leaders, do your firm’s product marketing publications require the words of authority?
Can John E. Bredehoft of Bredemarket—the biometric product marketing expert—contribute words of authority to your content, proposal, and analysis materials?
I offer:
- 30 years of biometric experience, 10 years of product marketing expertise, and complementary proposal and product management talents.
- Success with numerous biometric firms, including Incode, IDEMIA, MorphoTrak, Motorola, Printrak, and over a dozen biometric consulting clients.
- Mastery of multiple biometric modalities: friction ridge (fingerprint, palm print), face, iris, voice, DNA.
- Compelling CONTENT creation: blog posts, case studies and testimonials, LinkedIn articles and posts, white papers.
- Winning PROPOSAL development: managing, writing, editing for millions of dollars of business for my firms.
- Actionable ANALYSIS: strategic, market, product, competitive.
To embed Bredemarket’s biometric product marketing expertise within your firm, schedule a free meeting with me.
Differentiating the DNA of Twins?
(Part of the biometric product marketing expert series)
There are certain assumptions that you make in biometrics.
Namely, that certain biometrics are unable to differentiate twins: facial recognition, and DNA analysis.
Now as facial recognition algorithms get bettter and better, perhaps they will be able to tell twins apart: even identical twins.
But DNA is DNA, right?
Twins and somatic mutations
Mike Bowers (CSIDDS) links to an article in Forensic Magazine which suggests that twins’ DNA can be differentiated.
For the first time in the U.S., an identical twin has been convicted of a crime based on DNA analysis.
The breakthrough came from Parabon Nanolabs, who’s scientists used deep whole genome sequencing to identify extremely rare “somatic mutations” that differentiated Russell Marubbio and his twin, John. The results were admitted as evidence in court, making last week’s conviction of Russell in the 1987 rape of a 50-year-old woman a landmark case.
Parabon Nanolabs (whom I briefly mentioned in 2024) applied somatic mutations as follows:
Somatic mutations are DNA changes that happen after conception and can cause genetic differences between otherwise identical twins. These mutations can arise during the earliest stages of embryonic development, affecting the split of the zygote, and accumulate throughout life due to errors in cell division. Somatic mutations can be present in only one twin, a subset of cells, or both, potentially leading to differences in health and even developmental disorders—and in this case, DNA.
The science behind somatic mutations is not new, and is well-researched, understood and accepted. It’s just uncommon for DNA to lead to twins, and even more uncommon for somatic mutations to be able to distinguish between twins.
Note that “well-researched, understood and accepted” part (even though it lacks an Oxford comma). Because this isn’t the only recent story that touches upon whole genome sequencing.
Whole genome sequencing and legal admissibility
Bowers also links to a CNN article which references Daubert/Frye-like questions about whether evidence is admissable.
Evidence derived from cutting-edge DNA technology that prosecutors say points directly at Rex Heuermann being the Gilgo Beach serial killer will be admissible at his trial, a Suffolk County judge ruled Wednesday….
Heuermann’s defense attorney Michael Brown had argued the DNA technology, known as whole genome sequencing, has not yet been widely accepted by the scientific community and therefore shouldn’t be permitted. He said he plans to argue the validity of the technology before a jury.
Meanwhile, prosecutors have argued this type of DNA extraction has been used by local law enforcement, the FBI and even defense attorneys elsewhere in the country, according to court records.
Let me point out one important detail: the fact that police agencies are using a particular technology doesn’t mean that said technology is “widely accepted by the scientific community.” I suspect that this same question will be raised in other courts, and other judges may hold a different decision.
And after checking my blog, I realize that I have never written an article about Daubert/Frye. Another assignment for Bredebot, I guess…
Your identity/biometric product marketing needs to assert the facts rather than old lies,
Today’s Acronym is PIA (Privacy Impact Assessment)
(Imagen 4)
(Part of the biometric product marketing expert series)
Do U.S. government agencies simply run roughshod over your privacy rights?
Not exactly.
Government agencies are required to issue Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs) for their projects.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation alone has issued over 60 PIAs.
For example, here is the PIA for CODIS, the Combined National Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) Index System (CODIS).
And if anything needs a PIA, it’s CODIS, since it potentially contains your personally identifiable information…and the personally identifiable information of your relatives.
The PIAs themselves are detailed. The CODIS PIA includes 8 sections with 19 pages of questions and responses. For example, here is the response in section 8 regarding privacy:
The type, quantity, and sources of information collected by FBI CODIS are necessary to identify crime scene offenders, missing persons, or unidentified human remains, or to link multiple crime scenes. Such information is only further disseminated for these purposes. Moreover, NDIS does not store State Identification Number/Universal Control Number or otherwise collect, handle, disseminate, or store contributors’ names. Therefore, CODIS DNA profiles and pedigrees can only be matched to a named individual by the submitting Criminal Justice Agency forensic laboratory, independent of NDIS.
- The privacy risks associated with the collection and maintenance of FBI CODIS information are inaccurate information, unauthorized access, and unauthorized disclosures.
- The privacy risks associated with the access and use of FBI CODIS information are unauthorized access, unauthorized (or overly broad) disclosures, and loss of data.
- The privacy risks associated with the dissemination of FBI CODIS information are the risks of unauthorized disclosures and loss of data.
The risks of unauthorized access, unauthorized disclosures, loss of data and inaccurate information are mitigated by the quality assurance standards promulgated by the FBI pursuant to the Federal DNA Identification Act. These risks are further mitigated by the system, physical access, network-infrastructure, auditing and quality assurance controls, as described more specifically in Sections 6.1 and 6.2, which are in compliance with FIPS Publication 199, as applicable.
The risk of inaccurate information is also specifically mitigated through the identity verification process performed by participating Criminal Justice Agency forensic laboratories to confirm a potential match. The identity must be confirmed prior to the disclosure of any personally identifiable information to the law enforcement entity who submitted the DNA sample.
Lastly, notice is provided as described in Section 5.1.
Frictionless Friction Ridges and Other Biometric Modalities
I wanted to write a list of the biometric modalities for which I provide experience.
So I started my usual list from memory: fingerprint, face, iris, voice, and DNA.
Then I stopped myself.
My experience with skin goes way beyond fingerprints, since I’ve spent over two decades working with palm prints.
(Can you say “Cambridgeshire method”? I knew you could. It was a 1990s method to use the 10 standard rolled fingerprint boxes to input palm prints into an automated fingerprint identification system. Because Cambridgeshire had a bias to action and didn’t want to wait for the standards folks to figure out how to enter palm prints. But I digress.)
So instead of saying fingerprints, I thought about saying friction ridges.
But there are two problems with this.
First, many people don’t know what “friction ridges” are. They’re the ridges that form on a person’s fingers, palms, toes, and feet, all of which can conceivably identify individuals.
But there’s a second problem. The word “friction” has two meanings: the one mentioned above, and a meaning that describes how biometric data is captured.
From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XhWFHKWCSE.
No, there is not a friction method to capture faces. Squishing
- If you have to do something to provide your biometric data, such as press your fingers against a platen, that’s friction.
- If you don’t have to do anything other than wave your fingers, hold your fingers in the air, or show your face as you stand near or walk by a camera, that’s frictionless.
More and more people capture friction ridges with frictionless methods. I did this years ago using MorphoWAVE at MorphoTrak facilities, and I did it today at Whole Foods Market.
So I could list my biometric modalities as friction ridge (fingerprint and palm print via both friction and frictionless capture methods), face, iris, voice, and DNA.
But I won’t.
Anyway, if you need content, proposal, or analysis assistance with any of these modalities, Bredemarket can help you. Book a meeting at https://bredemarket.com/cpa/
MFB = Multi Factor Biasification?
There’s a paper from Itiel Dror that I need to read. Its title is “Biased and Biasing: The Hidden Bias Cascade and Bias Snowball Effects.”
Here is a portion of the abstract:
“Cognitive bias…impacts each and every aspect of the justice and legal systems, from the initial engagement of police officers attending the crime scene, through the forensic examination, and all the way to the final outcome of the jurors’ verdict and the judges’ sentencing. It impacts not only the subjective elements in the justice and legal systems but also the more objective scientific elements, such as forensic fingerprinting and DNA….[S]uch errors in the final outcome rarely occur because they require that the shortcomings in each element be coordinated and aligned with the other elements. However, in the justice and legal systems, the different elements are not independent; they are coordinated and mutually support and bias each other, creating and enabling hidden bias cascade and bias snowball effects.”
Bredemarket 
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