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Richard Stallman's Political Notes

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Prediction of a person's appearance from DNA

jeudi 9 décembre 2021 à 13:37

It is now possible to predict a person's physical appearance fairly reliably from per DNA sequence.

Since our current knowledge of the significance of genes is imperfect, some people will not actually resemble the prediction. This may cause the wrong people to be questioned. At least it will be possible to prove, with their DNA, that they are not the suspect.

Other possible problems are not caused by inaccuracy of prediction. However, I don't think we should call it "racial profiling" when the state suspects people in racial group R because it is known that the culprit was in group R. If a witness says, "He was black" or "He was white", we would not call it "racial profiling" if that led to questioning blacks, or to questioning whites.

Real racial profiling is when cops jump to the conclusion that they should search for a certain group, not based on knowledge, but rather based on assuming that people in group R are likely to be criminals.