DNA surveillance

I thought this was really interesting in the Trib today (by Maura Dolan and Jason Felch ) :

" California will adopt the most aggressive approach in the nation to a crime-fighting technique that uses DNA to try to identify elusive criminals through their relatives.Using what is known as familial or "partial match" searching, the policy seeks to find an unidentified suspect through DNA found at a crime scene by looking for potential relatives in the state's genetic database of about a million felons.Once a relative is identified, police can use that person as a lead to trace the suspect."

So this is how I was reading the whole thing, thinking along the line, wow this is really pushing the envelope to try and track down criminals through their relatives DNA, and then ask or 'interrogate' or coerce the relative to spill the beans, IF they know anything at all, about the suspect. I was thinking, not good, there must be a better way....

Then in typical Trib fashion they throw in a zinger to make you think twice about it...

"Police in the U.S. have used genetic relationships to help catch criminals on a much smaller scale. After Kansas police zeroed in on a serial killer who dubbed himself BTK—initials for bind, torture, kill—they obtained a court order for the Pap smear of the suspect's daughter. Without her knowledge, police did a DNA analysis of the specimen, obtained from a medical laboratory.The genetic similarities indicated that they had the right man, Dennis Radar.

So in summary, I almost changed my mind about the utility of this type of DNA "crime fighting". I wonder what the daughter of The BTK killer thought about this? How soon after his arrest did she find out? (sorry for the morbid thought, I can't help wondering if she still gets regular Pap smears or goes to the same Dr. ?) Ugh. We can all be glad this monster is behind bars. But if they already suspected him anyway, couldn't they have just gone through his garbage or papers in his office to get HIS DNA, not his daughter's?

Everybody should go out and rent the movie GATTACA. This is our future it seems....

Other links: WaPo, NPR