What if Facebook was actually called Policebook?

Apparently, a serial murderer and rapist was identified by the police when they used a DNA database (called GEDmatch, which appears to be a site meant for helping people find their relatives) to which he had voluntarily provided his DNA data. Science has an interview with Yaniv Erlich, a Columbia University geneticist, who had alerted to possible uses of a site such as GEDmatch in 2014.

An excerpt where Erlich makes a key point:

Q: There’s a lot of concern about privacy being compromised here, but people voluntarily put their data into GEDmatch.

A: It's not like people fully understand the consequences of putting their DNA into a public database. They think, “So many people use the website, so it’s OK.” Or: “Oh, it’s a website for genealogy.” What if it was called Police Genealogy? People wouldn’t do it. We don’t think about everything. We think about the most likely thing. [Bold emphasis added]

Blackmail of a gay student at IISc

Orinam, an LGBT support and advocacy website, carried a report two days ago -- “To the person who wrote the note”: Bengaluru student responds to a homophobic extortion attempt -- on a shocking case of blackmail of a gay student at IISc. When his extortion attempts failed, the perpetrator carried out his threat by outing the student (Tushar) in a vicious note posted on a public notice board.

Then, this happened:

Thus outed to the entire hostel, Tushar, who had only been out to his closest friends until then, chose to respond with the following note on the same notice board [you should go read it now].

Tushar, who describes himself as ‘shy and a bit introverted’ said he felt relieved upon writing the note. Classmates and fellow-hostelites came up to him to express their support. In the weeks since the incident, he, with the support of friends, lodged a complaint with the university administration. At the time of publishing this note, he is still awaiting formal action in response.

I hope the "formal action" will be firm and stern. For now, I just want to convey my sympathies to Tushar (whom I don't know), and to applaud his extraordinary courage.

* * *

This story has also been picked up by Daily O.

* * *

Here's a 2011 post by a gay student at IIT-B. Here's another from IIT-M.

A Theoretical Physicist Goes Online, Meets a Bikini Model

One thing leads to another. And, ... he gets jailed in Argentina for smuggling 2 kilograms of cocaine into that country.

Maxine Swann has the riveting, if grim, story of Prof. Paul Frampton of the University of North Carolina:

Two weeks later, on Nov. 12, Frampton’s trial began in a small wood-paneled courtroom, where he sat before three judges. On exhibit in front of the judges was a collapsed black cloth suitcase with wheels wrapped in yellow cellophane.

Frampton’s long-held defense — that he was duped because he had a childlike understanding of the ways of the world — began to unravel. The prosecutor opened his cross-examination of Frampton by citing a text message retrieved from Frampton’s confiscated cellphone. “On Jan. 22 at 9:46 a.m.,” he said, “you wrote from Ezeiza airport to the person you understood to be Denise Milani: ‘Was worried only about sniffer dogs but more.’ ” As his interrogation of Frampton continued, he read other text messages sent from Frampton’s phone. One at 9:52 a.m.: “Need to know if your loyalty is with the bad guy-agent & bolivian friends — or good guy, your husband?” And another at 9:56 a.m.: “SIRU” — the Hotel Siru, where they were planning to meet in Brussels — “IS AMBUSH.” 10:14 a.m.: “Your naivety is bad for me, us. This is millions. NO SIRU, OK?” At 11:19 a.m., Frampton sent Milani an e-mail: “This stuff is worth nothing in Bolivia, but $Ms in Europe. You meet me at the airport and we do not go near the hotel the ‘agent’ suggested. Stay at another hotel.” At 11:47 a.m., there was another text message: “Monday arrival changed. You must not tell the coca-goons.” At 12:16 p.m., he wrote: “WHY ARE YOU IGNORING ME? AT THIS LAST MOMENT. WE DID NOT DECIDE HOW TO MEET TOMORROW IN BRUSSELS AND KEEP COCA & LIVES. AT SIRU WE MAY LOSE BOTH!!” At 1:06: “We may do cool 1,000,000.”

Frampton explained to the judges that these messages were jokes. [...]

A Criminal Googles for His Crime

Felix Salmon has put together several examples like this one:

In their investigation into the art theft, [officials] found that Mr. Istavrioglou had searched the Internet for reports about the robbery after it took place but before the story became news.

Reminded me of this ancient post; the underlying story, unfortunately, is lost to link-rot.

[Update: Apparently, there's a category of crimes called Google Murder Cases. Grim stuff.

The link-rotted 2005 story has also been reported on elsewhere.]

Death of a Scientist in Singapore

Raymond Bonner and Christine Spolar have a hugely damning FT story about the death of Shane Todd, an American scientist, in Singapore where he worked at the Institute of Microelectronics.

On June 24 last year, the body of a young US electronics engineer, Shane Todd, was found hanging in his Singapore apartment. Police said it was suicide, but the Todd family believe he was murdered. Shane had feared that a project he was working on was compromising US national security. His parents want to know if that project sent him to his grave.

Very, very grim stuff.

The Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes

Men may come and men may go, as Basil Rathbone had come before and Robert Downey Jr. came later, but for me, Sherlock Holmes in tinsel life means Jeremy Brett. He is the one who lived the character faithful to what Doyle had constructed (Just as Hercule Poirot = David Suchet, although the delectable Peter Ustinov had made a valiant effort earlier). With such a staunch bias to the original, even when depicted in another media (cinema instead of the written word), I shouldn't have attempted reading the written word involving Sherlock Holmes and Watson, by a writer whose name is not Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I did. Only out of overwhelming urge to stroll through the swirling mists of Baker's Street one more time, to rest and rejoice in a fresh set of mysteries laid out by, hopefully, an author who raises to our exacting expectation. To my credit, I carefully chose a book, out of the myriad available, that had Jeremy Brett posing as the detective on the wrapper. The Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes by Paul Gilbert. The book started promising in that the language was sufficiently Victorian to transport us back to the early 1900s and I slouched further in the couch with the Kindle DX firmly rested on my tummy with only the right thumb capable of any physical action. The game is afoot.

Each of the story in the book is an "untold mystery" by Watson in the original; cases that were solved spectacularly by Holmes, whose time hasn't come then for public consumption. For instance, "The Affair of the Aluminium Crutch", the third story here, was mentioned in the introductory passages of "The Musgrave Ritual". That ploy, while regaling the reader, unfortunately also sets his expectation high. Premonitory came when I read in the first story titled Baron Maupertuis, a sentence "There is certainly more likelihood of picking up Moriarty's trail again if we take up Lady Beasant's consultation, than if we sit here sucking pipes." Sucking pipes? That usage should have given the game away that the author is belabored to put on this writing style that does not come natural for him. But I am nit-picking; so I thought and I persisted my reading. All the usual suspects from Prof. James Moriarty to esoteric Spaniards were there. But the stories, one after another, came  with an original title by Doyle, and gloriously fell flat. Even an introduction of a uni-sex character (Watson, there are many other forms of attachment between two men), with a reference to the "esteemed and now infamous Mr. Wilde", couldn't save the book. If these are the stories that go with the titles mentioned in passing as "untold mysteries" in the originals by Doyle, by writing them, Paul Gilbert provides now a good reason why they deserve to remain untold.

Having bitten once, I should have shied. I picked another book of similar purpose, a more recent "Between the Thames and the Tiber: Further Adventures by Sherlock Holmes" by Ted Riccardi. I gave up midway through the third story in this collection, which thankfully, also had 'original titles'. There is no additional cause for dislike in this case. Seriously, what these 'stories' -- for, I wouldn't dare anoint them 'mysteries' -- uniformly lack in plump is the fine art of deduction that Doyle originated and enunciated so well through his Sherlock to unravel a seemingly unsolvable mystery through logical appraisal of clues and facts that were at times merely over the top but neither impossible nor implausible. There are more such attempts to write 'Sherlock Holmes mysteries' by other authors (counted seven). I only hope some of those stories pass muster in the mystery and deduction department. Because, with no real talent in English writing, even I can construct Sherlockian sentences (the only thing going right for these books). Like this: After having brought on my undivided attention to bear upon some of the purported mysteries, delivered in wads of accentuated Victorian text, in two manuscripts by seemingly different authors, nevertheless bereft of any real mystery or deduction whatsoever, I could only throw up my arms now in remonstrance and ejaculate, "Catastrophe."

The Rajaratnam Trial

While we wait for Rajat Gupta to step away from the ISB Board (just as he has done at no less than five companies / entities), the Rajaratnam trial has begun. A star witness has already started his testimony -- this is a man named Anil Kumar, an old McKinsey hand who, by his own admission, fed Rajaratnam insider information on McKinsey clients he worked with. (Anil Kumar, incidentally, resigned from the ISB Board in 2009 after his involvement in the insider trading scandal became public). The prosecution has also played several conversations between Rajaratnam and his associates; one of them features Anil Kumar.

Some interesting bits, in no particular order:

• Mr. Kumar ... testified that Mr. Rajaratnam told him in 2002 that Galleon had $100 million a year to spend on research ... Mr. Kumar said he made a couple of proposals to provide industry research to Mr. Rajaratnam, but the hedge-fund manager didn't respond.

  Eventually, Mr. Rajaratnam told him at a charitable event that such industry research "wasn't really what I want," and proposed hiring Mr. Kumar as a private consultant for Galleon for $500,000 a year, Mr. Kumar testified.

• “You work very, very hard and you’re underpaid,” Kumar quoted Rajaratnam as saying. “People have made fortunes while you were away in India, you deserve more for all your insights, so just keep track of your insights and share them with me.”

  He said Rajaratnam insisted on paying him, saying “I know you will not remember to keep a list of ideas if you don’t get money from me.”

• "[Rajaratnam] was asking me for a variety of information such as what is a company’s profit, their revenue, how they are doing in that quarter, if they had strategic plans,” Kumar said. “He kept asking me. I didn’t always know the answer but I felt that since I accepted the money I had a sort of obligation to him.”

• "How’s the market treating you today?” Rajaratnam asked in another tape played for jurors after they discussed a deal involving Vishay Intertechnology Inc.

  “Like a baby treats a diaper,” Smith replied, prompting giggles from Rajaratnam.

Links ...

1. Matt Taibbi at Taibblog: The Catholic Church is a Criminal Enterprise. Here's the Taibbi Treatment:

   One expects professional slimeballs like the public relations department of Goldman Sachs to pull out the “Well, we weren’t the only thieves!” argument when accused of financial malfeasance. But I almost couldn’t believe my eyes as I read through Dolan’s retort and it dawned on me that he was actually going to use the “We weren’t the only child molesters!” excuse. Dolan must have very roomy man-robes, because it seems to me you’d need a set of balls like two moons of Jupiter to say such a thing in public and expect it to fly. But this is exactly what Dolan does; he bases his entire defense of the Church on the idea that others are equally culpable.

2. Thomas Benton in The Chronicle of Higher Education: The Big Lie About the 'Life of the Mind':

   One reason that graduate school is for the already privileged is that it is structurally dependent on people who are neither privileged nor connected. Wealthy students are not trapped by the system; they can take what they want from it, not feel pressured, and walk away at any point with minimal consequences. They do not have to obsess about whether some professor really likes them. If they are determined to become academics, they can select universities on the basis of reputation rather than money. They can focus on research rather than scrambling for time-consuming teaching and research assistantships to help pay the bills. And, when they go on the market, they can hold out for the perfect position rather than accepting whatever is available.

   But the system over which the privileged preside does not ultimately depend on them for the daily functioning of higher education (which is now, as we all know, drifting toward a part-time, no-benefit business). The ranks of new Ph.D.'s and adjuncts these days are mainly composed of people from below the upper-middle class: people who believe from infancy that more education equals more opportunity. They see the professions as a path to security and status.

3. Massimo Pigliucci at Rationally Speaking: "Anything Is Possible." No, Not Really.

   Clearly, not anything is possible. It is pretty easy to come up with examples of things that are not possible: it is not possible for me both to be and not to be (pace Hamlet); it is not possible for me to levitate; and it is not even possible for me to be in Rome at this moment, because I’m in New York writing this essay.

   Those three examples are not picked at random, they illustrate three distinct classes of impossibility recognized by philosophers: the first is an instance of something that is logically impossible; the second is an example of physical impossibility; and the last one is an illustration of contingent impossibility.

4. Live Science: Babies Are Born To Dance. Check out the video.

Death of a professor: "Too much of insufficient evidence"

From this very distressing report:

Nearly three years after he was allegedly beaten to death, six Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) activists accused of the murder of Prof HS Sabharwal in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, were today acquitted by a Nagpur court due to lack of evidence.

[...]

Public prosecutor Praful Shandilya said that there was "too much of insufficient evidence" when the case was transfered from Ujjain to Nagpur. He said he had made an application for further investigations in the case, as relevant material which could lead to a conviction had not been collected by the investigating agency.

"The investigating agency is under the state and there were allegations against the political party ruling the state. So it [state government] got it executed in the manner it wanted," Shandilya said. [Bold emphasis added.]

And the report adds that "ABVP lawyer Pushpendra Kaurav said the prosecution had failed to establish that the accused were at the site of the incident."

How can we understand this failure when "the assault was shown repeatedly on national TV, with two of the main men even circled to identify them," as Dilip points out?