Young baseball players in Latin America with big dreams of coming to the United States to play in the big leagues have to do more than work on their batting and fielding these days–they may also have to prove that they are who they say they are. Baseball has been beset by a series of assumed identity scandals; for example, the young baseball phenom, Esmailyn Gonzalez, received a $1.4-million bonus when he signed with the Washington Nationals in 2006. This February, the player who was misrepresenting himself as only 19 years old turned out to be a 23-year-old by the name of Carlos David Alvarez Lugo [Scientific American].

To combat the problem, Major League Baseball investigators have begun giving DNA tests to some prospects to determine whether they are actually related to the people they identify as their parents, and aren’t just borrowing them along with the birth certificate of a younger man. A statement from Major League Baseball said that it used DNA testing in the Dominican Republic “in very rare instances and only on a consensual basis to deal with the identity fraud problem that the league faces in that country.” The statement added that the results of the tests were not used for any other purpose [The New York Times]. But the testing raises ethical questions, and could even be declared illegal when a new law takes effect later this year.

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Were you born after 1988 in a small state? If so, researchers would have a particularly good chance of figuring out your Social Security number. In a new study, researchers used publicly available data, including an individual’s place and date of birth, to guess the Social Security number that would have been assigned to that person. And the study’s authors say that cyber-crooks could use similar techniques for identity theft. “We live in a precarious time, where knowledge of a Social Security number, along with other information about one’s name and date of birth, is sometimes sufficient to impersonate another individual,” said Alessandro Acquisti, the study’s lead author [Bloomberg].

Acquisti’s team shared their results with the federal government, but the Social Security office is downplaying the findings; spokesman Mark Lassiter said there is still no “foolproof” method for predicting Social Security numbers. “The suggestion that Mr. Acquisti has cracked a code for predicting an SSN is a dramatic exaggeration,” Lassiter said via e-mail. However, he added: “For reasons unrelated to this report, the agency has been developing a system to randomly assign SSNs. This system will be in place next year” [AP].

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In a rare victory for freedom of information in China, the government has abruptly reversed course on its mandate that Internet filtering software be installed on every computer sold in China after July 1.

Yesterday, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced that mandatory installation of the software, called Green Dam Youth Escort, would be delayed indefinitely. The software caused a torrent of protests from both Chinese computer users and global computer makers…. China has said the software is designed to filter out pornography and violence to protect minors, but many experts say it can also block any other content that the authorities deem subversive [The New York Times].

While some experts suggested that the Chinese government might be delaying the program’s roll-out simply to give computer makers more time to test the software and comply with the policy, others believe that the government was forced to bow to the pressure from outraged citizens. “This shows that social pressure can’t be ignored,” said Zhou Ze, a Beijing lawyer who challenged the legality of the plan. “They tried to control public opinion to back the plan by creating a fuss about pornography, but that failed, and they will have learnt to be more careful next time” [Reuters]. Analyst Edward Yu of Beijing says that while protests from foreign computer companies probably influenced the government’s decision, “we think public opinion played an even more important role” [AP].

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If you’re arrested for a felony in the state of California, expect to give up a DNA sample. As of January 1, California police departments began taking and storing genetic samples from all adults arrested for felonies, regardless of whether they go on to charge those people with crimes, or whether the suspects are ultimately convicted. Meanwhile, the FBI and 15 states now collect DNA samples from immigrants who are detained, and 16 states store genetic samples from people found guilty of misdemeanors.

The intent is to create a large genetic database that will allow police to solve more crimes, but critics say the cumulative effect may be unconstitutional. Criminal justice experts cite Fourth Amendment privacy concerns and worry that the nation is becoming a genetic surveillance society…. “What we object to — and what the Constitution prohibits — is the indiscriminate taking of DNA for things like writing an insufficient funds check, shoplifting, drug convictions,” said Michael Risher, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union [The New York Times]. 

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Some doctors are so concerned about being negatively reviewed on Web sites like Yelp, RateMDs, and Angie’s List that they are asking patients to sign gag orders that bar them from posting negative online reviews. A company called Medical Justice, which seeks to protect doctors against medical malpractice claims, advices doctors to have each patient sign the non-disclosure agreement–and if the patient refuses, to turn him away.

“Consumers and patients are hungry for good information” about doctors, but Internet reviews provide just the opposite, contends Dr. Jeffrey Segal, a North Carolina neurosurgeon [and the founder of Medical Justice]. Some sites “are little more than tabloid journalism without much interest in constructively improving practices,” and their sniping comments can unfairly ruin a doctor’s reputation, Segal said [AP]. About 2,000 doctors have signed up for the service since it was launched two years ago. Segal claims that privacy laws and medical ethics prevent doctors from defending themselves on the review sites.

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In a landmark court case, a European court has ruled that law enforcement agencies can’t keep DNA samples from people who have never been convicted of a crime. In the unanimous judgment, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that keeping the samples was in violation of people’s right to a private life, a protection under the Human Rights Convention [AP].

Its decision, which is binding on all 46 members of the Council of Europe, will have an immediate impact on around 850,000 innocent people whose genetic profiles are stored on the police DNA database in England and Wales [The Economist]. In those parts of the United Kingdom, the police collect a DNA sample from anyone arrested on a “recordable” offense, a category that includes everything from murder to “fraudulently evading bingo duty.” That sample is stored for the rest of the person’s life, even if they’re never convicted of the crime they were arrested for. If the U.K. doesn’t appeal the new ruling, the English and Welsh police will have to immediately destroy the genetic profiles of everyone without a criminal record.

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Ten intrepid genetic explorers have volunteered to have their genetic information posted on the Internet for anyone’s perusal, along with photographs, their disease histories, allergies, medications, ethnic backgrounds and a trove of other traits, called phenotypes, from food preferences to television viewing habits [The New York Times]. The 10 volunteers are the first participants in the Personal Genomics Project, an endeavor run by Harvard Medical School that hopes to offer free genetic testing to 100,000 people in exchange for their privacy.

The project aims to advance genome research by tapping volunteers who have a Facebook-mentality sense of privacy–minimal–and enough excitement about genomic science that they are willing to lay out their genetic and medical information so any researcher can sift through it for links between genes and traits. “There’s a hope that by making these data public, you can harness crowd-sourcing power in the same way that Wikipedia and YouTube and Google and Linux all emerged from cooperative, distributed efforts” [Boston Globe], said Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker, who is one of the 10 pioneers.

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A new method to identify an individual’s genetic profile from a larger pool of genetic data could be a boon for forensic science, but is causing headaches for the National Institutes of Health. In response to a study describing the technique, the NIH quickly removed several publicly available databases of DNA information drawn from medical studies, citing concerns that patients’ privacy could be threatened.

The new type of DNA analysis could only identify an individual if that person’s genetic profile was already known. Such a confirmation could reveal patients’ participation in a study about a specific medical condition, denying them their presumed confidentiality, experts said [Los Angeles Times]. NIH officials say they took down the databases, which contained genetic data from more than 60,000 patients, as a precautionary measure, and say it’s unlikely that the privacy of any of those patients has been violated.

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