Breaking: Did the FBI Suspect Fraud in 9/11 DNA ID Process?
Reading between the lines here... The NYC medical examiner's office *was*, it's true, mired in scandal. But I wonder if the FBI wanted to examine the code to determine whether the DNA identification process was on the up and up. 9/11 may be unraveling behind closed doors, folks!
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/30/nyregion/30dna.html?_r=1&partner=rss&e...
Ruling Sought on Suit Over 9/11 DNA Software
By JOHN ELIGON
Published: October 29, 2010
A federal judge in Manhattan has been asked to determine if a lawsuit can proceed that accuses the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office of stealing the secrets behind a computer program used to identify the remains of 9/11 victims.
The lawsuit, filed in March by Gene Codes, a software development company based in Ann Arbor, Mich., accuses the medical examiner’s staff of providing the Federal Bureau of Investigation with information about the technology behind Gene Codes program. It seeks tens of millions of dollars in damages.
The city filed a countersuit for $10 million, accusing Gene Codes of failing to live up to its contract.
According to Gene Codes, the city approached it in the weeks after the attacks because it did not have a system for processing the DNA from such a large collection of remains, many of which were badly burned.
The company had developed software that could analyze and organize numerous types of DNA, according to the complaint filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan.
The city, however, said in court papers that Gene Codes had approached it, offering to provide its technology at a reduced fee.
Whoever initiated the agreement, the two sides in March 2002 signed a three-year contract, but that contract’s details are now at issue.
Gene Codes said the city had agreed to protect all confidential information regarding the software.
The medical examiner’s office has disclosed Gene Codes’ “valuable trade secrets and confidential information and has acted on its own and in concert with the F.B.I. to steal” the secrets and information, the company wrote in its complaint.
The city, in response papers, denied it had given any confidential information to the F.B.I. and said it actually helped Gene Codes develop the software and had some ownership rights.
The city said it paid Gene Codes $13 million for the contract. The city has asked Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald to dismiss the suit.
The software was known as the Mass-Fatality Identification System, or M-FISys for short.
Gene Codes set aside all its other business to focus on the 9/11 identification project, according to its complaint.
And apparently, the city was happy with the product. In a letter supporting Gene Codes’ nomination for the National Medal of Technology, the medical examiner’s office wrote, “Without M-FISys, the identification of the remains could not have proceeded so quickly and so smoothly.”
Even after the contract with the city was over, Howard Cash, the president of Gene Codes, said he continued to regularly service the software free. But when the system eventually crashed, he said, he told the city he would not bring it back up unless the city signed a formal maintenance agreement.
After that, Mr. Cash said, he discovered through someone in the medical examiner’s office that members of the office had printed out what he considered proprietary information about M-FISys and had turned it over to the F.B.I.
In its response papers, the city said it had printed out the DNA data so it could migrate it to the F.B.I.’s database, which was necessary when Gene Codes’ system became inoperable.
The city claims that as part of the contract, Gene Codes agreed to provide all upgrades and revisions to M-FISys free, even after the contract had expired.
The city said that it had the right to claim co-authorship of the system because it had provided Gene Codes with access to its database of DNA data from 9/11 victims, and had provided guidance as to what updates needed to be included in the system.
- gretavo's blog
- Login to post comments
Gene Codes and the World
Gene Codes and the World Trade Center
March 2004
It has been a difficult decision to open up this web site and to post information about the work that has consumed much of the attention of Gene Codes for the last two-and-a-half years, since September 2001. On the 29th of that month, we first met with senior staff of the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner [OCME]. We were there to discuss the difficulties they faced in the DNA matching needed to identify the victims of 9-11 at the World Trade Center.
Before the end of that first day, we were asked to take the lead in designing a data comparison and tracking system that today is being used to identify almost 20,000 human remains from 2,750 people. Gene Codes Forensics, Inc., a subsidiary of Gene Codes Corporation, developed the Mass-Fatality Identification System [M-FISys, pronounced like emphasis]. It correlates the DNA profiles from the remains with profiles from over 5,000 personal effects of the victims (toothbrushes, combs, etc.) and nearly 7,000 cheek swabs collected from surviving family members. Many of the remains have been tested and re-tested multiple times with different laboratory techniques.
This has been a staggering job. It is not one that we sought, and it is not a contract that we bid on. But when asked to help in this humanitarian effort, we could certainly not refuse. We also had no way to estimate how complex the job would be, since many of the problems that we have been asked to solve were not obvious until we ran up against them. For instance, the fact that remains were exposed to temperatures of up to 2,000 degrees (F.) means that many remains yield only partial profiles at best. But despite the difficulties and complexities, we have developed new technologies combining short-tandem repeat analysis, mtDNA sequencing and SNP comparison that go far beyond any bioinformatics tools that were available in this field when we began. The software professionals working for us here in Ann Arbor and in New York worked extremely hard, pushing through holidays and weekends to release updates to the software nearly every week. I could not be more proud of the staff at this company, and I honestly don't know of another software development team in the world that could have built the forensic identification tools that we have created at anywhere near the quality and speed that has characterized this project.
We made a decision early on to not use any of the World Trade Center work in any of our marketing or PR. All of my staff and shareholders are keenly aware of the need to respect the grief and the dignity of the families of the victims, and we did not want to appear to be capitalizing on of the deaths of so many innocent people. Despite weekly requests, we refused all press coverage and interviews until the 1,000th victim was identified in late April, 2002. At that point, only two reporters were given access to our staff, including Adrienne Burke, editor of Genome Technology. Then we again refused all of the many follow-up requests until carefully selected reporters were given limited access to our work at the time of the first anniversary of the attack. Each of these public disclosures was made only after significant debate and soul-searching, and in coordination with the Director of Forensic Biology and other officials at the OCME.
But this work has also had an impact on you, our 16,000+ Sequencher users. When almost all of our engineering and software Quality Assurance efforts were re-directed to the World Trade Center Identification Project, ongoing efforts on other projects were drained of their resources. The project to "carbonize" the Macintosh version of Sequencher for Apple Computer's OS X should have been completed in late 2001, but it is still in final beta-testing as I write this. We certainly have the staff and skill to complete this task, but as president of this company, I cannot use financial need as a moral justification for pulling any staff off of the M-FISys development team to go back to the Sequencher project. Not while only 53% of the victims have yet been identified and their remains returned to their families for burial.
When asked directly by our clients, we have not hidden the reason for our delays. Some have been understanding and even actively supportive. We received this from a user in Australia
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002
Hi Marie,
Reading that article (thanks for the link) was a real eye-opener - here I am hassling you about an upgrade to Sequencher, and there is GeneCodes and employees slaving away on what must be a rather gruelling and demanding project. I have to apologise for my impatience in light of all this (and I mean it).
Gotta go, thanks again for the link and for alerting Robin to my inquiry.
Seeya,
Michael
Others have been less patient. Here is an e-mail we received from a user in the western United States.
Hello good folks,
While I am waiting (again) for the Mac OS 9 environment to start up so that I can use Sequencher, I thought I would send a note to you asking when the OS X version will be available. Your software is the LAST program that I use not to have gone OS X compatible. And that's quite a statement, I use all manner of programs, ALL of which are OS X carbonized at the minimum, most are native. What gives? I have to tell you that after spending what for me was a lot of money for your software, I am disappointed at the pace of developments and improvements. Do you have a beta version that I might help with testing, or even an alpha? I happy to test and bug-hunt for you. I'm just tired of having another, and in this case crappy, operating system on my computer. When you release the OS X version of Sequencher, that will no longer be a necessity. If a new Sequencher is not forthcoming, it will be awfully tempting to switch to a competitors' product. I would like an honest answer to my concerns and not the "We're working on it... It's in testing... Impossible to give you a date" kind of response - if I gave those answers to my chairman and funding agencies, I would lose my job.
Richard
It is only because of this sort of reaction that today we are adding a link to a Gene Codes Forensics web site. As I said at the beginning of this letter, this has not been a decision that we have made lightly. By including this information on our web site, we intend no disrespect or insensitivity to those who lost loved ones on 9-11, but we also feel that we owe it to our users to explain why Gene Codes Corporation has not been giving the industry-leading levels of technical support and rapid development that you have come to expect. Our primary business is still one of bioinformatics and we are not abandoning that mission, but we are balancing our resources as judiciously as we can in light of the moral weight of the effort in New York City.
Thank you for your patience and your understanding.
Sincerely,
Howard Cash
President, Gene Codes Corporation
http://www.genecodes.com/company/wtc.html
History 2010 Gene Codes
History
2010
Gene Codes launches Sequencher 4.10.1 for Windows and Mac platforms in March 2010.
2009
Gene Codes launches Sequencher 4.9 for Windows and Mac platforms in March 2009.
2007
Gene Codes launches Sequencher 4.8 for Windows and Mac platforms in October 2007.
2006
Gene Codes launches Sequencher 4.6 for Windows and Mac platforms in March 2006 and Sequencher 4.7 for both platforms in October 2006.
2005
Gene Codes Corporation personnel are on the ground in Thailand soon after the devastating tsunami and provide assistance and DNA identification services using M-FISys
Gene Codes launches Sequencher 4.5 for Windows and Mac platforms.
2004
Gene Codes launches Sequencher for Macintosh OSX while continuing to support Classic Macintosh and Windows operating systems.
2002
775 Technology Drive in Ann Arbor, Michigan, becomes our new headquarters.
2001
New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner [OCME] asks Gene Codes to assist in the effort to identify the victims of the World Trade Center terrorist attack. Gene Codes Forensics is formed as a wholly owned subsidiary. Gene Codes' employees and shareholders respond wholeheartedly to this call to service. The first iteration of MFISYS ("EMPHASIS"), the mass fatality identification system, is released in December 2001. The WTC effort concludes in February, 2005.
2000
The Forensic version of Sequencher becomes the standard at the FBI and other labs around the world engaged in identification through mtDNA sequencing.
1999
Gene Codes opens offices in Philadelphia and the United Kingdom.
1998
With substantial new enhancements for mutation detection and expressed protein comparisons, Gene Codes launches on the Microsoft Windows platform.
1997
Gene Codes builds a special Forensic version of Sequencher for the U.S. Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory [AFDIL]. The Forensic Build of Sequencher facilitates identification by "mitotyping," the sequencing of the hypervariable regions of the mitochondrial genome. AFDIL uses Sequencher to help identify the remains of American service men and women who have died in active duty so they can be returned to their families.
1993 to 1997
Nearly every major pharmaceutical company and commercial genomics company in the world standardizes on Sequencher, as do most labs at major academic centers.
1991
At the Cellular Biology meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, Gene Codes introduces Sequencher, for the analysis and assembly of DNA fragments.
1988
Howard Cash, President and C.E.O. incorporates Gene Codes in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The Mass Fatality
The Mass Fatality Identification System (M-FISys)
The complete solution for DVI & Missing Persons casework
Wherever there is the need for DNA identification of human remains, M-FISys is uniquely able to make sense of huge quantities of data and to assist in the task of victim identification. Even when ante-mortem data is unavailable, M-FISys' kinship analysis lets family members know if remains collected from a disaster belong to their missing relatives. In addition to forming a valuable addition to the emergency response repertoire on a national or local level, M-FISys is also able to handle data from large-scale civil incidents such as air crashes, where human remains are frequently fragmented.
We initially developed M-FISys for identification of the victims of the World Trade Center disaster in 2001. Since the, years of close work with forensic scientists on the front lines of victim identification has resulted in a comprehensive solution for data management in victim identification situations.
Our integrated approach to disaster data management includes both software and services components:
The M-FISys database has extensive capabilities for:
* CODIS compatible file exchange, ensuring interoperability with existing standards.
* Operation in a network environment with multiple users, or as a standalone system that can be run entirely on a common laptop. This flexibility allows M-FISys to adapt to any scale disaster or work environment.
* Direct matching of DNA profiles to personal effects (references), with immediate access to raw electropherogram and image data for each sample. This ensures that trained Forensic Scientists always have access to the data they need to make accurate identifications
* Screening by STR/SNP or Mito with inter-assay concordance checks for increased confidence
* One-to-many and many-to-many searches based on user-defined thresholds for statistics or allele counts. The ability to easily do a many-to-many comparison is unique to M-FISys
* Automatic generation of complete match reports with statistics, providing confidence for accurate identifications.
* Automatic screening of all samples against exclusion profiles (e.g., laboratory personnel), reducing the chance of misidentification through laboratory contamination of samples.
* Virtual Profiles, combining multiple test results from a single sample, with concordance & conflict reporting, another feature unique to M-FISys! This greatly simplifies work with fragmented samples, or degraded samples that have been assayed many times.
* Kinship matching to family references. Samples can contribute to more than one case and M-FISys can handle complex pedigrees. Profiles can have multiple roles, allowing a direct reference or newly identified person to be used as a reference for another. Profiles can be reassigned to other references if needed, greatly increasing their flexibility.
* Graphical pedigree displays with editable relationships, and a complete set of Pedigree drawing tools to graphically specify likelihood ratio scenarios. The results are obvious without having to manually evaluate complex equations.
* Calculation of likelihood ratios and posterior probabilities with flexible, intuitive parameters. No typing in of complex symbolic algebra!
* Calculation of population statistics based on sample size. M-FISys can use any population statistics database required, including user-supplied statistics for particular population groups.
* Integration of non-DNA data, such as anthropological descriptions, location where remains were recovered (including GPS or grid coordinates), and identifications made by fingerprints, dental or other methods. Annotations can include free-form text. This level of integration is unique to M-FISys, and allows the Forensic Scientist to save time and work more efficiently with all the data readily accessible.
* Multiple levels of secure access privileges including "Administrator Only" functions. Specific operators can be assigned to samples or groups of samples.
* Extensive management reports giving you insight into your data, including Administrative review tools to establish sample chain of custody, and audit-trails on critical operations.
* QA tools allowing you to spot inconsistencies and errors in the data that may be the result of commingled remains, sample switches or contamination and greatly reduce the chance of a false-identification. Additional tools provide Data validation to reduce operator error on data entry, including automatic correction of common errors in mtDNA nomenclature (Anderson/CRS numbering)
* Extensive work lists and project management tools to help your team work effectively and efficiently, ensuring that no data falls through the cracks, and provides immediate feedback on the progress of the identification efforts.
* The system is highly scalable, and has already been proven in real-world situations with well over 100,000 data samples.
* M-FISys has a modular design, allowing new analysts to learn the specific parts of the program they need to contribute productively, often on the very first day they use the program. This short learning curve allows a very rapid response in DVI situations.
* Data compatibility with all current commercially available kits and markers and extensible for custom systems and marker sets as needed, to ensure long-term usability.
M-FISys in Use
In November 2001, M-FISys was used by the New York Office of the Chief Medical Examiner to expedite the identification of the 265 victims of American Airlines flight 587, the second-largest commercial air disaster in US history. M-FISys was also used early in the Thai Tsunami disaster of December 2004 for DNA identification of victims.
But M-FISys is not limited to DVI work. M-FISys has also been applied to missing-persons work and has all the tools needed to catalog DNA from unidentified human remains and from the relatives of those missing. It is uniquely capable of determining if any remains on record could belong to any relative of a person reported missing through bulk kinship analysis.
The accurate and timely identification of large sets of human remains depends on the evaluation of a wide range of complex information by a forensics expert. The purpose of M-FISys is to facilitate this process without automating it -- the final identification must be done by a qualified person in possession of all the facts. M-FISys is capable of integrating and filtering a range of data sources, performing quality checks and complex analyses and presenting the user with a range of evidence through an intuitive interface. M-FISys software is the first to combine STR, mtDNA and SNP data in an integrated manner, with subsystems for quality control, progress reporting and workflow management.
M-FISys Screen Capture - STR Master List
Raw genetic analyses of Simple Tandem Repeats (STRs), Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs), and Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) can be viewed through the M-FISys Master List. Analyses can be grouped using variable parameters to identify fragments belonging to the same person and to build up a consensus DNA profile from badly damaged remains.
M-FISys presents users with a rich set of information to enable them to make their best judgment in the identification of a victim. Other pieces of information visible to users on this screen include which samples have been positively identified (marked in red), the population likelihood of occurrence of this STR profile, and the mode of identification of each victim sample.
M-FISys Screen Capture - Mitochondrial DNA Master List
Mitochondrial DNA extracted from personal effects, kin samples and remains from a crime scene can be viewed through the same intuitive interface, and results can be displayed grouped by similarities between STR or SNP results obtained from the same materials. Information available to users includes whether a sample has been identified (in red), if a sample is a confirmed example of the mitotype of a missing person (yellow star) and a graphical representation of coverage of the mitochondrial hypervariable regions.
M-FISys is fully integrated with the Forensic Edition of the Sequencher™ DNA sequence assembly tool from Gene Codes Corporation, which can automatically generate a mitotype as a list of differences from a reference sequence, or permit the user to evaluate the evidence supporting a particular base call.
Through the integration of many strands of data in a single intuitive interface, M-FISys is uniquely well qualified to assist the forensic biologist in the rapid identification of human remains. The issues of large-scale data integration and interpretation addressed by M-FISys are by no means restricted to a mass fatality and could be applied in any area of forensic casework where DNA identification is a requirement.
The fact that the FBI does not claim bin Laden is
wanted for 9/11 adds credence to the hypothesis that, as you say, "9/11 may be unraveling behind closed doors", and more specifically that the FBI could be one of the agencies/entities in which a certain faction or factions within the elite ruling class who were not a party to the gang of perpetrators who pulled off the 9/11 false flag op are becoming increasingly outraged about this hijacking of US foreign policy in a way that is ultimately detrimental and risky to the interests of those certain factions.
This is not the first time that the FBI was not fully cooperating or going along with a Zionist/Neocon false flag operation. In 1995, the FBI was apparently powerful enough and independent enough to not go along with the Zionist plans to blame the OKC bombing on Iraq and Iran. And again, in 1996, the FBI was powerful enough to cover-up the Missile attack on the TWA 800 airliner that Israel had set up to be blamed on the Arabs, thus thwarting yet again the Zionists' plans for triggering a War on Israel's Enemies, er, I mean a "War on Terror".
Gene Codes Sues New York
Gene Codes Sues New York over 9/11 DNA ID Software; Faces Countersuit
November 01, 2010
NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Gene Codes is suing New York City alleging it stole trade secrets as part of Gene Codes' work to identify the remains of victims of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
In a complaint filed in March in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, Gene Codes, based in Ann Arbor, Mich., alleges New York's Office of Chief Medical Examiner improperly shared proprietary information about its software with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
In the complaint, Gene Codes said that OCME approached it following the 9/11 attacks in lower Manhattan to develop the software to identify victims of the attacks and to organize the DNA data of the 2,800 victims and 20,000 fragmented remains located at Ground Zero.
OCME had already been using a previously developed software program called Sequencher for the analysis of mitochondrial DNA, Gene Codes said, and added that in order to carry out the 9/11-related tasks it "suspended its existing commercial software research and development activities and devoted all of its efforts and energies to developing a new and groundbreaking system of DNA profile matching technology."
The new software eventually was called Mass-Fatality Identification System, or M-FISys.
Gene Codes was awarded a three-year contract worth $13 million by OCME for developing the software.
After the contract expired, however, OCME infringed on trade secrets associated with M-FISys, Gene Codes alleges, by providing access and information about the software to the FBI, violating the contract it had with OCME, as well as Gene Codes' IP rights.
According to the suit, violations included OCME employees printing out confidential database schema from the M-FISys software "for the purpose of enabling FBI to extract," Gene Codes' trade secrets "in order to develop and enhance the functionality of" CODIS, another software program that was in use by FBI, the company said in its complaint.
Gene Codes is asking for at least $10 million in damages.
New York City is countersuing Gene Codes and is asking that the company's lawsuit be dismissed. It also asks for $10 million in damages.
According to the city, Gene Codes approached OCME in late September 2001 to develop the new software. Under its contract with Gene Codes, the city claims it obtained a "perpetual, royalty-free" license to use the M-FISys software for non-commercial purposes. In exchange, Gene Codes could claim copyright ownership of the software but not commercially exploit the program, New York alleges.
"The creation and development of M-FISys represented a collaborative effort under with OCME provided constant input and feedback to Gene Codes and OCME specified the desired functionalities that were to be incorporated in the program," the city said in its response to Gene Codes' complaint.
While OCME could have claimed joint ownership of the software, the city agreed not to, in part due to Gene Codes' "agreement to commit most of its resources to the project and work at a reduced rate of compensation for its services."
New York City alleges Gene Codes breached its contractual obligations by, among other things, failing to properly train OCME personnel for use of M-FISys; failing to provide upgrades and revisions of the software to OCME after the contract expired as was required; and failing to provide OCME with a version of M-FISys that could generate data in a CODIS format, "although such functionality was specifically requested by OCME and later incorporated in a newer version of M-FISys."
It also alleges that in November 2006, Gene Codes agreed in writing not to file claims against the city for IP violations stemming from its work developing M-FISys for OCME