California Initiative to Expand DNA Database

vervais_sucks writes "A California attorney is personally bankrolling, to the sum of $1.3m, an initiative to require law enforcement to take DNA samples of every person they arrest for a felony." The (lengthy) initiative is available here (search for DNA on the page).

Comments

Do you know what a felony is?

[CSharpMinor]

I know someone who's a convicted felon. Want to know what the conviction is for? Graffiti.

That's right, he sprayed graffiti on someone's house when he was 18 and now he's a felon for life. And he gets a DNA sample taken.

How about people with more than $200 of pot on them? People who accidentally cut fiberoptic cables while digging in their backyards?

Do people not realize how idiotic laws are in this country? More than 30 states still consider it a felony to have sex out of wedlock!

Further background

[aka-ed]

Bruce Harrington, the lawyer pushing for his, is doing so because his brother and his sister-in-law were murdered in their homes a couple of decades ago.

The ACLU is doing what they can to slow or stop it.

Here's some informative blog entries:

http://www.jefallbright.net/node/view/1780

http://www.socallawblog.com/archives/001186.html

sucks for people falsely accused

[r5t8i6y3]

a few years back i was falsely accused of breaking into and thieving half a dozen houses in broad daylight. a felony crime.

well, there i am, at home in my pajamas one morning and a knock at the door. two police officers, one local, one state trooper, ask if they can come in. being completely naive and a bit frightened i let them in.

they tell me that half a dozen homes were robbed in broad daylight and that neighbors said they saw a man fitting my dark complexion driving up and down the street days in advance of the robberies.

i explain (to no avail) to the officers that i had been on that road exactly *once* in my life (the day before) when i accompanied my girlfriend to her friend's home to feed her cat while she was away.

the officers didn't care what i had to say and they proceeded to play good-cop bad-cop and tell some enormous lies about me in the process. one of them asked if he could use my bathroom and then proceeded to case my home.

then they told me that they needed to take my picture and fingerprint all of my fingers. after about one hour they finally left.

after a few weeks had passed (in which i heard nothing from the police) i called the police department to find out what was going on. it took a couple weeks to get through the police bureaucracy, but eventually someone was able to tell me that i was no longer under suspicion.

when i expressed concern about having my picture and fingerprints taken and said i wanted them back i was told that wasn't possible. after expressing my displeasure and complaining to various people in the police department eventually my picture and fingerprints were released to me.

unfortunately, my friend who is a police officer told me that my picture and fingerprints had been scanned and sent to the national FBI database. when i asked him about having them removed from that database he gave me a look that indicated the possibility of that happening was as likely as a cold day in hell.

that experience taught me how easy it is to have your unique unchangeable biometric information stolen and forever stored in government databases just waiting to be abused.