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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).
RTFA.
He who is merely arrested forfeits personal biometric identification (DNA) which is not at all like fingerprints, but carries very personal and private data about his genetic makeup, health, probability of disease and much else.
Remember, being arrested has nothing to do with being guilty. This means that if a couple little girls like the ones up in Seattle skip school and then make up a story about being raped by you or some other stranger that had never even seen the girls before and you're arrested because of it (or in that poor homeless guy's case, PUT IN PRISON), they will confiscate your DNA for evidence for eternity - even if the girls later confess that they invented the whole story to get away with skipping school (as those two little twats in Seattle did this past winter).
It isn't even so much the DNA itself as it is the shifting of our legal system from a "presumed innocent until proven guilty" to a "guilty until proven innocent, and even then you're still fucked" system.
#1. DNA test everyone arrested for a FELONY and run a match through DNA samples from other cases.
.1% per year) by submitting DNA samples from non-criminals (but not the same people each time).
#2. All DNA samples take from #1 are to be PURGED COMPLETELY from any databases after 30 days.
#3. All people CONVICTED of FELONIES will have their DNA taken again (the last sample was purged in #2). This sample can stay in the databases forever.
#4. Any DNA samples will ONLY be used to compare to other DNA samples from criminal cases. No scanning for violent dispositions (as you mentioned) nor any paternity suits or ANYTHING.
#5. All DNA matching will require at least double blind. I don't trust cops.
#6. There will be random checks done (no less than
I think DNA matching is good idea, but I don't trust the cops with it. I want lots of checks and balances and I want non-convict DNA records to be deleted. Keep the honest cops honest and don't keep records on innocent citizens.
On the way back I was detained by Redding PD on suspicion of public intoxication. They took me to the station for full prints, DNA and history check. They held me until morning. I was never arrested or charged (I have a clean record). I was detained because the PD was conducting an emphasis patrol on a troublesome motel.
The application of civil rights in California has slipped somewhat, I believe. I left California the next day and have not returned since. I would I recommend California as a good place to visit or do business.
For instance, look up a British case (another link), where the DNA from a blood sample found at the crime scene was compared against Britain's national database. A match was found, with odds of 1 in 37 million of being wrong. The man was convicted of the crime.
The problem? He had advanced Parkinson's disease and lived 320 km from the crime scene. He couldn't even dress himself, let alone drive a car.
The problem is one of comparision - since you can't compare the entire 3 trillion base pair genome, you have to make do by comparing a small part of it - which, while it may have a "1 in 37 million" chance of being wrong, might actually be wrong after all.
Sorry I didn't make that clear enough.
I want double blind tests of clean DNA submitted at random intervals to "prove" that the system will not flag the innocent.
If clean DNA is run and it comes back saying that it is linked to a crime, it shows that there is a problem with the system.
The important thing to remember is that any DNA matching will just about "prove" that you're "guilty" of that crime. It will be up to you to show that you didn't do it.
Given that humans will be involved, there will be mistakes. So the planning has to include methods of testing for errors. And repeated, random, testing.
Also, a series of checks to see where and why those errors were made and a review process to fix the problem(s) as they are identified.
Don't trust the cops.
Don't trust the lab technicians.
Don't trust anyone involved with it.
One thing that is hard to do with finger prints is to leave someone else's at a crime scene. With DNA, however, it is not so difficult to imagine a whole new business starting up, which is the collection of DNA junk and bottling it.
So there you are, a smarter felon than usual, you commit some terrible crime, but you thoughtfully get out your DNA bomb, and set it off just like an insect fogger, painting the crime scene with the DNA of 100,000 individuals --- and in far greater quantity than what you left. If you've been a little careful, you'll generate a sufficient quantity of chaos to
- bring the DNA lab to its knees, or
- get some unfortunate schmuck tossed in your stead (remember the Portland OR lawyer whose fingerprints got mangled by the FBI for the Spanish bombing? Oops.), or
- you just get an expert witness to point out that a DNA bomb has been set off, and that the crime scene DNA is effectively worthless, including
...
... set off DNA bombs *elsewhere* which include your own DNA, thus presenting credible evidence that your own DNA has been captured for DNA bombs used by other fiendish folk
I guess the point is that we may be in a rather unique little window of time when DNA evidence is actually useful --- it just can't be that long before effective countermeasures are readily available to the thoughtful criminal. Go read some Phillip K Dick scifi to learn how to think about such things. "Minority Report" gives a perfectly entertaining presentation about the potential misuse of "indisputable" information.So: if you wonder where could you get a bunch of junk DNA without working too hard
I'm feeling a bit foolish about actually describing a potentially lucrative business opportunity. I take it all back. Move along, move along, nothing to see here.