What Will We Do With Innocent People's DNA?

NevDull writes "As creepy as it may be to deal with identity theft from corporate databases, imagine being swabbed for DNA samples as a suspect in a crime, being vindicated by that sample, and never even being told why you were suspected. This article discusses a man, Roger Valadez, who's fighting both to have his DNA sample and its profile purged from government records, and to find out why he and his DNA were searched in the BTK case. DA Nola Foulston said, 'I think some people are overwrought about their concerns.' -- convenient as she wasn't the one probed without explanation. The article then mentions that 'In California, police will be able in 2008 to take DNA samples from anyone arrested for a felony, whether the person is convicted or not, under a law approved by voters in November.' What will be the disposition of the DNA of the innocent?"

Comments

Nothing to Fear

[ackthpt]

DA Nola Foulston said, 'I think some people are overwrought about their concerns.'

In a country where the federal government has been concentrating power in the capital, I can't see where she gets such bizarre ideas.

We're heading for a country where everyone is a potential suspect, eventually. And when the congress pulls and late nighter and the president flies back to the capital to quickly sign a bill allowing the government to barge past states rights and personal descisions it's discomforting. It would probably be a small matter to bury into a large bill some little thing that allows the transportation of all DNA evidence to be conveniently sent to the Foggy Bottom and squirreled away somewhere, where it could be called upon the next time someone needs a roundup of the usual suspects and a filing error could easily send anyone off to Gitmo.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[Mistlefoot]

everyone is always a potential suspect.

What of the poor sap who has an affair with someone who happens to get raped/murdered on her way home.

That his sperm has been found in her body and definitly matches means he's guilty?

How do you prove you had consentual sex with a now dead women. There are many such instances were the DNA found at the scene does not mean guilt. It seems to be the rule of thumb these days. If the DNA is there you are deemed guilty.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[pizzaman100]

And when the congress pulls and late nighter and the president flies back to the capital to quickly sign a bill allowing the government to barge past states rights and personal descisions it's discomforting.

Ok, I'll bite. States rights are non existent, and have been for some. Just last week the SC ruled that it's illegal for any state in the union to put to death a 17 year old who commits multiple premeditated murders. Try to have your state lower the drinking age to 19, or opt out of Social Security, or pass a law against abortion or (insert idea here). This cuts both ways politically. But unfortunately the different party wings only howl when it comes to an issue that they care about. The rest of the time they have no problem with the Feds imposing their will.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[The_K4]

If you had an affair with someone who was raped/murdered on her way home you should come forward if they have your DNA or not. ANY information that you can give the police will help them in hopefully finding the true killer. If you don't, even if they don't have your DNA on file, they will most likly find you anyway.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[BWJones]

You should also know that every individual that serves in the armed forces is required to submit a blood sample for DNA isolation and data warehousing. Of course these databases are supposed to be used principally for identification of remains, there are other more insidious plans that some individuals have proposed and acted upon with these data. i.e. using the data to test database systems and index them to criminal records. The problem of course like I have said before is that once these databases are created, it is very difficult to put the djinni back in the bottle. People will access them and include them in other projects.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[neil.pearce]

Drunken one-night stand?
Obviously this rarely applies on Slashdot...

Re:Nothing to Fear

[Anonymous Coward]

(Puts on tin-foil hat)

They could also compare DNA to aptitude tests, and found out what genetically makes a soldier good. Not that this would be used for making gentically modified soldiers (god forbid), but it could come in useful when recruiting.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[ReverendLoki]

I agree that in this instance, you should indeed come forward - however, I believe that as a matter of ethical principle, which I hold myself alone up to, noone else. I also feel that a person has his own right to privacy, and to protect him/herself against possible false accusation, and if that person in that situation doesn't want to volunteer info or DNA, that's his choice - though I feel it makes him a crap excuse for a human. And unfortunately, i can understand why one might - fear that they will then become the immediate suspect and taken to court on whatever circumstantial evidence available with the eyewitness testimony of a little old lady with glaucoma in her one good eye who just knows that you were the one that did it.

Of course, don't be surprised if the police find enough reason to get a warrant for your DNA and it happens anyways.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[ackthpt]

(Puts on tin-foil hat) They could also compare DNA to aptitude tests, and found out what genetically makes a soldier good. Not that this would be used for making gentically modified soldiers (god forbid), but it could come in useful when recruiting.

"This one's cut out for Navy SEAL!"
"How do you know?"
"DNA shows high strength, agility, good swimmer and an excellent natural armor class"

Re:Nothing to Fear

[Anonymous Coward]

Try to have your state lower the drinking age to 19

Bad example, since the drinking age is already set by states. There is no federal drinking age.

It happens to be 21 because federal highway funding to the states is tied to compliance with setting it to that age. However, there was a span of time where certain states such as Louisiana had a lower legal age. (The theory is that Louisiana makes more money off alcohol sales during Mardi Gras than they get from highway funding, but who knows) ;)

Re:Nothing to Fear

[Thunderstruck]

Try to have your state lower the drinking age to 19, or opt out of Social Security, or pass a law against abortion or (insert idea here).

Actually, if you read South Dakota v. Dole, its pretty clear that your state is quite free to set the drinking age wherever it likes. (As long as it does not mind paying for its own roads.) Other cases such as Morrison & Lopez, (which held that Washington D.C. cannot make it a crime to carry a firearm in a school zone, or create a civil cause of action for abused women,) have in recent years done much to begin the revival of States' rights.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[ackthpt]

Kind of makes you wonder what Lee Harvey Oswald III is up to nowadays.

President. The real George W. Bush's body is in the concrete foundation of Arlington Stadium. It's all a very long, convoluted plot to seize the Whitehouse and ... whoops, boot coming through the door, see ya

Re:Nothing to Fear

[Anonymous Coward]

I generally vote Democrat but in this case I agree with you. The husband has a clear conflict of interest in this case. Furthermore, Terri has nothing in writing stating her wishes.

The *default* should be to take care of such a person unless proof is shown that she wanted to die.

I've seen interviews with Michael Schiavo and the guy is, for lack of a better word, slimy. He seems to have no sympathy whatsoever for Terri, and I find it hard to believe that someone would work so hard to end another's life. Once her parents started the legal battle, any sane person would've said: "fine, I'm outta here". Divorce her and let her parents handle her care.

But he'd rather spend millions on lawyer fees to make sure her life ends. There's something very wrong about that.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[JJ]

For years every member of the military has had to submit to fingerprinting and having their dental records retained for exactly the same reason. Both of those could also be miss-used. I for one would rather know that a million extra fingerprints, dental records and even DNA were kept, that one guilty person might be caught.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[Sloppy]

its pretty clear that your state is quite free to set the drinking age wherever it likes. (As long as it does not mind paying for its own roads.)

This is an illusion. If a state decides to handle roads on its own, that state's citizens are still not allowed to opt out of the federal taxes that would have gone to into the federal highway funds. Thus, citizens in a state with a drinking age of 19, would pay twice for their roads. That's not fair, and such a punitive measure clearly stretches the idea of them being "free" to set their drinking age.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[Zemran]

The problem has already arisen in that these databases are already becoming global. I no longer have the link but a man was arrested in England a couple of years ago for a crime commited in Italy. He was arrested because his DNA matched the DNA found at a crime scene. He had never left England in his life and did not have a passport. He had a big fight on his hands because we have already got to the stage were we assume that DNA is infalable when it is not. Just like fingerprints, we match so many points (16 with fingerprints) and eventually if the database becomes large enough you get duplicates. It is folly to say that no 2 are the same just that the probablity is high that we will not get 2 the same. The problem is caused by human error in that we match on a limited number of points and have such a large database.

If you were on a jury, would you convict on DNA evidence alone? I think most people would because of the media hype about how perfect the system is and we will get a lot of innocent people in prison with these databases.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[plague3106]

Thats the WORST thing you can do...as they police will immediately fixate on you as their prime suspect.

In the real world, no good deed goes unpunished.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[Anonymous Coward]

high strength, agility, good swimmer and an excellent natural armor class

Wow, you must've reduced your wisdom and intelligence to the bare minimum in order to get such high points in the other attributes.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[plague3106]

So you'd be for cameras in every house too because it might help solve just one crime right? Why not..thats what your logic leads to.

If you had bothered to RTFA, you'd know that out of 18 DNA-drag nets, only ONE actually helped collar someone...and it was limited to 25 people that had access to the victim. The rest (where thousands of samples were collected) DID NOT HELP AT ALL.

So, whats the point?

Re:Nothing to Fear

[mankey wanker]

Oh, I laugh...

While I understand where you are coming from, I think you may be naive to the point of stupidity.

You would come forward as a good person, as a good citizen, as someone who seeks the truth.

The police have no such agenda. Their agenda is to provide society with a sense of law and order. That they regularly pin crimes on the most likely suspect is proof of the fact. No one knows the truth, the truth is rarely "outed" during a trial. We solve crimes by pinning them on the most likely person. It gives the appearance of law and order. The most likely suspect is often merely the last person to a see a victim alive, a close family member, a husband, a good friend. God help you if you fail to have an alibi, if you were sitting at home alone watching TV.

Now I could give a shit about Scott Peterson, but take the example anyhow. Scott Peterson had a pregnant wife, Laci. Many couples become estranged during a wife's pregnancy. Scott took a lover, Amber Frey. Juries don't like cheaters. Cheaters are liars and untrustworthy. FWIW, a very large number of people cheat all the time and we all know that fact. Laci was eventually found in the San Francisco bay, a place where Scott Peterson went boating on Xmas eve. Now, I don't know about you - but many people made much of the fact that Scott went boating on that day - as if it were beyond belief that someone would do such a thing just because he needed to get away or to think for a while. To wrap up, Scott Peterson was convicted because he was cheating on his wife, and was seen boating on the vast body of water in which Laci's body was later discovered. I am not saying that there aren't more details, but those are the main details.

They pinned it on him and gave him the thumbs down routine. The man will die largely based on mere speculation. There's not a single piece of incontrovertible evidence in the whole case. There's an alternate defense explanation for everything the prosecution claims.

A culture of spectacle and sacrifice doesn't care about the truth, it cares about appearances. We pin crimes on the most likely to be guilty, not those that are truly guilty. And there may be a universe of difference between those two categories. Is Scott Peterson "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt"? Hell no, but society hates to imagine that there is a murderer loose somewhere. Society likes to nail someone so that the collective can rest easy at night.

Now it turns out that one of my old professors at law school is one of the point men for the whole DNA as evidence movement, his name is Larry Marshall. His big break for DNA evidence came in the Rolando Cruz case. Read about it here: http://www.innocenceproject.org/case/display_profi le.php?id=07

The salient bits are: "...under pressure from the community and in the midst of an election year..." and "...a sheriff's department lieutenant recanted testimony he had given in previous trials." Wow, do I mean it's often just politics and cops that lie? Hell yeah...

I quit law school because Larry Marshall gave a speech in which he informed all of us idiot law school students that the most important thing about the practice of law was how the judge was feeling, what kind of day the judge was having. Did the judge just have a fight with his wife? Is he feeling poorly? Does his stomach roil because of the steak sandwich he had at lunch? That's the guy that will decide all of your motions. He probably won't even read your motions except for during the five minutes before he must render a decision while he trembles on the toilet seat before entering the courtroom. If anyone read anything, it was some poor fuck law clerk that rendered an opinion via post-it note on how the judge should decide the issue.

You know how you play 3D shooters instead of doing your homework? Judges are just like you...

So, would I come forward and admit I was the last person to see some now dead chick alive? I would like to say yes, but the real answer is no. In the adversarial process, you are a suspect until you are excluded as a suspect by the evidence. Does that sound like "guilty until proven innocent"? Yes, it does sound a lot like that.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[gearspring]

This is the problem with using DNA evidence.

From an article in wired magazine quoting a Nature article which I don't want to pay $30 for access too.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.09/penn_pr.ht ml

"The question they ask of the guy in the dock is, what is the probability that an innocent man would match this DNA? And the answer is, of course, about one in a million," says Pike, looking around the table and pausing for drama. "The question they should ask is, given the match, what is the probability that he is innocent? And the answer is, about one-third."

I just found this article at http://www.innocenceproject.org/dnanews/index.php.
The Innocence Project usually uses DNA to prove someone is innocent. Here is an example where an innocent man was convicted because of DNA:

Compiled by Peter J. McQuillan

Forensic Contretemps

Brian Kelly was the first person in Scotland to be successfully prosecuted solely on the basis of DNA evidence. The facts were uncomplicated: A woman was raped at night in her Ayrshire home in 1987 by a burglar. In July of that year Kelly, a police officer who lived nearby, voluntarily gave a DNA sample to investigators believing this would eliminate him from the inquiry. Thereafter, the lab reported a match and Kelly was charged with the rape. The victim was unable to identify him as the rapist even though she knew him as a police officer. Kelly nonetheless was convicted in 1989 and sentenced to prison for six years. His parole was delayed until 1993 because he refused to admit his guilt. The Scotsman (Nov 23, 2003) recently disclosed that the conviction may be quashed early this year because two separate studies have concluded that cross contamination of the evidence may have produced a false-positive result. The Texas Department of Public Safety operates 13 regional crime labs, all of which are nationally accredited. A review by the Houston Chronicle (Oct 26, 2003) of recent audits of seven of these labs found that one failed to adequately decontaminate lab space. Another had improper evidence storage and lacked a back-up power supply. "When power fluctuates during amplification of extracted DNA, the evidence could be destroyed." An inspector noted that dozens of evidence cuttings at one DNA lab were not properly stored. A DPS scientist explained away the deficiencies by saying that a 100 percent compliance rate is an unreasonable expectation. "You can go into any lab, any day of the week and find some things that need correction." Last year, according to the Bucks County Courier Times (Oct 14, 2003), errors were uncovered in four cases worked by one scientist at the Pennsylvania State Police Crime Lab. In one case she failed to detect a semen stain on an article of clothing assigned to her for analysis. Last June she was given six months of remedial training, at the end of which she resigned. PSP officials sent letters to prosecutors in 27 counties whose cases were handled by her, notifying them of the potential for error. Some 615 cases were scheduled for retesting. In the neighboring state of New Jersey, five police officers were recently convicted in federal court for a civil rights violation involving the death of a prisoner in their custody. Introduced at trial was a bloodstained concrete chip that was pried from a sidewalk two weeks after the victim was arrested. Witnesses said the five officers beat the victim at that location. A FBI Crime Lab scientist testified that she matched his blood to the sidewalk stain. The defendants were awaiting sentences when FBI officials disclosed that the scientist had just admitted skipping a quality control step in DNA tests in their case and 102 others. She did not perform the routine check for contamination because she wanted her casework "to run smoothly." The prosecuto

Re:Nothing to Fear

[Maxo-Texas]

The fine point is that if you lower the drinking age you can. You just lose federal highway funding. It's like being "free" to quit your job but the boss will stop paying you. Actually it's worse- it's more like your parents taking 1/3 of the money you make at your job and then not giving it to you unless you do what they say. On the subject of the matter at hand, I do not think there is any way they should be able to keep DNA unless you are -convicted- of a crime. OTH... think of the benefits once they have everyone's DNA (which is where they are headed-- collect it at birth). When a crime is commited and their is DNA evidence (and they get better at finding it every day) then they can find the suspected party very quickly and prevent a lot of other crimes. In the hands of a good government, it's a great tool. In the hands of a dictatorship, it is one more lock on permanent power.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly- that's why he'd make a good soldier.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[PedanticSpellingTrol]

I'm actually starting to be glad I live in the state that started the civil war.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[richwmn]

Actually there is a precident to this. Years ago Congress mandated motorcycle helmet laws, also using the highway funds as an inducement. One or more states bucked and took it to court. It was held that funds collected within a state for highways could not be with held. Several states then revoked their helmet laws. The difference is that enough people in state offices feel that the drinking laws are appropriate so that it has not been challenged.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[tha_mink]

I view DNA as evidence just as I do finger prints. It's not a privacy deal when you leave DNA everywhere you go. No too different from a photograph...it's not as private as you may think...

Re:Nothing to Fear

[jadavis]

Is Scott Peterson "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt"? Hell no, ...

I don't mean to retry the case on /., but here's your "reasonable doubt" scenario:

Let's assume he was innocent. He is the last person to see her alive aside from the murderer(s). He had recently been making concrete anchors or something for his boat. He goes boating in the SF bay on Christmas eve. She disappears. Scott is asking the police about grief counseling before the search has even begun. He's having an affair and Amber doesn't know he's married. He tells Amber that his wife is dead before she actually dies. He tells Amber something about how he didn't do it, but he knows who did (or some such weird, ominous thing like that). Scott rents a car and drives 80 miles to look at the SF bay. Then Laci turns up in the SF bay. Then Scott goes down to San Diego and has tools and $10k in cash with him.

That's less evidence than the jury heard, I'm sure, but already that's not a very reasonable doubt to me. I just don't buy that story, and neither did the jury. A series of super-coincidences is not a "reasonable doubt".

Re:Nothing to Fear

[jadavis]

I think that was his point...

The feds take a large amount of taxes from everyone already, so there's no hope of the states supporting their own road system.

Reduce it to the following situation and then recosider your statement:

The feds take the states' citizens' money.
The feds offer to give it back if they say "how high" when the feds say jump.

It's not like the state can say "OK, we'll pay you that much less in taxes then.". If Cali opts out, all the other states are basically just confiscating Californians' money.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[bleckywelcky]

But the larger problem is what minimal amount of evidence the public (jury) is willing to base their opinion upon. I was in California temporarily and talked to some permanent residents of the state who were typical juror candidates (towards the end of last year, in the midst of the trial, before a verdict had been reached). And the 4 or 5 people I talked to all agreed that they would convict Peterson based upon the following facts: 1) An affair while his wife was pregnant. 2) He went out on a boat on Christmas day in the same area that the body washed ashore. Scary eh? I tried to probe them as to why they felt this was sufficient evidence and they claimed things such as "intuition"; that he just seemed like such a shifty and immoral character that the only explanation for those two facts must have been that he murdered his wife.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[jadavis]

Your first example is bad, as the determination of what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment is a Constitutional issue to be decided by the Supreme Court.

Well, they decided wrong. It makes no sense that something cruel and unusual magically turns into humane punishment when someone is one day older at the time the crime is committed.

The SC didn't turn to the text of the Constitution for answers, instead they cited "an emerging consensus" and referenced the policies of foreign nations -- HUH?!? . Shouldn't a "consensus" be decided by the legislature? Also, out of the states that permit the death penalty, a majority previously allowed minors to be executed.

This is a clear example of the federal government trampling states' rights. The SC is the worst offender, IMO. They often "interpret" the consitution to mean directly the opposite of what it actually says. Abortion should have been a legislative issue, and the 10th Amendment says it should be at the state level.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[Thunderstruck]

Any chance you can find me the name or citation for that case? I could really use it.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[The Archon V2.0]

In a country where the federal government has been concentrating power in the capital, I can't see where she gets such bizarre ideas.

We're heading for a country where everyone is a potential suspect, eventually.

I think you're giving the federal government a bit too much credit here. As nutty as they can be, they're hardly the only player in these kinds of games. Local police aren't the federal government, yet we've seen occasions where departments are just drooling at the idea of getting DNA from everyone in the precinct (or every [insert ethnicity here] in the precinct) and cleaning out their unsolved crime files. No federal involvement, they just ask for 'suspicious' people's DNA and mention that refusal could be seen as very suspicious and in need of further investigation.

The media isn't the federal government either. Yet almost every time there's a kidnapping/murder of a child in the news (as there is now), I see an idiot talking head or pundit bemoaning how the police were unable to search nearby houses. Here you have people essentially asking for an America where, if a cute/photogenic kid is kidnapped within twenty miles of you, kiss your Fourth Amendment rights goodbye and let nice Mr. Policeman tear up your floorboards to check for secret crawlspaces. After all, a big media sensation is worth more than your privacy, right?

Power is in some ways like energy - for the most part it can't be created or destroyed, just converted from one form to another. People with substantial amounts of power often want more, which means taking it from someone else. Some take it by force, some by playing the system, some by whispering promises in your ear about protecting you from the Bad Men in the world. If you think it's only Washington who wants to deprive you of rights, you're dodging pebbles during an avalanche.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[tfoss]

States rights are non existent, and have been for some [time]....Try to have your state lower the drinking age to 19,

Ok, I'll bite. Bullshit.

States rights exist, in some kind of balance with federal rights (granted, the balance may not please you, but that's a far from cry from non-existence). Any state has the right to lower the drinking age. They will lose some federal transportation funding if they do so, but they can do so.

A simple perusal of state law codes should prove the existence widely varying statutes.

With regards to the SC decision, since the majority's logic was based on the 8th amendment, it's pretty clear that this is a federal issue (see the 10th amendment). (and, just so we are clear, the decision brought us out of the glorious company of China, the Congo, Iran, Pakistan as the only countries to actively execute juveniles.)

-Ted

Re:Nothing to Fear

[jadavis]

It actually sounds somewhat reasonable. Consider:

They didn't hear the defense attorney at all. Jurors have to sit through all the defense stuff before they can convict anyone.

What about the other jurors? You have to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in the minds of 12 people at once.

It's one thing to be disgusted with the guy and say you'll lock him away, it's quite another to sit through speeches about how "Yes, he's a bad guy. He cheated. But he didn't hurt anyone." and having someone explain to you that your conviction will likely result in execution.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[mankey wanker]

Listen, Scott Peterson could be guilty. All I was saying is that there is no hard evidence of that fact, none that I heard. Could he have done it? Sure. Did he do it? I don't know.

I wouldn't kill a man thinking there was any doubt as to his guilt.

BTW, I actually did not follow the case that closely. I don't care about stuff like that - it's all bread and circuses to me. What I never heard though was that there was anything like clear, compelling evidence that he was almost certainly the killer.

Wrap your head around the possibility that it's morally wrong to put a man under the death penalty just because there is a very strong suspicion that he is the killer. That's not enough - the standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt."

Is Scott Peterson the murderer in question? I have reasonable doubts that make it impossible to arrive at that conclusion. YMMV.

The 12 people that matter found him guilty. But then they found all of those people that are now exonerated by DNA evidence guilty too.

I think it raises a lot of questions about our degree of certainty within our system of justice - don't you? I don't know if it still holds, but Illinois suspended carrying out death penalties until DNA evidence could make more headway into the legal system. What was happening was that we were putting to death mainly men of color with little to no evidence - and we now know that we were sometimes doing it wrongly, that we had the wrong men.

I would think that all people that care about TRUTH would be offended at that fact.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[timeOday]

Well I wish I had a mod point for you. The Federal government abuses taxation to grab whatever non-Constitutional powers it desires.

The evisceration of state and local government is IMHO the biggest problem with the USA, because individual citizens have practically no influence. Or as one famous elected leader who shall remain nameless (too distracting for the partisans) put it, "Who cares what you think?"

Re:Nothing to Fear

[GimmeFuel]

In the hands of a good government, it's a great tool.

Sorry to break the news, but there's no such thing as a "good government." Just shades of bad government. Even if we had what you considered a "good government" now, that would not last forever and sooner or later we would have a bad government that would not hesitate to use all those things that were previously "great tools" to oppress the people.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[rk]

As someone who served on a criminal trial as a juror once, I can state unequivocally that I will gleefully waive my "right" to jury trail and let them empanel a set of judges to try me.

The scariest person on the jury, ironically, was a church minister. I don't think he even understood what the phrase "innocent until proven guilty" meant. He and a couple other people on the jury didn't even see a needd to debate it. I said that I'd hang the jury if we didn't give the defandant the benefit of the doubt on every piece of evidence.

We eventually did convict, but at least I'm sure that guy got a really fair trial. It was enough to shake my faith in the jury trials, though.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[sfm]

"Try to have your state lower the drinking age to 19"

But isn't the 21-drinking age a case of the federal government using highway funding to blackmail the states ?? I suspect if the funding issue was removed, many of the states would reduce the drinking age.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[bleckywelcky]

Sure, but what happened to innocent until proven guilty? Now it's up to the defense to prove that he didn't do the crime? Instead of the prosecution proving that he did do the crime? Somethings wrong there.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[ka1ser s0ze]

I'm against the Death Penalty because most prosecutions are based on politics, money, or vendetta. What would be fair in a Death Penalty case would be if an innocent person was executed, then the jury, prosecutor and judge would be guilty of 1st degree murder as a minimum. I'm not sure if they should get the Death Penalty automatically or not.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[dadragon]

As far as plausible defense explanations, it's those that let OJ Simpson walk free, and probably Baretta as well. The sword cuts both ways.

It's better to let a guilty man walk than to hang an innocent man.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[grrrl]

didnt they try to get into the DNA database in an episode of NCIS? and they were all pissed off because it was only for identification of remains

im not even really sure what spin the writers were putting on the issue... seemed to me like they thought it should be used for anything and everything, without any concern for privacy (but then the 3 super-talented-know-it-all NCIS cops are finding the "bag guys" right...)

Re:Nothing to Fear

[jadavis]

Well, the prosecution had to go to all the trouble of proving all those facts through investigation and witnesses.

Regardless of what Scott Peterson said at trial, those facts narrowed it down to either guilt or the least plausible series of events that I've heard of.

He was innocent until proven guilty. What would it take to convince you that he's guilty if not all of the evidence that the prosecution presented? Now you're asking for him to be proven beyond all unreasonable doubt. It's just getting rediculous. The justice system gave him every presumption of innocence, including letting him hang around the Mexican border for a while with tools and $10k in cash.

A bunch of people sitting around their TV I'm sure proclaimed his guilt when there was still reasonable doubt. I heard one person say he was guilty of her murder the day Laci went missing (I used to live in Modesto). But the people that actually put him away certainly gave him every presumption of innocence until the facts were overwhelming.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[Facekhan]

One problem with death penalty cases from a fairness standpoint is that the prosecutors can exclude members from a jury who do not believe in execution. They call it death-qualifying the jury or something like that and what results is a jury that is skewed towards people who are both pro-death penalty and in general more likely to convict.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[wirelessbuzzers]

Or else he rolled really lucky. For those of us that roll our characters.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[astflgl]

Another example: You sneeze on someone while riding the bus. They are later murdered. You are now a suspect in a murder case. The law in california now gives the authorities the ability to store a copy of your DNA.

So you are soon to have no control over the media you buy, but some asshole gets copies of your DNA and gets to keep it regardless of whether you agree? This is astounding. DNA isn't just proof of identification, it's you, compressed down into a molecule. DNA samples should be given voluntarily to prove innocence, not taken from people without consent to 'prove' guilt.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[jadavis]

I actually did not follow the case that closely ... I have reasonable doubts

Hmm... that's just dumb. Maybe if you did follow the trial as closely as the jurors you would have less doubt??

The standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt". You imply that there is a reasonable doubt, which implies that there is a reasonable story.

Please produce a reasonable story that is consistent with the facts and eyewitness testimony that does not result in the guilt of Scott Peterson. For example, finish the following sentences:

(1) I am Scott Peterson, and I told my mistress that my wife was dead, even though she was still alive, because ...

(2) I am Scott Peterson, and I rented a car, even though I had my own, and I drove it 80 miles away and sat looking upon the site which would, in the future, be the place Laci's body and the body of her infant were found, because ...

(3) I am Scott Peterson, and I asked the police for grief counseling while there was every reason to think that Laci was still alive because ...

You can see how this could start to make that transistion from the realm of "reasonable" to "unreasonable".

And wrong convictions WILL happen in any justice system, even a good one. I don't buy the idea that a wrongly convicted person is a sign of a bad justice system, I don't buy it for a second (keep in mind here that "wrongly convicted" != "innocent"). Trials are accurate the vast majority of the time. The fact that we even go back and exonerate convicts is a sign that the system is in good shape. Your standards for conviction are simply too high. If you go from "beyond a reasonable doubt" to "beyond an unreasonable doubt", you impose huge costs and you let too many guilty people go (which could have the compounding effect of not deterring enough crime). Don't get too morally superior letting guilty people walk the streets.

Now, if you want to argue that the death penalty is bad, that's a separate issue that reasonable people can disagree about.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[mpe]

We're heading for a country where everyone is a potential suspect, eventually.

It's unlikely to be everyone, only the "plebs". Those who are considered "patricians", both real people and corporates, tend to be exampt...

Re:Nothing to Fear

[AGMW]

Drunken one-night stand?
Obviously this rarely applies on Slashdot...

Unless it is a "menage a un" of course.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[mankey wanker]

Nope, you actually have this wrong - no one can actually understand what happens except a juror. Why not? Because through the media (court tv etc) you get both more and less than a jury ever gets to see. So all the rest is just noise.

FWIW, the policy is supposed to be that guilty men go free provided no innocent person ever gets convicted. I could just as easily suggest that your standard is far too low.

And BTW, I don't have to follow the story closely because it gets broadcast quite loudly anyway. Everything you stated as hard evidence is merely circumstantial evidence. Some of it is probably lies. Happens all the time. And finally, I don't even care if the guy is guilty because I have no interest in the matter.

As to the how important the rest is, it remains quite important because we know that a fairly high number of people are being wrongly convicted.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/sep2000/inno-s 14 .shtml

"In 1999, the "Innocence Project" analyzed 62 exonerations in the United States. They found that mistaken eyewitnesses were a factor in 84 percent of the wrongful convictions, police misconduct was a factor in 50 percent of the cases, prosecutorial misconduct was a factor in 42 percent, fraudulent or tainted evidence in 33 percent, incompetent legal defenses in 27 percent, false confessions 24 percent, and snitches or informants in 21 percent."

I know it's just a stupid TV show, but one of the things I find amusing about "House" is how little the main character trusts the words and opinions of his patients. His whole rule of thumb there is that "patients lie." I would take this further and say that "people lie." Sometimes they lie on accident, they lie by omission, and they lie on purpose. People lie all the time because the truth is very hard to know. Sometimes they tell the truth as they know it, and that truth ends up being quite useless. People lie.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[mankey wanker]

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chroni cle/archive/2004/11/13/EDG5Q9QOI61.DTL

"The verdict, let it be said, was well within reason. Circumstantial evidence plus motive justified the finding of guilt. The defense failed to knock down the charges against Peterson with fresh evidence."

See, that's what happened right there. The expectation - mainly because of the media frenzy - was that Peterson had to overcome a fundamental presumption of guilt. The exact opposite is supposed to happen, a presumption of innocence is supposed to be a substantial hurdle for the prosecution but in reality it operates as more of a mere dip in the road. Juries want to rubber stamp what the government claims; and more importantly they will follow the non verbal cues given to them by the judge. This is all pretty well documented.

People locally really wanted that Peterson guy to "Frey" - and that joke is all over the internet. Google it up and you will have a deeper understanding of what went down. I would even argue that there was an issue for the jurors to NOT find Peterson innocent. A lot of negative attention would have been heaped on any juror that wanted to find Peterson "not guilty." The social demands and pressure are overwhelming.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[Anonymous Coward]

(1) I am Scott Peterson, and I told my mistress that my wife was dead, even though she was still alive, because ...

Response: It was a lie and it was easy to explain to her. It would stop any further questions because Frey would think it was too emotional of a area to go.

(2) I am Scott Peterson, and I rented a car, even though I had my own, and I drove it 80 miles away and sat looking upon the site which would, in the future, be the place Laci's body and the body of her infant were found, because ...

Response: It would be cheaper to take a rental than to have driven his truck. A car is easier to drive in San Fran than a truck. He was at the bay to see where the easiest place was to launch his boat and go fishing.

(3) I am Scott Peterson, and I asked the police for grief counseling while there was every reason to think that Laci was still alive because...

Response: His wife was missing, he was suffering grief because of her being gone. Grief isn't only for when someone dies. They have grief counselor's who work when someone is abducted.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[ajs318]

DNA analysis is done by human beings, using instruments that were built by human beings and according to procedures that were devised by human beings. It is thus prone to human errors on three levels. Yet people seem to see it as the be-all and end-all of forensic science: DNA evidence is never questioned.

We already know of one case where DNA evidence can give a false positive. Identical twins have exactly the same DNA. {Read: if you have a twin, you could frame them for a crime.} Unless we can be confident that every bit of information in DNA is being treated as significant {which is highly unlikely}, the probability of a false positive increases quadratically with the number of samples on file.

Bottom line: It's a matter of time before DNA cocks up.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[quarkscat]

Exactly right!

If you are a law abiding citizen, never beat your
wife or dog or kids, always pay you taxes on time,
never have a difference of opinion with your
neighbor or coworker or politician, attend church
or mosque or synagogue every week, never engage in
extramarital or kinky sex, then you really don't
have anything to fear.

But if you deviate from the straight and narrow
path dictated by the government or society's
"norms", you might risk being considered as a
suspicious person, or worst yet as a "security
risk" to the state. A spiteful neighbor or
aggressively "upwardly mobile" coworker might just
report you to the FBI, DHS, or even your employer.
(The toll-free numbers and websites have been with
us since shortly after 9-11-2001.)

No one is allowed to know if they are now under
suspicion, thanks to some of the more onerous
provisions of the USA Patriot Act (I). Breaking
into your home or auto or computer or office files
for "intelligence gathering" can be done on the
sly. But if you don't get that promotion, or that
new job, or that bank loan, or if "official looking"
vehicles always seem to be around you but you
never get that ticket for rolling through a stop
sign, don't be alarmed -- you just might be the
subject of an "investigation".

Since your photo, fingerprints, and DNA are no
longer really your property, but that of the state,
and these "ID markers" can be easily acquired by
a five minute "black bag" job for planting on a
crime scene, don't worry about it. Take another
Vallium, enjoy life while you can, and realize
that the police state that you always read about
in your "Cold War era" novels is here today.

Only now, your personal data is scattered around
between secretive 3 letter agencies and commercial
databases. If you think that MATRIX and CAPPS
is bad now, just wait until a National ID law
passes, and you are required to donate specimens
for their databases. The future is coming fast --
think "Minority Report", "Matrix", Fahrenheit451",
"1984" and "Solient Green" all rolled into one.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[budgenator]

I once had an interesting conversation with a guy on parole for 2nd degree murder, I asked in general, how many people in prison did what they were convicted of. He said 25% are innocent, 25% are guilty and 50% are guilty of a crime similar to had they are in for, but not the actual crime. Of course to accept parole you have to "accept responsibility" for your crime that means admit guilt, and of course you have to admit guilt to get a charge reduce or a promise of a less extreme sentence. A while ago I was selected for jury duty, and got to see some cases sentenced on a bargined plea, the accused now has to testify against himself in order to plead guilty in Michigan.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[TedCheshireAcad]

Good, someone else who watches Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

All I ever needed to know I learned from Dick Wolf.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[tha_mink]

I have no doubt that there are false positives in DNA technology, that's not the issue. The issue is "How much of an intrusion on one's privacy is it to collect and store one's DNA for later use"

I say, not any worse than a mugshot or a fingerprint.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[darthmundt]

I agree completely. Very well said.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[runderwo]

Don't forget that people have to test the DNA in labs to see if it matches. What about corruption there? Who's making the lab technicians accountable for mistakes that could potentially put an innocent man to death? This is essentially the only problem I have with DNA evidence being used in court right now.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[BroadwayBlue]

I recall a public defender speaking to my high school class years ago..."our system is designed to let 10 guilty people go free in order to prevent one innocent person from being wrongly convicted." Society has lost sight of that. Maybe society does not support it anymore, and we are okay with wrongful convictions. I, personally, am not.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[The_K4]

However they will most likly find you anyway. You know that nosie neighbor who saw her comming out of your door, the phone number that her cell phone was calling ever night while her husband was at work, the waitress who remembers the two of you.... They may fixate on you as a suspect, but the sooner you come forward the better the chance of them finding who really did it and that will help to clear you. If you wait 2 or 3 days till they find you that's 2-3 days the guilty party has to distance themselves from the whole mess, then when suspission DOES fall on you they are less likly to find the guilty person and clear you. Better to be a suspect earlier with greater chance of being cleared then later with less chance of being cleared. MOST people, when having affairs, don't cover their tracks nearly as well as they think they do.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[tbannist]

Innocent isn't a part of the court system, the jury doesn't find him innocent of the crime, they find him "not guilty (beyond a reasonable doubt)".

They are there to judge the quality of the state's case.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[tbannist]

That why both the prosecution and the defense are allowed to exclude members from the jury.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[The_K4]

Ok, i'll use your Scott Peterson Example. I also was unconvinced that he was guilty, as an avid reader of true crime novels, an individual who finds criminal psychology a fun hobby (i've read many books on this too), I see patterns that others might not. I believe that Scott Peterson MIGTH be guilty, but I am not convienced. That REALLY got him convicted wasn't his fishing trip and wasn't even his afair. What got SP convicted was the fact that he LIED to the police (several times that they caught him in lies) he LIED to his mistress, he acted VERY suspisious durring the search, and then once he started to get caught in his lies he prepared to run. If we assume for the moment that he is innocent, he just disproved your plan of attack! He didn't come forward with all the info he had right away, when the police found out anyway it looked bad for him and then the lies he told them looked even worse. If he is innocent he would have done MUCH better to tell the poilce everything up front, including the affair, so that he would get caught lying and make them look at him harder. You are correct that there IS risk in coming forward with in, it does make you a suspect, however if you don't come forward (or lie to the police when you are found out) it looks a lot worse then just being honest from the forefront. Remember that cops don't convict people, juries do and they sympathize with people who try and do the right thing, not with people they see as hiding and then lieing.

There ARE bad judges, but why should that make you leave law school? Now you are saying you agree with this broken system! I don't have much personal experince with judges but given the amount of crap (and in some cases threats) taht criminal judges have to put up with I would suspect that most of them are their because they want to be.....

Re:Nothing to Fear

[tbannist]

So, it's a tool, which can be used irresponsibly, like a gun?

Re:Nothing to Fear

[doctorslime]

Me wonders what Ackthpt has to fear? DNA Skeletons in his closet? Good to see you! DoctorSlime P.S. I do Agree, but isn't it about as intrusive as the Sex offenders Registry list? Its "No Minority Report". But half way to "And justice for All" and "GATTACA" . In Michigan Cord blood samples are regularly harvested dabbed and stored for a non-identified database or so they say...Soon only the criminals will be the unknowns in the system.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[PsiPsiStar]

Why didn't he simply just get a divorce?

He'd still have to pay child support, most likely. Thought I don't know how easily that can be avoided.

Pregnant women get murdered more often than other women. It's a big risk statistically, though I don't know actual figures.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

God help you if you fail to have an alibi, if you were sitting at home alone watching TV.

Chances are good your cable box and/or cable company knows you were watching (unless you never changed the volume or channel during the time) because of all the data they collect. Could be used to prove your alibi.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[davidmacq]

Why the hell does it cut off the last sentence!

Re:Nothing to Fear

[jadavis]

A guilty plea is a bargain with the DA to get a reduced sentence if you save the court's time by admitting guilt.

I don't see anything weird about that. He doesn't have to testify against himself.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[PMuse]

It would probably be a small matter to bury into a large bill some little thing that allows . . .

Amendment XXVIII: Congress shall pass no law exceeding in length this Constitution.

Let's hear it for clear voting records and accountability in law-making.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[jadavis]

policy is supposed to be that guilty men go free provided no innocent person ever gets convicted

No it's not. According to whom? I don't agree with that policy at all.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[Facekhan]

The prosecution can exclude jurors for cause for not believing in the death penalty, they later along with the prosecution can exclude jurors for no cause with their limited number of challenges. This effectively means though that the jury pool will be skewed to the prosecution's favor.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[mankey wanker]

You want to argue with William Blackstone? The precise quote from Blackstone's "Commentaries" is: "Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." It is a foundational statement in our system of jurisprudence and every law school student learns it. It's known as the "Blackstone ratio."

I never dreamed that anyone would question the wisdom of that statement.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[jadavis]

You siad:

policy is supposed to be that guilty men go free provided no innocent person ever gets convicted

which is different from:

Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.

There is a HUGE difference between those two. The former (what you said) does not even acknowledge that there is a tradeoff. The latter does, and it suggests a balance. The latter seems fine with me, but the former does not.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[mankey wanker]

The only difference I see is that the original statement includes a precise ratio. But from a policy standpoint it makes no difference because your MAIN purpose is supposed to be that no innocent person is wrongly convicted. Period.

It isn't a hostage negotiation, no one is actually trading anything 10 to 1.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[falconwolf]

Let's assume he was innocent. He is the last person to see her alive aside from the murderer(s). He had recently been making concrete anchors or something for his boat. He goes boating in the SF bay on Christmas eve. She disappears. Scott is asking the police about grief counseling before the search has even begun. He's having an affair and Amber doesn't know he's married. He tells Amber that his wife is dead before she actually dies. He tells Amber something about how he didn't do it, but he knows who did (or some such weird, ominous thing like that). Scott rents a car and drives 80 miles to look at the SF bay. Then Laci turns up in the SF bay. Then Scott goes down to San Diego and has tools and $10k in cash with him.

That's less evidence than the jury heard, I'm sure, but already that's not a very reasonable doubt to me. I just don't buy that story, and neither did the jury. A series of super-coincidences is not a "reasonable doubt".

So he's a liar and a cheat, that doesn't mean he's guilty of murder. Admittedly I don't know what the jury was told, with I do know, or have heard, I have more than a reasonable doubt. All of the evidence I've heard of is circumstantial, there's no direct evidence he did it. And as I've said before, just as the Founding Fathers of the USA believed, I believe it's better to free 10 guilty than to falsely convict 1 innocent.

Falcon

Re:Nothing to Fear

[Kombat]

Holy freakin' crap, you've spouted a lot of garbage, but I can't resist commenting on some of the stupidest points.

Re: Scott Peterson. He did it. It's as simple as that. There is a mountain of evidence against him, and your whole rant ignores one simple question: Who else had motive to kill Laci? Nobody. None at all. There was no forced entry to the home, nothing was ever reported missing or stolen, she was simply murdered. One common tactic investigators use in solving crimes is to start with the entire population as suspects, and eliminate people who could not possibly have done it. While it may be true that Scott Peterson was not the only one with the "Means" and "Opportunity," he was the only one with a "Motive." Nobody else had any reason to kill Laci. Scott did. A few other people may have had the "opportunity." Scott definitely did. He was seen in the area where her body was dumped, around the time it happened.

Finally, you assume that the jury is a bunch of brain dead lemmings eager to convict people for things they didn't do. They're not. Get off your friggin' high horse and check your ego. You're not the only open-minded and objective person in the world. Give others some credit. The jury was presented evidence from both sides, and concluded that Scott was lying, that he killed his wife, and that he deserved to die for it. They didn't do all this just because the prosecutors told them to (remember that the defense was equally passionately pleading with them to reach the completely opposite conclusion), they did it because they examined the evidence presented to them, and determined that there wasn't even a shred of "reasonable doubt" that maybe Scott didn't do it.

[The police] regularly pin crimes on the most likely suspect is proof of the fact.

Oh come on. Do you really, honestly believe that there are huge numbers of innocent people currently rotting in prison, just because the police "decided" to pin the crime on them? How exactly did the police manage to convince a judge/jury that this person was definitely the perpetrator? Is there a vast conspiracy of underground police labs, fabricating evidence to convict innocent people who just happen to be the "easy way out" for the cops to close the books on a crime? Are police all a bunch of immoral simpletons with no interested in truth and justice, but instead who all simply seek to put random innocent people in jail? Is that why the decided to go to police school and become cops? Do they hang out around the coffee machine and trade stories of innocent people they've convicted?

Gimmie a freakin' break. Do you really believe any of the garbage you're spouting?

I mean seriously, do you really, honestly believe that cops are all a bunch of people who don't care about right and wrong, and who knowingly accuse innocent people of crimes they didn't commit? Do you honestly believe that judges and juries are all so stupid as to be easily fooled into convicting innocent people? OR ARE THEY IN ON IT TOO, IN YOUR LITTLE PARANOID FANTASY?

I don't mean to yell, but sweet merciful crap, you are WAAAY out in left field buddy. I have a very hard time believing that anyone could possibly be as far out of touch with reality as you are appearing to be right now.

Finally, if what you claim were true, how did OJ get away with it? How did Robert Blake get away with it? They were certainly the "obvious" suspects (in fact, they most likely actually did it, and were not just unwitting pawns with unfortunate timing).

Re:Nothing to Fear

[Kombat]

Sure, but what happened to innocent until proven guilty? Now it's up to the defense to prove that he didn't do the crime? Instead of the prosecution proving that he did do the crime? Somethings wrong there.

No, nothing's wrong here, get your head out of the sand. "Innocent until proven guilty" is still the rule, and that's made clear to juries before cases even begin. Quit panicking about what a bunch of knee-jerk chicken-little slashbots and spouting.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[Kombat]

One problem with death penalty cases from a fairness standpoint is that the prosecutors can exclude members from a jury who do not believe in execution.

No, that's not a "problem" at all. In pro-death penalty states, the state has collectively decided that they wish for capital punishment to be one of the available options during sentencing. Allowing individuals on the jury who refuse to even consider allowing such sentencing under any circumstances invalidates the availability of such sentencing in the first place. That'd be like allowing people on the jury who "don't believe in convicting people of crimes, for any reason." The prosecution has a right to a jury that is open to all of the legal options available in the particular venue in which the case is being tried.

Re:Nothing to Fear

[Kombat]

BTW, I actually did not follow the case that closely. I don't care about stuff like that - it's all bread and circuses to me. What I never heard though was that there was anything like clear, compelling evidence that he was almost certainly the killer.

You can relax. There was.

Wrap your head around the possibility that it's morally wrong to put a man under the death penalty just because there is a very strong suspicion that he is the killer. That's not enough - the standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt."

I don't have to "wrap my head around the possibility," that's the reality. That is the standard. And it's the standard under which Scot Peterson was convicted. 12 impartial strangers were convinced, "beyond any reasonable doubt," that Scot was the killer.

Is Scott Peterson the murderer in question? I have reasonable doubts that make it impossible to arrive at that conclusion.

That's because you weren't on the jury. Also, by your own admission, you "actually did not follow the case that closely," and you "don't care about stuff like that."

But then they found all of those people that are now exonerated by DNA evidence guilty too.

What people? Name some examples. Name me just a few examples of individuals who were convicted and sentenced to death, and were later exhonorated by DNA evidence while they were on death row. It may have happened a couple of times, but it is extremely rare.

What was happening was that we were putting to death mainly men of color with little to no evidence - and we now know that we were sometimes doing it wrongly, that we had the wrong men.

Yes, it used to be much worse. In modern day though, I don't believe that innocent men are executed (although I concede that it still may happen occassionaly in the predominantly conservative regions of the US, such as the Bible Belt).

Re:Nothing to Fear

[Lord Kano]

How do you prove you had consentual sex with a now dead women.

Two words for you, my friend digital camera .

LK

Cluster and Classify ...

[foobsr]

We will end up with two categories of samples:

• convicted
• not convicted (obviously)

Do some analyses to enable you to categorize from an unlabeled sample.

<cyn> Imagine how useful that could be!</cyn>

I think some people are overwrought about their concerns.

Yes, I am.

CC.

Re:Cluster and Classify ...

[ackthpt]

We will end up with two categories of samples:

If you can ever find Walk Kelly's Pogo strips from the 70's, he nails Agnew for this very line of logic. Guess who isn't the one locked up in the jail? It is a bit like Nixon, again, isn't it?

Re:Cluster and Classify ...

[winkydink]

Eugenics went out of fashion post-WWII.

Re:Cluster and Classify ...

[Frodo Crockett]

If they have genes that indicate a likely aggressive personality, we can convict them even before they're perform the evil act.

That would be almost everyone with a Y chromosome...

Re:Cluster and Classify ...

[foobsr]

If you can ever find Walk Kelly's Pogo strips from the 70's, ...

Well, now you gave me something to chew on ...

CC.de

Re:Cluster and Classify ...

[ackthpt]

Well, now you gave me something to chew on ...

They've been reprinted a number of times in books. The sequence appears in The Impollutable Pogo:

Hyena (Spiro T. Agnew): "Lawnorder will prevail!
I fine you another thousand, and remand you to the custody of your cell."
Churchy LaFemm: "How about the Bill of Rights?"
Howland Owl: "Shh... You can pay that later."
Kelly, Impollutable Pogo , 106 (1970)

Re:Cluster and Classify ...

[ottothecow]

How about a system where the current (convicted?) DNA samples are seperate from the not convicted samples. The not convicted samples are listed only by number and if a match shows up as a number, a judge gets to make the call as to whether the information is released.

Of course there would still have to be a system in place that keeps them only adding data to that database when it is taken for a valid reason.

Re:Cluster and Classify ...

[foobsr]

They've been reprinted a number of times in books.

Thank you for alerting me to a piece of US culture that obviously seems worth to get in touch with :)

CC.

Re:Cluster and Classify ...

[ackthpt]

Thank you for alerting me to a piece of US culture that obviously seems worth to get in touch with :)

Walt Kelly and his Pogo strip were what we had before the likes of Doonesbury, Bloom County, Boondocks and many other. Kelly took on McCarthy at a time when it wasn't popular to do so, he also satirized LBJ, George Wallace and lambasted Nixon. Within his funny animal strip about a 'possum' and his Okefenokee dwelling friends, Kelly aimed some very sharp barbs at political figures. On top of all that, there was also social commentary, such as the title character and friend overlooking the trash strewn swamp and stating, "We have met the enemy and he is us." A former Disney animator, Kelly had a very beautiful, detailed style of drawing.

Re:Cluster and Classify ...

[Audacious]

Actually, I would think this would be more along the lines of:

1. Convicted
2. Not Convicted because the computer hasn't hiccupped yet.

Let's see, how many different DNA labs have had their hands slapped for fabricating their results? Like the one in the city of Houston, Texas. (Where they are completely overhauling their labs because of problems.)

How many times has it been found out that someone went to jail not because they are guilty but because someone else wanted them out of the way?

How many death row inmates are being released (like in the state of Illinois where almost all of them were released from death row) because DNA evidence has shown that many of the people there are there only because they just happened to be a different color, nationality, height, weight, sexual disposition, and so on?

The rules are (from my perspective):

1. If you have a lot of money - you can get away with a lot of things.
2. If you are very influential/powerful - you can get away with a lot of things.
3. If you are an average kind of person (some money, some friends...) you might be able to get away with some things (like getting out of traffic tickets and the like).
4. If you are poor though - tough break. Because you don't dress as nicely, speak as fluently, have a reparte with others who are more powerful - it is a good guess that you will have run-ins with the law. Just because of how you look, talk, and act.

It has been proven time and time again that:

1. Powerful people do some really nasty things sometimes. (As in the case of the gentleman who was murdered in a small town in Texas (in the 60s). It is suspected that the head of the police department killed this guy. But almost everyone who lived during those times is now dead and those who are still alive either don't know or won't talk about what happened. Or take the case of one of my wife's cousins. Found tied to a chair, hands tied behind his back, gag in his mouth. Shot in the head. Cause of death? Suicide. Case closed.)

2. People who have any kind of authority tend to abuse that authority. (Look at not only how many high ranking people abuse authority [like fixing traffic tickets and such] but if you would only go to Federal Court where the IRS takes people who try to evade paying their taxes you would get a real eye opener on what these people try to pull all of the time.)

3. People who are first timers to power jobs tend to work more for the people than those who return to that (or a higher) office. This is simply because they are novices and are learning the ropes. Once they've got the techniques down pat it is very seldom that they do not succumb to the temtations of power. And those that do not succumb usually wind up dead. Which should tell you something.

Graft and corruption go hand in hand with power and the more power you have the easier it is to misuse that power. It is not just a fact of life. It is a fact that we are allowing ourselves to be this way. We could just as easily say no to the way things are and change our way of life. We've just chosen not to do so.

Now?

[fembots]

With the "laws" nowadays, if someone wants her DNA samples removed from the record, just respect her rights and remove it, but not before passing a DNA Remover ACT 2005 which allows DNA Security Centre to keep a copy of the samples and flag that person.

It's like everybody's allowed to wear bulletproof vest, just don't be the only survivor in a drive by shooting.

Re:Now?

[foobsr]

to keep a copy of the samples and flag that person ...

... equiv(convicted).

This is why nanotechnology is a good thing. It will enable you to remanufacture your layout.

CC.

The solution is easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Clone the innocent people. Eventually the ratio of innocent to guilty people will be through the roof, OMG.

Re:The solution is easy

[Tribbin]

Not that the following denies your statement or has any worth at all, but:

If you clone a guilty person, at birth the clone will be innocent.

Re:The solution is easy

[AegisFang]

If you clone a guilty person, at birth the clone will be innocent.

Not if he/she's Catholic.

-A

What do to with innocent people's DNA

[pHatidic]

We keep their DNA sample, and then plant some at the crime scene the next time we kill someone. Wow that was the easiest ask slashdot ever.

Re:What do to with innocent people's DNA

[HTTP Error 403 403.9]

Mark Furman?

Re:What do to with innocent people's DNA

[prockcore]

We keep their DNA sample, and then plant some at the crime scene the next time we kill someone.

There was a comedian talking about he never litters. "With my luck I'll toss a soda can out the window while driving down the freeway and it'll land right on top of a dead body"

He also mentioned that he buys gum every hour on the hour at random convenience stores.. being sure to pay with a credit card and wave at the security camera.

Sometimes it's nice to have the government be able to track you.. it provides you with an alibi.

Re:What do to with innocent people's DNA

[bani]

all they need to do is sieze the security camera videotapes and then "lose" them.

happens quite frequently when law enforcement does something embarassing or criminal that gets recorded on videotape. the tapes get "lost".

Re:What do to with innocent people's DNA

[Lord Kano]

You mean how the FBI "lost" the front doors to the church in Waco Texas right before congress asked to see them?

LK

Yes yes...

[mindstormpt]

You'd better worry, someonw might clone your friend. Let the damn record be, that way if he commits a sexual offense in the future he might be caught.

Re:Yes yes...

[TheRaven64]

DNA records are not unique. DNA tests only measure the lengths of certain chains (oversimplification), not an entire DNA profile. A DNA result alone would narrow down the list of suspects to around 50 on average. You need other evidence to narrow it down beyond that.

I shall use it to create

[darth_MALL]

A Grand Army Of the Republic!

No bad can come of that...right?

Re:I shall use it to create

[aspx]

Begun, the clone wars have.

It's just data...

[zecg]

I don't think it's really about samples - the man hardly needs his skinflakes or his hair bits back and he sheds it all around anyway. As for the data it represents? Why, "we" keep it forever, of course. He is just the first in line, I'm willing to bet that within 20 years "we" will have a database of DNA samples from all "our" citizens - or whoever accepts my bet wins my slightly weathered tinfoil hat.

This will never fly

[John Seminal]

'In California, police will be able in 2008 to take DNA samples from anyone arrested for a felony, whether the person is convicted or not, under a law approved by voters in November.

There is something called the 5th amendment, protection against self incrimination.

Here it is, in case people forgot:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Re:This will never fly

[xlr8ed]

Under your reasoning, fingerprints would be allowed either and they have been doing that for, what 50+ years

Re:This will never fly

[winkydink]

This obviously doesn't apply to having one'spicture taken and being fingerprinted as that happens to everybody who get arrested, felon or not.

How is DNA any different?

Re:This will never fly

[spiritraveller]

It's more reliable, more useful, more efficent... and people believe in it.

People are afraid because they think that all it will take is some lab person to testify that the dna matched and they will be convicted.

Of course we've never had a problem with that before.

Re:This will never fly

[Tribbin]

With DNA it's like having that picture taken of you being naked.

Re:This will never fly

[Mr. Slippery]

How is DNA any different?

When you take my photo or my fingerprints, you are not taking part of my flesh.

The sovereignty of the state ends at my skin. It's that simple. You can pick up my dead skin flake or hair or whatever when it falls off me, but I will resist if you try to stick a swab or needle in me to take your milligram of flesh.

Re:This will never fly

[jericho4.0]

It seems UANAL.

Re:This will never fly

[DM9290]

How is DNA any different?

Who says it is?.

This same argument has been going on in regards of what to do with photographs and fingerprints of people after they are aquitted.

After a person is cleared on the offence there is no additional benefit to society to keep their personal information which outweighs the invasion of privacy that person suffers for having that information be on the "Record".

For an innocent person, having their fingerprints show up in a criminal database is an invasion of privacy. That is their personal data which the state took from them without their consent.

Insofar as the legal system is founded on the principle of presumption of innocence and respect for the rule of law. A person who is aquitted ought to be left alone as much as possible, and free to go about their business as if they were never accused in the first place.

There is no legal status in this society of "innocent, but not really".

As for your contention that EVERYONE gets fingerprinted. That is not necessarily true.

As least in Canada, there is discretion on the police as to whether or not they choose to take fingerprints. They have the authority in certain cases, but they can skip it if they dont see any necessity.

I would be suprised if most jurisdictions had a rule which said police MUST take fingerprints even if they dont want to.

incidentally.. in Canada, the policy of police departments (at least RCMP and Toronto Police) is to destroy or return fingerprints and photos of a person if they are aquitted of all charges upon request.

It is that policy (to destroy on request) which caused the Ontario Supreme Court to rule that the law allowing fingerprint retention on any basis was constitutional. It is likely I think, that if police started refusing to destroy fingerprints on an ad hoc basis, then the Court would rule that they must.

anyway.. this is Canadian law which few of you care about.

Look up R. v. Dore if you care about details.

Re:This will never fly

[Tsiangkun]

I'll take a wild guess and say, In a word, contamination.

If I roll your hand in ink and blot it, I know whose ink I am looking at.

If I snap a photo, I know it's your photo.

If I don't clean my pipetteman and mix your DNA and someone elses . . .

you can't deny that your sample is glowing on the chip when probed with DNA recovered from the scene. It's not your DNA glowing, it's the contamination.

Who cares, this case is closed. Don't drop the soap.

Re:This will never fly

[HTH NE1]

This obviously doesn't apply to having one's picture taken and being fingerprinted as that happens to everybody who get arrested, felon or not.

How is DNA any different?

As different has having a very large hash of a program's object code that also incorporates its serial number to verify its validity and having a complete copy of the source code of that program. Unless you regularly distribute your personal genetic code according to the terms of the GPL, there are several reasons you may have for not wanting someone to have your DNA.

Why mention the serial number? Because identical siblings do not have identical fingerprints, and can easily have different disfigurements as well (tattoos, piercings, a once-broken nose to name but a few). DNA alone might not be enough to perfectly identify some people, but it discloses a whole lot more information than should be necessary.

Indeed, there should be a privacy issue where a twin elects to give up his DNA without his identical sibling's consent. Giving up your DNA even invades the privacy of all blood relatives.

Re:This will never fly

[Funksaw]

Quote:"This obviously doesn't apply to having one'spicture taken and being fingerprinted as that happens to everybody who get arrested, felon or not. How is DNA any different?"

You can't use an inked fingerprint to plant fingerprints at the scene of the crime.

Re:This will never fly

[winkydink]

Go back to the golf course, OJ.

What do you think they're going to do? Take a pint of your blood or something? I suspect you're looking at a saliva swab or something similar.

And yes, using not-so-modern photolithography techniques, you can use inked fingerprints to plant fingerprints at a crime.

Re:This will never fly

[InfiniteWisdom]

You could at least write the obligatory "IANAL" before sprouting wild legal theories. The 5th amendment only covers testimony. Taking a DNA sample can at best be considered a "search or seizure" and is covered by the 4th amendment, not the 5th. Forcing arbitrary people to give DNA samples would violate the 4th, but not if you've been arrested for a felony. This has been ruled on several times in courts at all levels.

IANALE,BIHDMR (IANAL either, but I have done my research)

Re:This will never fly

[MagicDude]

You can pick up my dead skin flake or hair or whatever when it falls off me, but I will resist if you try to stick a swab or needle in me to take your milligram of flesh.

You may be within your rights to resist a forcable taking of a DNA sample, but chances are if a national DNA database is created, there will be certain "incentives" that will make you give over a sample. Think of any number of government services that could be tied to your giving a sample. Maybe you can't go to public school without giving a sample, or you won't get a driver's license if you're not on record, or no federal loans for college, etc. Or maybe it'll simply come down to free deliveries paid for by the government if the parents voluntarily give a sample of their baby's DNA. There's many ways you can be coereced into putting your DNA into the database, none of which are the government kicking down your door and sticking a needle in your vein.

Re:This will never fly

[MillionthMonkey]

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Wow, that looks like a great idea! I'll be sure to vote for this when it comes down the pike!

What proposition number is it?

Re:This will never fly

[Zemran]

Yeah, I remember reading about the American constitution in history. It lasted for hundreds of years and then someone called bin Lala got it scrapped a few years ago. I can't remember if he was Democrat or Republican but he made a lot of changes to American politics.

Re:This will never fly

[Mr. Slippery]

Maybe you can't go to public school without giving a sample, or you won't get a driver's license if you're not on record, or no federal loans for college, etc. Or maybe it'll simply come down to free deliveries paid for by the government if the parents voluntarily give a sample of their baby's DNA.

There would be heavy religious liberties and equal protection issues with any such attempt. There are those who believe that the body is a sacred thing, that removing parts of it (however small) to hand over to the state would be sacrilege.

(I'm no Christian, but I like Jeshua ben-Joseph's advice advice about "render onto Caesar what is Caesar's" - my body ain't Caesar's.)

Re:This will never fly

[fcrick]

The difference is that unlike fingerprints, planting DNA at the scene of a crime is quite trivial, and making a suspect out of an innocent person is not only easy, but is also incredibly convincing.

At least with fingerprints it takes time to carefully place individual fingerprints on items in a crime scene, whereas if you simply take someone's trash, you can easily recover enough genetic material that can be quickly spread over a crime scene in way that will incriminate that person.

Re:This will never fly

[Insipid Trunculance]

Nobody can plant your jailhouse photograph at a crime scene but they can plant your DNA at a crime scene.

Re:This will never fly

[bleckywelcky]

What are they going to do with your picture? Wave it in front of the camera at a murder victim's front door?

Finger prints are a bit easier, but probably not as bad, because errors in trying to plant a finger print are easier to detect.

DNA? Uh, how about just throw it wherever you want and it'll make someone look completely guilty? The only problem I can see with DNA is having enough of the sample to prove it originated from somewhere. But even if no sample was kept, only the electronic DNA record, evidence can be covered up and a particular sample can be claimed to have matched a particular DNA record. Law enforcement does this shit all the time. Need proof? Look at the number of people proven innocent since the introduction of DNA evidence ... Or just look at the number of people wrongfully imprisoned overall - proven innocent at a later date by any class of evidence whatsoever.

Re:This will never fly

[DM9290]

"I didn't know Canada adhered to the US Constitution, which was what was quoted in the article that I replied to. Try to stay focused here."

I didn't claim that Canada was bound by the american constitution. However the original comment was an issue of legal interpretation. And the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has a similar clauses against self incrimination.

7. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.
8. Everyone has a right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure. ...

11. Any person charged with an offence has the right ...
(c) not to be compelled to be a witness in proceedings against that person in respect of the offence; ...
(h) if finally acquitted of the offence, not to be tried for it again and, if finally found guilty and punished for the offence, not to be tried or punished for it again;
13. A witness who testifies in any proceedings has the right not to have any incriminating evidence so given used to incriminate that witness in any other proceedings, except in a prosecution for perjury or for the giving of contradictory evidence.


Since the original comment dealt with a matter of legal interpretation, it is RELEVENT to the discussion how other courts have already ruled in regards to similar rights in another english speaking country. You probably didn't know this but courts, even though not bound, can be persuaded by other rulings on other countries on similarily worded statutes.

Civil Liberties organizations (the ACLU was mentioned specifically in the original article) ARE definitly inspired by civil liberties afforded in other free democracies. And these comments are on topic.

Compare the Charter with the 5th ammendment to the US constitution as quoted in the article:
"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

Specifically compared Charter 11(c) "[Any person charged with an offence has the right] not to be compelled to be a witness in proceedings against that person in respect of the offence" to the 5th "[no person] shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself" and combine the effect of Charter section 13, and the effect is very similar. In fact, almost identical.

The entire discussion itself deals with civil liberties (regarding fingerprints, photos and DNA) and not merely the interpretation of the US constitution, any comments on those liberties is on topic. Or in "focus" as you say.

Re:This will never fly

[Naomiah]

I forget the case, but bodily fluids, are excluded from 5th amendment protections. They can test your tears, semen, blood type, they can even remove bullets from your body surgically, without your consent, to be used at trial, as long as there is no "unreasonable" risk to the health or life of the defendant. I wish I could cite the case, but I learned it 15 years ago, and haven't practiced law in 10 years. I was a criminal defense attorney too, so this case really irritated me, it seemed so contradictory on its face. DNA can be derived from any of the above listed sources, so unfortunately, the 5th amendment argument won't hold up in court. However, once there has been a determination of innocence, that is a totally different situation, and I don't really understand how they could be creating a database of innocent people's DNA without malign intent. I do believe that if this were litigated, it might fall under the Constitutional right to privacy, however. Below is part of a very old slashdot post I wrote discussing constitutional privacy rights in relationship to DARPA and Choicepoint's databases of personal information:

"The right to privacy was one of those unspoken, but widely accepted theories of British Common Law. But with the publication and ratification of the US Constitution, many areas of Common Law became statutory. Nowadays, the right to privacy is a statutory one, carved out of the intersection of individual rights derived from the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 14th amendments. For instance, the 5th amendment gives you the right not to self-incriminate, the 4th gives you protection from unreasonable searches and seizures, and the 14th and 6th amendments insure that you have due process rights (although this seems to fly over the head of the Bush Administration). In the middle of the 20th century, the USSC began to interpret the nexus of these rights as creating an area of individual activity that should be free from government interference. Some of the more famous cases, Griswold v. Connecticut and progeny, Roe v. Wade and progeny, found that while the right to privacy was not enumerated, it was implied, in the same way that if you say "I consult with my attorney Monday through Sunday," you have implied that you also talk to your attorney Tuesday, Wednesday, etc.

Santorum and his ilk, who claim to be strict constructionists, want you to believe a) that if the Constitution doesn't explicitly state a right, it doesn't exist, and b) the Constitution establishes a government to control and rule the citizenry. People like him are the most treacherous people in the US today. The stealth theory he is pushing with his obsessive comments on sexuality, is that individuals should have no input into their own governance, and that the government is an entity that has an obligation to control personal behavior, and also that it may push people around as it finds convenient.

However, strict constructionism is false on its face. The mechanism for the citizenry to amend the Constitution is written right into it. As can be seen in contemporaneous writings, it was obvious that members of the Convention expected, and even hoped, that the Constitution would not be a static document, but that it would be amended by The People through legal means, sometimes as Constitutional amendments, and often as the result of judicial challenges (to refute the concept of "activist judges"). Many members of the convention would be thrilled to see that there is no longer slavery in the US. This despite language in the Constitution explicitly discussing the international sale of slaves."

Sorry to join in so late!

All your base pairs.....

[Anonymous Coward]

purges self from gene pool before making stupid joke &&&[NO CARRIER]

Been doing it for awhile

[lecithin]

Usually just being arrested means that you will be fingerprinted and your picture taken.

Isn't this pretty much the same thing?

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[Eternally optimistic]

Getting a driver license gets you fingerprinted and yur picture taken in many places, including California. Yes, we will keep these things forever, just in case.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[John Seminal]

Usually just being arrested means that you will be fingerprinted and your picture taken. Isn't this pretty much the same thing?

Here is the difference. If someone steals a database of fingerprints, what can they do with that? But if someone steals a database of DNA, and for example an insurance company gets it, can you gaurentee they won't have different rates just based on the genes you are born with. And what if they discover that gene X, Y, and Z found together cause a 25% increased chance the person with those genes will be a murderer. Do we want a society, where just being born with certain genes is enough to warrent government keeping tabs on that person? I know, I know, if it is for public saftey, it must be okay. Just like major cities are installing 1000's of camera's on streets to keep track of what is going on. And California banned the .50 caliber rifle, which has never been used in a crime that I can think of (although getting a handgun is easier and used in more crimes). It seems to me, that in an attempt to make society more "safe", we are making society more ripe for some dictator to take control. I know, I must be wearing a tin foil hat, because coup's have never happened. I for one completely trust people with power not to get corrupted, ever.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[Vellmont]

My fingerprints and picture can't be used to determine if I have a greater chance of getting heart disease, cancer, etc. Could my DNA be used to deny me healthcare, insurance, etc?

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[Florian Weimer]

Usually just being arrested means that you will be fingerprinted and your picture taken. Isn't this pretty much the same thing?

It depends. A regular DNA fingerprint doesn't really reveal anything about your genetic disposition, so it's not such a big problem. However, it's not clear if DNA fingerprinting is as resistant to collisions as it is generally perceived to be. It's fine if you match one sample against a few hundred suspects connected with the case; it's very unlikely that there is a false positive. But if you match thousands of samples a day against a database of millions of completely unrelated DNA fingerprinters, the odds of a false positive increase significantly.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[blackpaw]

Yes it is. I have no problem with law enforcement keeping DNA, so long as they are the only ones with access to it. That sort of thing is incredibly useful for solving crimes.

I do have a problem with insurance companies et al keeping dna.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[idlake]

That's one fingerprint. It helps you verify that a cooperative person actually the license holder. However, it is of little use for forensic purposes.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[networkBoy]

Cali banned the .50? :oops:
-nB

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[Anonymous Coward]

Do we want a society, where just being born with certain genes is enough to warrent government keeping tabs on that person?

In pretty much every society your genes alraedy make a big difference. In certain parts of North America, for instance, those of us with dark skin or certain "looks" are more readily suspected of crimes than others. The new advances in DNA will just make this discrimination more applicable to white people as well. Maybe that's a good thing, it'll make the existing problem much more obvious.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[Kiryat Malachi]

And in many places (Michigan, Illinois) it doesn't require a fingerprint and they don't store the photograph except on the license.

Ironic that the places with *incredible* problems with machine politics are the ones whose policies are more protective of the citizenry, isn't it?

(Excepting of course the sad tendency of Chicago cops to get promoted for beating the heads of innocent citizens to a pulp, and the sad tendency of Detroit politicians to never have to actually *do* anything to improve their city and still getting re-elected.)

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[Martin Blank]

California banned sales of weapons using .50BMG ammunition effective the first of this year. Ammunition itself may still be sold.

The gun has been used in crimes very sporadically, but I don't believe ever by lawful owners, and I'm not sure anyone has ever been killed by someone using one.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[Anonymous Coward]

In certain parts of North America, for instance, those of us with dark skin or certain "looks" are more readily suspected of crimes than others.

That's probably because there is a higher probability that you have actually commited the crime. Go figure, huh?

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think the DNA they are taking can be used for that. Sequencing DNA is a long, expensive process. The standard samples are more like a fingerprint of the DNA, and work like a fingerprint in that they can tell one person from the next, and maybe male from female, but that's about it.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[phoenix.bam!]

Have you seen how much hair is in your hairbrush? How would you feel if your hairbrush was stolen and six weeks later your convicted of murder because your hair was found at the scene? Faking DNA evidence is trivial compared to creating a fake fingerprint.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[Foo2rama]

It is exactly the same. A DNA fingerprint cannot tell if you are higher risk to cancer or illness. It cannot say this or that, anymore then a fingerprint can. It is basically the cutting up of your dna using a known agent and then using electropharises to seperate out the components. The higher ie longer the strand the less distance it will travel in the gell with electrical currant applied. You can kinda do your own experiment at home that mimics this. Take a coffee filter place ink on it and place part of the coffee filter strip in water. As water travels (electricty) along the filter (electropharesis gel) the ink (dna) will seperate.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[pesho]

No it is not! You can't extract much information on the persons health, genetic predispositions, family links etc from a fringerprint or a mugshot. With DNA profile you can easily do that. It can get realy unpleasant when you try to get health insurance for example (oh no sir! Preexisting conditions are not covered. Sorry.)

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[iminplaya]

...so long as they are the only ones with access to it.

That's funny!

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[Moofie]

Ah, so we should just keep slipping down the slope?

I would say that, if you are exonerated, all records of your arrest should be destroyed.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[Fulcrum of Evil]

California banned the .50 caliber rifle, which has never been used in a crime that I can think of

There are only a few thousand of these rifles in existence, and the waitlist is something like 8-12 months. That doesn't matter: the government bans guns because they're scary, not out of any risk.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[Moofie]

Hold on. You're telling me somebody used a .50BMG weapon in a crime? What kind of crime? I'd love to read about that. Some jack-hole thinks he needs a six foot long rifle to hold up a convenience store. That's...magical.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[khallow]

They can't make a false positive on my DNA, if they don't have it.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[izomiac]

Yeah, most likely they'll just chop the DNA up with a few restriction enzymes, run it through gel electrophoresis, and scan the gel to see the location and width of the bands that emerge. Unfortunately, I could easily see someone making a national database of these, and whenever DNA evidence is found they just search it to find a suspect. DNA analysis may be accurate, but not 100%, so if you were the only match and didn't have an alibi then you'd be screwed.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[magefile]

Wrong. It can tell if you have certain risk factors. I have a rare disorder that was diagnosed (well, the diagnosis was confirmed) two ways: urinalysis (to detect byproducts left behind because of an enzyme deficiency) and DNA sequencing. The same principle applies to other health issues; people can be tested for risk factors for cancer and heart disease, or for signs if Huntington's, and myriad other health problems.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[AndyL]

"The gun has been used in crimes very sporadically, but I don't believe ever by lawful owners,..."
What about in weapons stolen from lawfull owners?

They count too.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[Foo2rama]

Wrong, sequencing is not DNA fingerprinting. Fingerprinting can be done in a High School Lab and sequencing requires very expensive components and techniques.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[Martin Blank]

They've been confiscated from a couple of militiamen who were also convicted felons. Someone also tried to use one when shooting up a supermarket, but was using it as a close-range weapon to shoot at police cars. There was also some nutcase in the Midwest who, IIRC, called an ambulance to his place and shot at it as it arrived, and then shot at the cops as they arrived. He was, as I recall, a felon, and ended up taking his own life (with another gun).

I'm not sure that anyone has ever been killed in the US by a civilian-owned .50BMG rifle.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[Martin Blank]

Browning Machine Gun. It's the round used in the M2 Browning Heavy Machine Gun, and also in weapons like the Barrett M82 line of sniper rifles used by various militaries for anti-materiel and certain (often extreme-range) hits where the standard M24 line isn't strong or accurate enough.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[Martin Blank]

Not in this instance. Unlawful use by lawful owners is what I was referring to; if you're not supposed to have gun in the first place, merely possessing it is illegal. Cops have lost their guns to criminals who have gone on to kill people with them (sometimes the cop they just took it from), but we don't take guns away from the cops.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[brjndr]

And California banned the .50 caliber rifle, which has never been used in a crime that I can think of

Yes, and it was a good move. 20/20 or one of those shows demonstrated what this rifle can do. The reporter shot at an aircraft door, and had placed a 1" thick steel plate behind the door. He missed on his first shot, but hit the door right in the middle on his second. The bullet passed right through the door and the steel. What the hell does a person need to own this gun for? Why should we enable the average citizen to have the ability to take down an aircraft. Ok, you support the right to bear arms. People should be able to protect themselves, but there is a difference between providing a citizen with a means of protection and enabling them to take out an aircraft. I personally would sleep better knowing that steps were taken to make sure people can't get their hands on these things.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[AK Marc]

Some jack-hole thinks he needs a six foot long rifle to hold up a convenience store.

Come on. It isn't 6 feet long. It's only 57 inches long.

And the reason is fear. That thing will go through most "bullet proof" vests warn by police. They still remember the bank shootout and don't ever want to be out gunned, even if that isn't necessarily a rational fear.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[Moofie]

OK, that sort of reinforces what I'd guessed: To a good approximation, zero criminals use legally-purchased .50 BMG rifles to commit crimes.

And, as usual, misinformation and scare-mongering at work to incrimentally remove the 2nd Amendment.

I really hate that the only political discussion in America is which set of rights we need to give up to Be Safe. It's really distressing.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[AK Marc]

I defy you to name one legitimate reason for a citizen to own a 0.50 caliber weapon.

Target practice. I defy you to name a single crime committed by a civilian with a legally owned .50 BMG rifle. Better yet, name any crime committed in the US with a .50 BMG rifle. If they are so dangerous, then someone must have used them.

Why don't we ban Ferraris? They are more car than you need. They are obviously designed only to break the law. You should have to prove legitimate uses of any products before you are allowed to buy them. Formula 409 is a little too toxic. It should be banned because a little scrubbing and lemon juce works just as well. Ban tartar control toothpaste because it doesn't do anything you can't accomplish with a little more brushing, and you obviously don't need all that power.

Oh, I am not now, nor ever will be a member of the NRA and I do not own a gun. I just think that both sides of the issue are populated with people that are nuts.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[Moofie]

A 5.56mm rifle cartridge will go through most bullet proof vests. A 7.62mm cartridge will go through all of them.

I think that if policemen don't want to get shot, they should find a less dangerous line of work, and stop worrying about people toting around 57 inch rifles. That cost $8000.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[plague3106]

Maybe to protect yourself against the government should it decide to throw out the constitution?

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[AK Marc]

A 5.56mm rifle cartridge will go through most bullet proof vests. A 7.62mm cartridge will go through all of them.

Type III protects against 7.62 mm full metal jacketed bullets (U.S. military designation M80), with nominal masses of 9.7 g (150 gr) impacting at a velocity of 838 m (2750 ft) per second or less.

If that's not enough, you can step up to type IV. But there exists no armor qualified to stop .50 BMG (though it is quite posible that IV will stop it, especially at the edge of the 1+ mile effective range of the .50 BMG).

But, given the numbers with which these exist and the rarity of their use in a crime (ban them in CA when there has never been a crime in CA using them) just seems stupid.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[Moofie]

Type III has the ceramic trauma plates, right? I'd be pretty surprised if that was normal duty garb for most officers.

Details aside, I totally agree with your conclusion: Banning .50 BMG is silly, and should be construed as a power grab.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[magefile]

True, but RFLP detection of risk factors (which I did in H.S. bio) is possible, and if they have the DNA sample anyway, it's not too far a jump to doing sequencing fairly soon down the road.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[Martin Blank]

I'll see if I can find the information again. It's been several months since I looked it up in significant detail (and I should have bookmarked it), but a number of the rifles that have been used in crimes were actually illegally manufactured and sold by a gunsmith who had a felony rap sheet. They were high-quality weapons -- he just wasn't supposed to be making them, let alone selling them.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[Martin Blank]

It's a seriously rare incident when a criminal uses an illegally obtained .50BMG rifle to commit a crime. Most sites I've seen can count a dozen, maybe 20, and that includes many that were mere possession by a felon with no proof of it being used in the commission of a violent act.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[Trepalium]

Until what point? If the risk analysis becomes too accurate, you might as well just invest the money yourself, because there would be no point in giving it to an insurer.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[emptor]

My .308 will go through a "bullet proof" vest. Most anything more powerful than 9mm has a good chance of penetrating a vest.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[emptor]

I defy you to name one legitimate reason for a citizen to own a 0.50 caliber weapon.

How about the simple fact that they're fun to shoot?

There was a West Wing ep a few years back where it was put most succintly: "It's not that you don't like guns, it's that you don't like people who like guns."

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[Anonymous Coward]

didn't have an alibi then you'd be screwed.

Didn't appear to have happened that way in OJ's case.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[HarryGenes]

As a professional using DNA for human identity every day, I can assure you that your fears are completely unfounded. UNLIKE a fingerprint (ink and thumb concept), a DNA 'fingerprint' is very incomplete. It is more like the biometric fingerprint. All a biometric reader sees is a handful of specific points to use as points of comparison. The DNA fingerprint works like that. It takes a handful of specific 'markers' that can help distinguish people. A DNA match in a crime or paternity or whatever is not a nucleotide base by base comparison. It is using specific differences to statistically support the match. It is entirely plausible for an innocent person to have a profile that matches another person. In fact, identical twins have identitical DNA. DNA evidence alone will never convict or acquit on its own. There has to be something else. For example, if the DNA match demonstrates a 1 in 3 million liklihood of it being the same person, one can imagine only one person in LA could have been the source of the DNA. That along with other physical and emperical evidence (witnesses saw the white bronco, OJ had motive, etc.), it becomes plausible that it is the same person. While I do worry that insurance companies can get information about diagnostic tests, there is no need to fear insurance companies getting a hold of DNA profiles from criminals. That data is essentially useless for disease information or anything else. Put your conspiracy theories back in your pocket and relax. Personally, I'd rather Big Brother had posession of my CODIS profile than my fingerprints which are much easier to plant or end up in innocent places- city streets, etc. If someone has a fingerprint card, they have all my fingerprint information. If somebody has my CODIS profile, they can't do anything useful.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[Narchie Troll]

Rifles are really great against jet fighters and smart bombs, aren't they?

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[aaronl]

Curtailing of freedom is not worth convenience or temporary security. That's why things were put into the Constitution and Bill of Rights. It was felt that they were necessary to keep the government in line, and allow citizens power and protection to deal with it if something went wrong.

Having the option to investigate your genetic predisposition is different from having the state abridge your freedoms due to those tendancies. The state show know as little as possible about the populace, as they have no reason to know much about them. If you have done nothing, then you have no reason to be watched or suspected. This is very unlike the popular fallacy that the innocent have nothing to hide. In fact, the innocent have as much to hide as the guilty: anything they want to.

Legitimate reason to own a .50 weapon? Special police forces and military personnelle have them. I also think you should be allowed to have tanks and fighter jets. Notice I didn't say "use", but only "have". If a revolution became necessary, that "having" would be quite useful.

Much like police carrying guns is not so they can shoot someone; it's so hopefully someone will be intimidated into surrendering. If the citizens are well armed, the state (and criminals) will have to think twice about screwing with the populace.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[Pseudonym]

Maybe to protect yourself against the government should it decide to throw out the constitution?

The government already has decided to throw out the constitution (PATRIOT act, war on drugs, take your pick). And gun ownership has helped... how, exactly?

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[AK Marc]

Type IIIa is what most officers probably wear. Most IIIa has the pockets for the plates and will become Type III when the plates are inserted. SWAT is probably the only group that wears III on a regular basis.

Banning .50 BMG is silly, and should be construed as a power grab.

Banning .50 BMG is silly, but I'm not sure it is a power grab. It isn't a power grab to lock up the cleaning chemicals so that your children can't get into them. The people that are banning the guns seem to actually be interested in saving people from themselves. Sure, they are doing it in an ineffective way which degrades our rights without increased safety, but I don't see malicious intent.

Re:Been doing it for awhile

[Moofie]

"Sure, they are doing it in an ineffective way which degrades our rights without increased safety"

Their intentions are, to me, irrelevant. Their goals are incompatible with a) my personal liberty and b) the Constitution. I wish those things were taken seriously anymore. They are, in fact, exercising their existing power in an illegitimate way to gain more power over me, and I find that more than a little offensive.

Disposition of the DNA

[nonother]

What will be the disposition of the DNA of the innocent?

Just basing this on everything our government has done both in the past and quite recently, the DNA will probably always be kept on record. I can't help being a pessimist about this...it's just too easy.

Illegal search and seizure

[mollog]

Seems like what Kalifornia is proposing is unconstitutional. Althought there is no 'right to privacy', there is a right to protection from government searchs. I aggree that people are often overreacting to privacy concerns, I also think we need to push back at government intrusion into our private affairs. Unfortunately, the current political environment is one of intrusion, invasion, interference. The eventual solution to the issue will be political, not lega.

Re:Illegal search and seizure

[3waygeek]

Actually, the California state constitution specifically lists a right to privacy -- it's in the second sentence of the document.

Re:Illegal search and seizure

[Martin Blank]

Seems like what California passed is not unconstitutional, because it involves plenty of safeguards. This is typical unresearched crap getting past submitters and editors that makes Slashdotters get all up in arms.

The law was passed as Prop 69 last year. Yes, it requires that eventually all people convicted of felony charges and certain misdemeanor charges provide DNA samples, and all persons convicted of a felony under the care or direction of the California Penal System (in custody or on parole or probation) provide samples. In addition, it laid out very specific rules for what to do with DNA of people not charged or found not guilty. Of note from California Penal Code Section 299:

(a) A person whose DNA profile has been included in the data bank pursuant to this chapter shall have his or her DNA specimen and sample destroyed and searchable database profile expunged from the data bank program pursuant to the procedures set forth in subdivision (b) if the person has no past or present offense or pending charge which qualifies that person for inclusion within the state's DNA and Forensic Identification Database and Data Bank Program and there otherwise is no legal basis for retaining the specimen or sample or searchable profile.

(b) Pursuant to subdivision (a), a person who has no past or present qualifying offense, and for whom there otherwise is no legal basis for retaining the specimen or sample or searchable profile, may make a written request to have his or her specimen and sample destroyed and searchable database profile expunged from the data bank program if:
(1) Following arrest, no accusatory pleading has been filed within the applicable period allowed by law charging the person with a qualifying offense as set forth in subdivision (a) of Section 296 or if the charges which served as the basis for including the DNA profile in the state's DNA Database and Data Bank Identification Program have been dismissed prior to adjudication by a trier of fact;
(2) The underlying conviction or disposition serving as the basis for including the DNA profile has been reversed and the case dismissed;
(3) The person has been found factually innocent of the underlying offense pursuant to Section 851.8, or Section 781.5 of the Welfare and Institutions Code; or
(4) The defendant has been found not guilty or the defendant has been acquitted of the underlying offense.

Basically, if a person is found not guilty or acquitted, or charges have been dropped for at least 180 days and there is no retrial or appeal pending (this is covered later), then the person may submit a written request to have the record expunged and the sample destroyed. The law basically requires that the request be granted as long as a few things are included, none of which are easily avoided because of the wording of the law.

Re:Illegal search and seizure

[mollog]

Yes, I've read the constitution and its amendments. Your argument about the 'right to privacy' is internally conflicting; it agrees that no such right is declared, yet it goes on to assert such a right. But the constitution does protect us from unreasonable search and seizure. I wonder what the framers of the constitution would have said about governmental record-keeping of citizen's identification. I don't think they would care for it.

Re:Illegal search and seizure

[Atmchicago]

(c)(1)The person requesting the data bank entry to be expunged must send a copy of his or her request to the trial court of the county where the arrest occured, or that entered the conviction or rendered disposition in the case, to the [lab], and to the prosecuting attorney of the county in which he or she was arrested or, convicted, or adjudicated, with proof of service on all parties. The court has the discretion to grant or deny the request for expungement. The denial of a request for expungement is a nonappealable order and shall not be reviewed by petition or writ. (thank you jeblucas!)

See that last sentence? A judge can just tell you to go screw yourself if he so chooses anyway!

Re:Illegal search and seizure

[Anonymous Coward]

This really works better if you post it first

Otherwise everyone just points and laughs at how you're trying so hard to hide section (c) where they tell you that they can reject your request for any reason without review or appeal.

Re:Illegal search and seizure

[srmalloy]

(a) A person whose DNA profile has been included in the data bank pursuant to this chapter shall have his or her DNA specimen and sample destroyed and searchable database profile expunged from the data bank program pursuant to the procedures set forth in subdivision (b) if the person has no past or present offense or pending charge which qualifies that person for inclusion within the state's DNA and Forensic Identification Database and Data Bank Program and there otherwise is no legal basis for retaining the specimen or sample or searchable profile. (emphasis mine)

And now that they have the right to take the sample, all it takes is a simple addition to the Penal Code stating something like "All forensic evidence collected pursuant to a felony investigation shall be maintained in storage for a period of not less than twenty-five years." Voila. Instant "legal basis for retaining the specimen".

Re:Illegal search and seizure

[mabhatter654]

The problem is that once it's in the "system" you'll never get it out. Like other posters have said the definition of "legal reason" can be an administrative decision based on something as simple as a speeding ticket. When you get into all the cross-referencing that goes on, your sample probably ends up on the FBI database 72 hours after they take it... did they promise to get the records back from ALL the places they sent it?

I suppose once everybody's DNA is on record they'll have to go back to good ol witnesses. Hell, what's to stop them from snagging your newborns DNA at the hospital... all it takes is an "administrative suggestion" usually regarding paying the bills and the FDA could force every hospital to submit samples of every patient...who's to say we'd ever know?

When it gets to these issues I'm reminded of the orginal Jewish law [OK it's from Deutoronemy] that set "limitations" on criminal investigations. The origial rules required an investigation by the town elders and two offical wittnesses [and stoned um for lying!!] Also, it required "govt" to make a "sacrifice" for the human loss, then closed the matter...it prevented years long witchhunts we have now...constantly trying to "pin" the crimes on somebody. It also prevented the "establishment" of a legal "profession" to contiually bend the rules... [OK we know how THAT turned out] of course even the best laid plans can be ruined by idiots!!!

No one is innocent.

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone on the planet is judged almost every day on their DNA. Are you goodlooking? Are you smart? Are you crafty? Are you tall?

Knowing the actual sequence is irrelevent.

The sequnce of your genes and the resulting expression of these genes has already defined you.

fingerprints?

[Anonymous Coward]

what do they do about fingerprints right now? Fingerprints and DNA at least to the police seems very related.

Re:Fingerprints?

[idlake]

What exactly are people afraid of, that they can't commit a crime anymore and get away with it?

No, what they are afraid of is that they will show up as a false positive and then face charges based on "incontrovertible" DNA evidence.

In fact, what has come out in many legal cases so far is that handling and processing DNA by forensic labs often leaves a lot to be desired.

Why not one-way hash for DNA DB?

[DoctoRoR]

It seems like much of the angst over a national DNA database is the potential misuse of the sequences, e.g. raising insurance rates or selecting against carriers of X. If the goal of criminal DNA databases is to match samples from crime scenes, why not use a one-way hash of each DNA fragment? That way, the actual DNA sequence wouldn't be kept. The hash could be constructed after removing common sequences, but I'm probably missing something aside from sequencing issues (which should be more automated in future). And this doesn't address larger issues on DNA matches...

Re:Why not one-way hash for DNA DB?

[cmowire]

Because prosecutors already have a glut of information.

The problem is, you can now have a case with no smoking gun, no confession, but a LOT of circumstantial evidence, people WANT to believe that the person in question is guilty. At the very least, somebody's good name is ruined.

The ability to take random samples of available genetic material (the amount required goes down over time, of course) from a place doesn't help you solve a case, it just adds some cold cases.

It all goes down to the philosophy of "innocent until proven guilty", really. Saying that somebody shouldn't have a problem about it is to say that we should all walk around with TV cameras attatched to our bodies.

Re:Why not one-way hash for DNA DB?

[v1]

One way hashes are good because a very small change in the input produces a drastic change in the digest. A "good" hash function will toggle, on the average, 50% of the bits in the digest when ONE bit in the input is toggled.

Since genes don't reproduce perfectly, and mutation is relatively common, you'd probably be somewhat hard-pressed to find two exactly identical genomes in an adult by random sample of two cells. This means there is no single hash we could store to represent a person - DNA comparison is not an exact match, but rather it's a statistical comparison, and you only have to get so many 9's after the 99.99 to say "it's him". You can't do a statistical analysis once you've hashed your data.

Re:Why not one-way hash for DNA DB?

[DoctoRoR]

Good point. What about doing a monte carlo simulation where you generate variations on the crime scene DNA and see if they match as well? That way, you generate a pool of DNA fragments that are similar to the found DNA, then you calculate the probability that these fragments would produce a particular person's hashes. Hash collisions could be worked into the probability.

Re:Why not one-way hash for DNA DB?

[Kiryat Malachi]

Some thoughts on this:

Good hashes are designed to exhibit an avalanche effect. Since most human's DNA is 99+% similar to each other's, the minor human-human changes should produce major hash-hash changes.

I am not a cryptographer; I have read Schneier's "Applied Crypto", and do have a lot of math background. That out of the way, my understanding of such things leads me to believe that it is easy enough to design a non-colliding one-way function. Since we're not really interested in the data-compressing property of hashing for this, but simply in the "verification without knowledge" that hashed values allow us, a 1:1 one-way function would suffice. Given a 1:1 one-way function, false positives don't exist.

Now, the problem with a 1:1 function is that you can create a reversal table that will provide provably correct outputs. Ways to get around this: salt, pseudorandom pads (essentially equivalent to salt, really), obscurity methods, etc. Also, the need to worry about this varies with how much DNA information you're storing - considering the estimated valuable lifetime of such information (lifespan of the owner plus a bit) we need to account for the likely improvement of computing in that timeframe. Which is likely to be significant. If we were hashing the *entire* DNA sequence from an individual, that might be enough information to be non-trivial even 200 years from now (an optimistic value-lifetime estimate). Or not. That'd remain a problem in such a setup.

But false positives aren't that big a deal, if you're thinking ahead.

Re:Why not one-way hash for DNA DB?

[Tribbin]

In twenty years there will be anti-discrimination demonstrations with banners reading: "We deserve that work as much as you do you fit fucks!"

Re:Why not one-way hash for DNA DB?

[scaryfish]

This is essentially what happens. I can't imagine that they actually have a freezer full of DNA samples from people. What they almost certainly do is a microsatellite repeat fingerprint - essentially looking at how many copies of several repeats you've got. So all that would get stored in the database would be like "John Doe:15, 12, 9, 13, 12, 5, 14".

I should point out that in almost every case the number of repeats in each of these cases has absolutely no effect on the person whatsoever.

Re:Why not one-way hash for DNA DB?

[Qzukk]

The problem then is "what if the hash is wrong"? Do you want to get arrested because some lab tech fucked up your DNA sample and now its hash matches some serial kiddie rapist's?

Even if you redid the DNA sample, you'd still have been arrested for being a serial child rapist, and nobody's going to look at you the same again.

Re:DNA is hushed

[ackthpt]

DNA from innocent people should be kept on file incase the person ever commits a crime. Then DNA from the crime scene can be matched. In fact, all newborns should have their DNA put on record. That way investigating crimes in the future will be a piece of cake.

I've always admired you, your clever way with words and such. You're my hero! Can you please send me a lock of your hair?

Privacy

[Doc Ruby]

And what about our right against self-incrimination, protected by the 5th Amendment? Why is only our cerebellum protected? Why can we be compelled to give involutnary testimony by divulting DNA, possibly our most private info, short of our thoughts? If they can get our DNA, can't they get a MRI scan, while they ask us questions? Will they stop when they learn to read them?

Sadly, an appropriate quote

[Stiletto]

"To imagine the future, imagine a boot stepping on a human face -- forever."

-George Orwell

Re:Sadly, an appropriate quote

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the past, too, at least back to the invention of the first organized religion and/or government.

Mod me to hell and back...

[Unloaded]

"What will be the disposition of the DNA of the innocent?"

Wait, let me guess. Same as the disposition of the photographs and fingerprints of the innocent?

I don't get it. How is the potential for abuse any higher just because the sample is DNA? To me, the benefits of being able to solve a years old case based on DNA samples outweighs the risks of abuse within the system. Lets give the cops the tools they need to put the crooks away. Just make sure there are no loopholes in the law that would allow the government, as well as insurance companies and the like to access and use the results to discriminate against people.

Re:Mod me to hell and back...

[cmowire]

Because any law can be changed later.

Information that shouldn't be kept... shouldn't be kept. Not protected by a law that can be changed later or stored based on the assurances of somebody who can't even be bothered to read it that there aren't any loopholes or reinterpreted by a court of law... stuff like that.

And it just increases the amount of available circumstantial evidence. Sure a semen sample or whatnot will be hard to argue... but if you are picking up skin cells and sequencing them, things can get a little dangerously circumstantial.

Re:Mod me to hell and back...

[John Seminal]

I don't get it. How is the potential for abuse any higher just because the sample is DNA? To me, the benefits of being able to solve a years old case based on DNA samples outweighs the risks of abuse within the system. Lets give the cops the tools they need to put the crooks away.

The police have pleanty of tools to solve crimes. They don't need any more. It comes down to one thing. Either we are a free and open society, or we become a police state. If we make the police so powerful, that the People can no longer fight back if the cause ever comes that they need to, what will we be? Will we be no more able to fight for our own freedom than Iraqi people could fight for theirs under a dictator? The reason we limit the power police have is the same reason we limit the power politicians have. It is to protect against the over ambitious, the Joseph McCarthy's of the world. The easier it is for a group to take control of a society, the more likely they will do so. All the police camera's in larger cities, put in place to fight "the war on terror" do nothing but track citizens, not terrorists. DNA is one more way of keeping tabs on people.

I have one question. How would history be different if DNA technology was avilable in the 1950's, and if all black people were forced to submit DNA. Then government decided to do more than just bug telephones and listen in. The possibilities for abuse are too great.

Re:Mod me to hell and back...

[Anonymous Coward]

Please tell us how history would have been different, because I can't see it making any difference. The government already knew who black people were because they were *black*. They didn't need to use DNA to track them down.

Re:Mod me to hell and back...

[prockcore]

To me, the benefits of being able to solve a years old case based on DNA samples outweighs the risks of abuse within the system.

I've watched enough Cold Case Files to know that many cases go unsolved simply because they can't identify the victim.

I wouldn't mind having my DNA on file simply because if I'm ever murdered and mutilated beyond recognition, they could at least notify my family. :)

Re:Mod me to hell and back...

[trenton]

How is the potential for abuse any higher just because the sample is DNA?

Can a fingerprint provide a complete genetic map of an individual? Can you clone someone from a photograph?

Re:Mod me to hell and back...

[imsabbel]

Do you really think, even for a moment, that at ANY point of time in this or the last century "the people" whould have had ANY chance against the police force and the army?

Re:Mod me to hell and back...

[jimi the hippie]

I think that prior to about 1920 they would have. With the right motivation and organization, of course.

Re:Mod me to hell and back...

[PedanticSpellingTrol]

The US Military doesn't exactly have a great record against guerilla tactics.

Moreover, it's a given that if some issue were to become so divisive that civil war broke out, a sizable chunk of the armed forces would jump sides, sabotaging or stealing what equipment they could. And let's not count out foreign aid, there are plenty of neighbors to the south with long memories who would love nothing more than to see the US establishment brought down. Things would not be so one-sided as they appear at a first glance.

Re:Mod me to hell and back...

[mabhatter654]

but there's lots of southern white people with a little black in them...with DNA we could get down to .001% black! Of course then they'd all realize we're all the same mixed up genes!!!! funny how that works.

Re:Mod me to hell and back...

[PsiPsiStar]

1. I had a friend who once filed a complaint against the local police department and won. Ever after that, the cops would pull him over whenever they saw him and check out his car and ding him for any little thing he's done. Vendettas like this are common enough.

2. DNA is more "mysterious." People can judge a photo for themselves, or even look at a picture of a fingerprint. But if you search a database of people, you can find one who fits simply by chance. In such trials, DNA should not be allowed as evidence.

3. DNA contains a great deal more evidence than fingerprints do. While most of this information isn't currently accessible, it will be eventually, and could be used for a variety of purposes. Once information is in one database, legislation signed at midnight can move it to another without people having any effective recourse.

4. Because it's even easier to plant a DNA sample than it is to plant a fingerprint.

I think we're going to end up making a lot of mistakes trying to use DNA as evidence. I'm not saying it shouldn't be done. I'm just saying that there will be a lot of unforseen problems. Better to move with caution and circumspection and not rush into things too quickly.

Nothing, really.

[simetra]

If you're innocent, no problem.

You leave your fingerprints everywhere. You don't cry like a baby about people having access to your fingerprints. You likewise leave bits of DNA all over the place (ala Gattica).

Please show me where we are guaranteed the right to total annonymity (sp?) all the time everywhere. Better yet, retroactive guaranteed annonymity always everywhere all the stinking time!!! It doesn't exist. It's a paranoid pre-conception!

Re:Nothing, really.

[SteroidMan]

Also tell me why my taxes fund the collection of data on innocent people. This is a costly process, and rife with potential for abuse. Why would I want my government to record this information?

Re:Nothing, really.

[simetra]

To keep innocent people innocent.

Also, how would you like it if your daughter was raped and murdered, and you go to the Police and they say "Well, we found a bunch of semen, but because we don't collect DNA, we have nothing to compare it to. Sorry."

Re:Nothing, really.

[Content-Free]

The Supreme Court has only said that you have to give your name when asked for identity.

Re:Nothing, really.

[dedeman]

Well, I think that this issue falls a bit short of "total anonymity", as it is not guaranteed, as you put it, "always, everywhere, all the stinking time". I think that the framers of the constitution have put it more eloquently.

But, since you don't mind such an idea, I suppose that you may not disagree to an individual tracking tag on your ear? It's just to make sure that you are, as you put it, "...innocent, no problem.", and not doing anything illegal.

And, I suppose that you will not mind having a security camera, able to detect every band including thermal infrared, aimed at your house, your windows, and back yard, just to make sure that you aren't doing anything illegal.

I think the concern here is the "potential" for abuses. Just because you are not doing anything illegal today, doesn't mean that the same thing won't be illegal tomorrow, and when it is, luckily your DNA will be on account.

Re:Nothing, really.

[Fian]

Both fingerprint and DNA evidence can be faked. As you stated, we shed DNA all the time, thus is would be trivial for someone to harvest some of yours. Once a DNA sample has been obtained it can easily be amplified using PCR and other techniques in a standard household kitchen. The DNA sampler could then spike any location with copious quanitites of your DNA, making you appear to have spent quite some time there. Now you have to work hard to prove you were somewhere else at the time.

A few years ago, the above senario would have been quite a stretch. Today, it is entirely plausible. DNA evidence should not be held in such high regard anymore.

Re:Nothing, really.

[badmammajamma]

It's a privacy issue. Having someone's DNA is an invasion of privacy. This is why you are only required to give your name upon arrest.

Re:Nothing, really.

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

I HATE people with this mentality. ...

This is what America has become. My Aunt is a professor in criminology and you would not beleive the mentality of her students. She is in shock over the mentality of our youth. The way our youth seems to have this nazi mentality of "If you didnt to anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about"

LIFE is not that simple. LIFE is complex. Put a camera on a street corner... catch someone running a red light. He must be guilty! What the camera did not pick up, is that the driver was blinded by the evening sunset and could not make out the light.

Things are not simple. Thats why we remind each other the Salem Witch trials. An individuals rights are to be protected because the MOB mentality of "if you didnt do anything, you're ok" is complete bullshit.

NO ONE EVER SAID being found guilty is a state of reality. An individual should have every tool to protect themselves and presumption of innocence. EVEN at the risk of allowing a criminal to slip through the cracks of justice. I would rather have a criminal get away with a crime than sent an innocent man to jail.

Re:Nothing, really.

[Mr. Slippery]

If you're innocent, no problem.

Until the law changes, and you're guilty of something. Japanese-Americans who cooperated with the government in the late 1930s and gave up information (like, to the Census Bureau) probably regretted it a few years later.

You leave your fingerprints everywhere. You don't cry like a baby about people having access to your fingerprints.

We leave few clean usable prints behind, mostly smeared partials. (And it's interesting that fingerprint identification has never really been proven valid and reliable.)

Re:Nothing, really.

[Moofie]

Ah, the old "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear!" argument. That might make sense, if law enforcement were above reproach.

Guess what: They're not.

I would much rather have my murder remain unsolved than to live in a police state. You are attempting to elicit an emotional response in a philosophical argument, which is poor form.

Re:Nothing, really.

[Gilgaron]

You're sidestepping the issue. The concern isn't about prohibiting collection of DNA, it is about concern over archiving DNA samples of the innocent.

Re:Nothing, really.

[jimi the hippie]

To keep innocent people innocent.

The police having your DNA doesn't keep you from commiting a crime. If you are innocent, you are innocent; no amount of data can change that.

Re:Nothing, really.

[jimi the hippie]

Backyard? Why don't we go ahead and just start putting them in the houses. They could be integrated into some sort of plasma display, then we could require that everyone have one in each of their rooms. It could be used for surveillance and propaganda at the same time!!

Re:Nothing, really.

[jimi the hippie]

It is a marker that, more than any other evidence, can correctly pick out the guilty from the innocent.
That is not true. Perhaps you were there before the perpetrator. You took off your hat and lost some hairs and dandruff then went about your business. The crimal comes along, does the crime keeping his hat on.
The only DNA there is yours and the victims. Guess who's getting their door knocked down by the cops....

Re:Nothing, really.

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

That may be. But again life is not so simple. Who is to be trusted with our most damning evidence? The government? Private agencies? Corperations that demand DNA evidence before getting a credit card, or telephone line?

What kind of world will we become? I dont like the idea of relying solely on ones DNA as being the determining factor if they're guilty. If we become too set on accepting DNA has the ultimate evidence of guilt... Just how hard will it be to defend ones innocence?

Re:Nothing, really.

[jimi the hippie]

"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer." --Sir William Blackstone (i believe)

Re:Nothing, really.

[Scarblac]

If you're innocent, no problem.

Precisely. There are two big movements in new laws at the moment.

ONE: more possibilities for law enforcement, less privacy, harsher penalties, everything allowed if you mention terrorism. This is no problem at all if you're innocent.

TWO: Nobody is innocent. Ever downloaded an unlicensed mp3? Used unlicensed software? Copied a CD? Had an idea that happened to be patented? Taped a TV show? Drank alcohol before 21? Drove faster than the speed limit?

"That's ok if you're innocent" is only relevant for the 2 or so people who are completely innocent.

Who else gets to access it?

[C3ntaur]

I'm more concerned about the potential for abuse by outsiders than by the law enforcement authorities. You can't tell my predisposition to an illness or disorder from my fingerprints, but you certainly can from my DNA. How long will it be before health/life insurers and employers bribe the right politicians and get access to this stuff -- probably under the guise of "background checks" or some similar nonsense?

Re:Who else gets to access it?

[Mabelyne]

In Canada, when a DNA sample is collected regarding a particular case, said sample can only ever be used in that case. It does not go to a national repository to be held just in case it may be needed in another case at some some future point in time. Sounds like the US needs to get with the times.

Re:Who else gets to access it?

[Moofie]

Yeah, because it's totally impossible that anybody will ever be able to get that DNA corpus. Or change the law. The government will protect you...really!

Re:Who else gets to access it?

[The Angry Mick]

Oh, I wouldn't worry about that too much.

All of this data will be placed in the hands of data aggregators known solely for their high moral integrity. You know, Choicepoint, Equifax, Experian, TransUnion . . .

DNA instead of passwords.

[Anonymous Coward]

How about using it to log on and withdraw money from ATM machines. Hold your finger up to the needle at the ATM machine nto withdraw your money. Sounds like the ultimate biometric authentication system.

Re:DNA instead of passwords.

[RetepMc]

What about the guy in front of you with a disease that you don't want.

Re:DNA instead of passwords.

[sconeu]

What about the guy from the blood bank, who needs money? He just took my blood, but steals the pack instead of putting with everyone else's. Now he can withdraw from my account, because after all, it's *my* blood, and only I would be using it to withdraw cash!

Re:DNA instead of passwords.

[iminplaya]

Hold your finger up to the needle at the ATM machine...

Oh, yeah, right. Just after some syphillus infested drug addict jammed his finger there thinking he was getting a free hit.

Re:DNA instead of passwords.

[VoidWraith]

Siblings point out contamination et cetera, but what about those of us who can't stand being pricked? I fear the doctor taking a blood sample to test, and I could never donate blood: purely from this fear. Its not like I have a low tolerance for pain, or can't stand the sight of blood; I get cuts all the time, from assorting things and it doesn't bother me much, but I can't stand needles! Shots aren't as bad, but the ones that take blood are almost unbearable.

Re:DNA instead of passwords.

[pentalive]

Anything fixed to you, when compromised, can not be replaced. If a crook steals you ATM card you can get another with a different number. If a crook steals your DNA how ya gonna change it?

Re:DNA instead of passwords.

[RetepMc]

Your "What about the guy..." was so much better than my "What about the guy..." Darn you insightful people.

What Will We Do With Innocent People's DNA?

[caluml]

We could merge lots of innocent people, and create a super-innocent embryo. I assume that the baby would grow up to be a complete do-gooder, something like Clark Kent.

there are no innocents

[10am-bedtime]

if the people have given the state the right to spy on them, tag them, track, divide and thus conquer them, then the people have lost their innocence. it will be difficult to find it again because corruption doesn't kill innocence, it defaces it and leaves it the subject of mockery. in this way, the mean spirited ride the tides of entropy over their and in fact all unborn children.

can corruption be eased-off, or must it be broken?

Fingerprints?

[Professor_UNIX]

How exactly is this any different than fingerprints except being a heck of a lot more accurate? A lot of our fingerprints are already in databases and they're scanned by AFIS every day. They're a heck of a lot less accurate than a DNA sample would be at ruling you out as a suspect. What exactly are people afraid of, that they can't commit a crime anymore and get away with it?

innocent?

[tverbeek]

What will be the disposition of the DNA of the innocent?

"No one is innocent!" --Agent Rogersz, Repo Man

Re:Innocent?

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Absolutely. If you do not drive a 250,000 car.... you are a guilty middle class waste of life and who really gives a shit because there are so many poor suckers out there willing to build the homes of the rich.

Re:Clone Them

[Sneftel]

We can use this DNA to create a super-race of people who aren't guilty of crimes!

Close.... a super-race of people who aren't guilty of crimes, but are really suspicious-looking.

The DNA isn't the question here...

[the_skywise]

The violation is that the guy had his door busted down, had his house searched and DNA taken and the police never told him WHY he was a suspect.

That the DNA didn't "solve" the case was inconsequential because the DNA did helpe the police confirm who the guy was.

The question that should be asked here is not "Should the police be able to take samples of your DNA when you're arrested?" No brainer, you can already take fingerprints.

The bigger question here is: Can the police KEEP your DNA on profile *AND* can they keep the results of what they found while searching your house?

What if they found illegally downloaded music in his house? Could he be tried for that? Should those records be kept from the first search?

DNA aside (and IANAL) the current law is yes and yes.

Re:The DNA isn't the question here...

[chiph]

What if they found illegally downloaded music in his house? Could he be tried for that? Should those records be kept from the first search?

Live your life in a transparent manner, and you have nothing to fear, Citizen.

We're not as bad as the UK currently is -- but America is definitely on the road to becoming the observation nation.

There are two solutions for this: significant cultural change (John Q Public saying "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"), or live your life as if it were in a glass house, and everyone can see everything you do.

Chip H.

How about this for logic...

[ackthpt]

It's like everybody's allowed to wear bulletproof vest, just don't be the only survivor in a drive by shooting.

"If you let us keep your DNA on file, we can use it to prove you are innocent, further if you ever go missing we can us it to trace you if you leave a trail. So it's a good thing, you see?

Better spam targeting?

[spywarearcata.com]

With a lot of DNA samples in vulnerable databases, I guess the most probable outcome will be better demographic targeting of genital enhancement spam.

Hollywood is in California, right?

[iNatrix]

Haven't these people seen GATTACA?

Re:Cancel health insurance before it costs too muc

[xanthines-R-yummy]

I realize your comment was toungue-in-cheek, but on a serious note: if only it were that simple. Data extraceted from DNA only represents potential outcomes in many instances. The genome is often called a blueprint but as any architecht knows, there's a huge potential for the finished product to have alterations. It's the same way with DNA. The emerging fields (maybe it's already emerged?) of proteomics seems more likely to predict actual outcomes, like in this study. Sorry, but I think most you will have to pay to read the entire article.

Problem is matches aren't always exact

[Sycraft-fu]

Maybe the sample from the crime scene is degraded so you can say it was "probably" this person (like 1 in 10,000) but not certianly. Also you can match within families. You run DNA and discover it isn't person X's DNA, but a female relitive, etc.

So a hash would only be useful for dead on matches. Now maybe we decide that's all that the police should have, but you can see why they'd argue for more the orignals, as they are more useful.

DNA is largely similar for close relatives

[aralin]

Here is a big difference. While your kids are going to have totally different fingerprints and even pictures, their DNA to you will be largely similar. So by taking your DNA, you are putting your kids and your relatives in the database as well. If there is a partial match with someone in the database, they will just go after all his relatives and eventually find the right one. They just got a recent mass murder case solved when a daughter of a suspect volunteered to give a DNA sample, when he refused.

Re:DNA is largely similar for close relatives

[prockcore]

They just got a recent mass murder case solved when a daughter of a suspect volunteered to give a DNA sample, when he refused.

No, what they got was sufficient cause for a warrant.

They used the daughter's DNA to obtain a warrant for *his* DNA.

Tin foil hat time...

[SteroidMan]

For those that aren't disturbed by this. Consider the president of the Ukraine, Yushenko. What if instead of using Dioxin, they created a virus tailor made to attack his DNA?

What if they made all World Bank protestors sick?

If the government has access and control over our DNA they can use that data against us.

Re:Tin foil hat time...

[simetra]

They Are Us.

There's no big evil conspiracy. The people at the DMV who take your finger prints aren't snickering to themselves saying "Heh, heh, I have that bastard's prints! We own him now! We can frame him for the murder of OJ's wife!" They're thinking "Christ, is it Five yet?". They go to Home Depot on the weekend, they step in dog crap on occasion, they get paper cuts and hug their kids goodnight.

Paranoia mistakenly assumes a great deal of competence, cunning, and motive in the average worker.

Re:Tin foil hat time...

[TyroneShoolaces]

i dunno where you live, but the DMV's in Illinois are set on making people's lives miserable. i swear.

Re:Tin foil hat time...

[Qzukk]

Paranoia mistakenly assumes a great deal of competence, cunning, and motive in the average worker.

And stupidity underestimates the power of one malcontent in an underpaid dead-end government job.

Re:Tin foil hat time...

[plague3106]

Why do you assume its the DMV worker that would abuses it? Once its in the system, your friendly politician who you speak out against can get that info and possibly use it against you.

Innocent

[denissmith]

What makes you think they're innocent?:-)

Armed Forces Members Probably In Same Boat

[Goo.cc]

While I was in the US Navy, they started a DNA cataloging program, which they claimed was only intended to help identify people in the case of death. They claimed that the information would never be shared and would be discarded after discharge.

It has been 8 years since I was discharged. Want to bet that my information is available to law enforcement, even though I have never been convicted or accused of a crime?

Re:Armed Forces Members Probably In Same Boat

[BCW2]

Did you know that your fingerpeints went straight to the FBI database? Just like they have since the military started collecting them. They are used to run a check for past criminal activity and another check for the same when a security clearance is needed.

Everyone that gets arrested gets fingerprinted and the prints go to the FBI.

Now where will the DNA data be stored? Same place as the fingerprints have been for over 50 years. Not that big a deal. Mine went there in '76 and were checked again in '77 when I went to Submarines.

Re:Armed Forces Members Probably In Same Boat

[Bruha]

I agree, they did this in the Army in addition to our normal teeth xray.

I wonder how one would find out if this information still existed and why.

Re:Armed Forces Members Probably In Same Boat

[ChrisMaple]

The DNA information will be on computerized database(s). It gets backed up, as it should be in any responsible organization. It would be nearly impossible to selectively remove the information from hundreds or thousands of backup tapes.

The claim that the information would be discarded is thus a transparent lie. They couldn't get rid of it if they wanted to.

It's going to be a long time...

[Jack Johnson]

"If you're innocent, you have nothing to worry about." That line has become thouroughly entrenched in our society. Any and everything can be justified to the average american with that phrase.

Re:It's going to be a long time...

[jimi the hippie]

[I]If you're innocent, you have nothing to worry about.[/I]

Try coming to Wyandotte County, Kansas. Where poor, intelligent, harmless (and innocent) college students can lose thousands of dollars (in bond and legal fees) plus a weekend in County lockup for answering the door and being polite to a detective, not to mention being honest about said college student's ignorance to the felony crime.

Re:It's going to be a long time...

[noidentity]

"If you're innocent, you have nothing to worry about."

I'm not worried about possible crime I will commit against myself, it's crime that someone else will commit against me by misusing data the government has about me.

Re:It's going to be a long time...

[Kirth]

1943, a hare came to the swiss-german borders. The swiss customs-officer asked "well, why do you want the seek asylum in switzerland?" "Well, you see, Hitler started going after cangaroos", the hare replied. "Well, you're not a cangaroo, so you have nothing to worry about", the officer said. The hare: "Well, prove that to Hitler!"

Its a bit a stretch, but the bottom line is of course that you may have something to worry about even if you're innocent. Because your governement or your police officers might not be innocent..

Re:It's going to be a long time...

[jimi the hippie]

More specific? Okay, happened to me.

In Michigan

[Anita Coney]

Everyone convicted of a felony has to give a DNA sample before sentencing.

Re:In Michigan

[EverDense]

The key word there is "convicted".

Re:In Michigan

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Everyone convicted of a felony has to give a DNA sample before sentencing.

Do I get to choose the form? Also, would I get to deliver it to the prosecutor in person?

when the cloning is complete

[dmf415]

Once cloned, you'd have to figure out how to get your brain in your newly cloned body. That would be cool if you broke a bone, or dislocated your knee.

As on vulcan so below

[ishtari]

We should do as the vulcan, sample DNA on birth and be done with it! Like, then someone in the future could hack the central DNADB and clone 10,000 J. Michael Straczynski and we could finally get some quality television! A vote for mandatory DNA sampling IS a vote for the future!

Re:DNA is hushed

[TWX]

I've always admired you, your clever way with words and such. You're my hero! Can you please send me a lock of your hair?

You bring up a good point in an interesting way. We already don't investigate and prosecute crime that evidence exists for, in everything from auto theft to home burglary. We have tools to handle these and at least make some kind of dent in the statistics, but we don't. Collecting samples of everyone to use to match to a scene doesn't help if the investigators don't bother to do real police work, and if the perpetrator of a crime is smart enough to minimize the amount of evidence of his presence. It's amazing what new clothes, a hat or hair net, and thoroughly bathing beforehand can do to leave no useful evidence.

Too Many Worries To Be Effective

[Surak_Prime]

I'm as concerned about protecting civil liberties as anyone, but sometimes it seems like we're throwing the baby out with the bathwater, arguing too many angles. I understand the whole "if I'm not doing anything wrong I have nothing to hide" fallacy, but folks, let's let the authorities have the DNA, anyway. As long as we are VIGILANT about the court system and the way they use the DNA, who cares that they have it - other than that it may make their jobs easier.

No system of law enforcement is EVER perfect. The idea is to make it operate as well as POSSIBLE. And if they have my DNA on file, that's just as likely to mean they can eliminate me as a suspect as it is to mean they declare me one....

Re:Too Many Worries To Be Effective

[John Seminal]

No system of law enforcement is EVER perfect. The idea is to make it operate as well as POSSIBLE. And if they have my DNA on file, that's just as likely to mean they can eliminate me as a suspect as it is to mean they declare me one

I don't want to be eliminated as a suspect. I want to be presumed innocent until a court convicts me.

Have you ever thought about the abuses in the system? Can you GAURENTEE there will never be abuses? What if our politicians pass laws making certain websites illegal, and people try and access them in an internet cafe. All the police would have to do is go through the internet cafe with a small vacum cleaner. What if abortion is overturned in the courts. Do we want the police swabbing the DNA off coat hangers? And what if I happen to have a combination of genes that is highly concentrated in prisions populations, and some politician decided that gene is a gene all criminals have. How far could they legislate. What could they do?

The point is I don't trust the police or government. It is the healthiest attitude to have. Force the police and governemt to work within the rules that exsists. Police catch people all the time, DNA won't make us any more safe. But the potential for abuse is too great.

And for those who want a DNA database, what about all the "criminals" in prision, on death row who are adamant about their innocence and are begging for DNA testing, and the prosecutors who refuse their requests saying they had their day in court.

Re:Too Many Worries To Be Effective

[Surak_Prime]

You are making the all too common mistake of confusing law enforcement with law MAKING. We WANT our law enforcement officials to be as efficient and work as well as possible (within the law) in enforcing the laws - REGARDLESS of whether we approve of those laws! Our opinion of the laws themselves is something to be taken up with legislators when they are making/amending them, and with courts when they provide opportunity to review them - NOT with the cops.

And the police deciding you are a suspect is not the same thing as a conviction - that is the whole POINT of separation of powers.

Re:Too Many Worries To Be Effective

[SydShamino]

>>> And if they have my DNA on file, that's just as likely to mean they can eliminate me as a suspect as it is to mean they declare me one....

Incorrect. If your DNA is not on file, you would have to be involved somehow with the case to be considered a suspect. (Did you know the victim, live near them, work near them. Did you have a motive?)

If your DNA is on file, you could be matched to cases across the country. (DNA profiling as used today is not precise; false hits happen.) False hits are unlikely, but the likelihood goes up as the number of samples go up. If a false match is a 1-in-a-million shot, then with the US population cataloged you would have 260 false matches every time. If nothing else, they would probably check your flight records to see if you happened to travel near the victim at the wrong time. In other words - you would be a suspect until excluded.

I'm not saying whether this is good or bad. I'm just saying that, contrary to your claim, having your DNA on file makes it MORE likely you'd be considered a suspect in a crime, not EQUALLY likely.

This looks interesting on false DNA matches.

Re:Too Many Worries To Be Effective

[plague3106]

We WANT our law enforcement officials to be as efficient and work as well as possible (within the law) in enforcing the laws - REGARDLESS of whether we approve of those laws!

Speak for yourself. I for one would rather police not enforce stupid laws that people disapprove of. Just as civilians can exersise civil disobediance, so should law enforcement be able to.

'I was only following orders' does not excuse police (or army for that matter).

Re:Too Many Worries To Be Effective

[Yolegoman]

And for those who want a DNA database, what about all the "criminals" in prision, on death row who are adamant about their innocence and are begging for DNA testing, and the prosecutors who refuse their requests saying they had their day in court.

Sometimes, I think this country really sucks.

Same law in the UK

[UpnAtom]

Blair is also trying to compulsorily fingerprint everyone and tie together ALL the computerised data held on people through a unique National Identity Number.

Oh, he's also going to track our daily movements through automatic CCTV facial recognition & the ID Card audit trail.

This law has been passed by House of Commons and is currently being debated in the House of Lords. Unless the Lords block it, I'm emigrating somewhere less Orwellian. Anyone want to swap citizenship? I'm serious...

Re:Same law in the UK

[rpozz]

CCTV facial recognition is a joke, don't worry about that.

If however, they try and impose ID cards with biometric data upon us, then the oil blockades from a few years ago will look like a small obscure protest. Fuck That Shit.

Re:Same law in the UK

[TopSpin]

CCTV facial recognition is a joke, don't worry about that.

Worry about it.

The Super Bowl XXXV thing in Florida was a low budget pilot. It failed because the system couldn't cope with the poor resolution provided by the cameras used and the very poor ambient lighting. That problem does not apply in all cases where facial recognition can be deployed.

Here's an interesting site; Facial Recognition Vendor Test. Don't let the .org fool you; this thing is sponsored by the FBI and the Dept. of Homeland Defense. Ten vendors are currently participating. They are actively putting these systems through a testing regime. Interestingly, no results appear from prior year testing.

You and I have no idea how good this stuff is. The important thing is the They haven't given up on it.

Re:Same law in the UK

[rpozz]

It depends exactly which way the facial recognition works:

If it's looking for one particular person in a crowd of people, it can (possibly) be reasonably effective.

If, however, it's comparing a single face against a set of 60 million, it has absolutely no chance. Some people look enough alike for a human to not be able to tell the difference. Add in poor focus, weather and lighting conditions, and the fact it is a 2D image, and the computer has absolutely no chance.

Re:Same law in the UK

[UpnAtom]

The system could work under likelihood of suspicion. You won't need to be definitively recognised, just a 10% chance of it being you could count against you for the rest of your life.

None of which would be a problem if we could trust every future government, police, Inland Revenue, MI5, foreign secret service and army of civil servants needed to maintain the Database.

Blair thinks this is necessary to prevent his mistaken invasion of Iraq causing an attack by Al Qaeda. Find out more at http://www.no2id.com/.

Re:Same law in the UK

[wayland]

Where are you going? US has SSN, and Australia, while somewhat freer, is only about 5 years behind the USA in many ways. Where would you go? Switzerland? New Zealand? New Hampshire (Free State project)? Let me know when you figure it out.

Re:Same law in the UK

[UpnAtom]

New Zealand is top of my list. I know they have an overzealous anti-terrorism law but there are moves to correct it. They and you Aussies have already rejected ID Cards.

But I am also working with No2ID in a desperate fight to avoid losing my country to some autocrats. It's hard to research which countries still have functioning democracies so thanks for the NH lead.

BTW, the UK government also passed a law which grants unlimited powers for any minister (including Whips!) who verbally declares a state of emergency/tyranny.

Data never goes away

[billstewart]

Data never goes away once it's collected. (That doesn't count Murphy's Law of course - data you really want goes away quite easily.) Computer storage is cheap, and keeps becoming radically cheaper. Software and system administration / management costs aren't cheap, and don't get cheaper, and systems that weren't explicitly designed to get rid of data mean that expunging data is typically an expensive unreliable manual process. And that's just the costs of expunging the data in the active database - that doesn't count hunting through backup tapes, etc. New software and applications, on the other hand, can often import data from existing systems (again, minus the Murphy's Law issues), and when they do so, they usually aren't very good about maintaining any constraints on usage of the data, and usually aren't very good about backtracking if you want to find out who's had access to the data or get them to erase it.

All of this means that any law or policy that increases data collection is not only dangerous, but the data usually gets used for other things beyond the original purpose - information *does* want to be free. Anything that hangs an unique identifier on data, such as a National ID Card Number (or SSN, or SIN, or driver's license number), makes it easy for data to be imported into other systems and aggregated together. Anything that hangs a non-unique ID onto something, like a firstname+lastname, increases the chances that data will be imported into other systems incorrectly, combining your data with known criminal SameFirstInitial+DifferentMiddleInitial+SimilarLas tname who lives in a different city. In both cases, you'll never get the data expunged.

On the other hand, Moore's Law also means that applications that used to be unthinkable are now routine. When mainframes costs tens of millions of dollars and needed to be fed punchcards and stored stuff on magtape, writing database applications took a couple of years and a large budget, so only critical applications that could be used by lots of people got written. These days, a cheap desktop computer can hold lots more data, and any random civil servant can run a Spreadsheet query or simple fill-out-the-form database application for anything they feel like, such as tracking their ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend's phone bills. And most of that data could really fit in a pocket-computer as well, so next year that same civil servant or telemarketer can take a picture of your face or license plate using their camera-phone and look it up for some arbitrary reason (currently it takes a laptop for the license-plate lookup, and it's being done to nail parking ticket non-payers.)

Re:Data never goes away

[IronChef]

Data never goes away once it's collected.

Tell that to my last Maxtor Diamond Plus 9, dead 2 weeks out of warranty.

Re:Data never goes away

[filipvh]

Absolutely! A practical example of data never going away was when Deja-News suddenly pulishef 20 years of USENET archive (now Google Groups) a few years ago. A lot of people were suddenly very embarrassed that they'd used their real names on the inflammatory, idealistic posts of their youth...

Re:Data never goes away

[theLOUDroom]

Data never goes away once it's collected. (That doesn't count Murphy's Law of course - data you really want goes away quite easily.) Computer storage is cheap, and keeps becoming radically cheaper.

It doesn't matter how cheap computers get. You make keeping the data after a certain time period illegal.

This is the way they should be doing it. IIRC, this is that way it's already being done for firearms background checks.

If you make it illegal to keep the data after a certain period of time, then the hard disk cost might be trivial, but the potential legal consequences wouldn't be.
Sure the gov't might like to keep my DNA on file for life, but if everyone involved in the project knows that they might spend the next 10 years in jail for what they're doing, they might have second thoughts.

Here's a hypothetical scenario:
I have this data.

1. It's illegal for me to distribute it. The data itself has been watermarked so it can be traced back to me if I do. (Subliminal channel)
2. The data has been cryptographically end-dated. It is illegal for me to keep it after the pre-determined end date and it is impossible for for me to forge a new end date.
3. It's illegal for me to have this data without a valid signature and end date attached.

At this point, that data is like leaving an old WWII grenade around. Sure you could, but the chances are probably a lot better that it's going to bring you harm than anything else.

Of course there are problems created by making a certain pattern of bits illegal, but since our society doesn't seem to have any problems with doing this for kiddie porn (won't someone think of the children!), they shouldn't have a problem doing this for an actually decent reason.

I'm just wondering if criminals will use a DNA

[multiplexo]

bomb in the future to obscure evidence. You get some blood plasma, or some other fluid that contains a lot of DNA, get samples from different people, mix it up, put it in a bottle with an M-80 taped to it and set it off at the crime scene. Voila, the police end up with so many DNA fragments that there's no way they can tell who did the crime.

If you don't want to use an M80 just get a spritzer bottle full of some DNA containing fluid and spray it everywhere all over a crime scene. I wonder if you could extract DNA sequences from barber shop cuttings and do this?

Re:I'm just wondering if criminals will use a DNA

[khallow]

That's the rub. You might end up with dozens of fragments that you can't link with any given person. I think ultimately it wouldn't work though. First, the bomb might not work correctly (after all, the criminal may be the only one with fresh DNA at the scene). Second, the bomb would give information about you (after all, you do have to acquire it somehow). That might nail you even if the bomb worked perfectly.

Re:I'm just wondering if criminals will use a DNA

[Jafafa Hots]

Pointless. Having your DNA at a crime scene only helps if then already know who you are and you are a suspect... they use it to confirm you are the bad guy. If they have no clue who you are, they can't use your DNA to find you.

However if you use your DNA bomb, then they can narrow down the list of suspects to people with access to DNA - blood band workers, etc.

If you weren't a suspect already, now they can possible find you because you've given them a clue where to look. And if you already were a suspect, then your blood bomb is going to finger you almost as much as the DNA would.

Re:I'm just wondering if criminals will use a DNA

[scaryfish]

This would work even better if you had access to a lab. The majority of DNA fingerprints are done using microsatellite repeats. These are amplified and analysed using Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR). Theoretically you could get hold of someone elses DNA, and if you knew the particular microsatellites the authorities used, just PCR it. Sprinkle some of that PCR product around, which will be about 100,000,000 times more concentrated than any biological sample, and you're done.

Re:I'm just wondering if criminals will use a DNA

[Sique]

Every bag of household litter contains the DNA of all the household members. So if you want to build a DNA bomb just get there, take the litter from a neighbouring street and fiddle around with a comparatively cheap DNA tester (which is in fact a DNA multiplier). Of course you get lots of indifferent DNA (from the last tuna sandwich and the dairy products, from the worn out leather boots and everything else) too, but the point of DNA bombs is exactly this: Lay hundreds of DNA tracks to cover your own.

The whole point of DNA evidence is that you only need a single scrap from your skin, a drop of your sweat to extract enough DNA to start pattern matching.

Re:I'm just wondering if criminals will use a DNA

[ComputerInsultant]

Barber shop cuttings would be of little use as the hair has no DNA that can be used in PCR. There would be some dandruff, and that might be usable, but normally the CSI types like to have the root of the hair with all of its nice fresh cells.

But go ahead and use the barber shop cuttings anyway as that will mask the presence of the 100 hairs that you drop from your scalp every day. Your one or two hairs at the scene will be lost in the hay stack of cuttings from the barber shop.

Now where did i put those M-80s? ;-)

Re:I'm just wondering if criminals will use a DNA

[putaro]

Pointless. Having your DNA at a crime scene only helps if then already know who you are and you are a suspect... they use it to confirm you are the bad guy. If they have no clue who you are, they can't use your DNA to find you.

Today - because the DNA database is relatively small. If they get everyone into the database it will become one of the first things they check.

Re:I'm just wondering if criminals will use a DNA

[DragoonAK]

I read recently about some group of criminals that would cut off hands from dead people and use them to put fake fingerprints on crime scenes. Can't find the link, sadly.

Innocent...UNTIL

[Ars-Fartsica]

The DNA of innocent people will almost certainly end up in the same database as the felons...maybe with a flag that this individual has not YET been charged with a crime...but being in the database itself will be something of a "lite" suspicious attribute.

We are moving towards a police state, and society has overwhelmingly chosen "safety" over privacy, liberty, and freedom. It is only a matter of time before the govt requires all residents and citizens to be in such databases.

Expunge records!

[redelm]

I'm a bit surprised that as developed a state as California doesn't have laws governing expungement of non-conviction arrests. An arrest is not a safeguarded official act, so ought to be completely undoable.

No different from fingerprint info etc

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Why is it that people think that new technologies always mean new risks to rights? The issues dealing with keeping DNA records are surely no different to those for figerprints etc.

If someone gets tested for fingerprints or DNA the same basic procedures apply. Some countries allow the data to be gathered for a single investigation only. Others allow the collected info to be cross matched against the "open cases" database.

Personally, I think this something that is far less likely to be abused. I'd rather a few more crims get pulled out of society.

Re:No different from fingerprint info etc

[ackthpt]

Why is it that people think that new technologies always mean new risks to rights? The issues dealing with keeping DNA records are surely no different to those for figerprints etc.

Oh, probably because of the devious ways government can try to accumulate such things, "for the common good". Also worth noting is the amount of energy with which they pursue such things. If there's a lot of power behind something you probably should be paying a lot more attention than usual.

Re:No different from fingerprint info etc

[shaka999]

Hmmm, I didn't realize that a finger print could be scanned for possible genetic anomalies? Personality traits? .....

Re:No different from fingerprint info etc

[Qzukk]

The problem is that unlike a fingerprint where I can throw it up on a projector in the court room and show the crime scene sample against my own and demonstrate to the jury that the DA is so desperate to convict me for a crime I didn't commit, they're willing to claim my fingerprint is a match on one point.

Harder to do that with DNA. Instead, you get some "expert" coming in to say "yes, the DNA matched." And then you end up like Houston, with dozens of cases that turned out to be total bullshit. Hundreds of DNA retests, probably at taxpayer expense. Stories like this one where even after finding out the guy couldn't have matched the semen from the rape kit, keeping the guy around because he was picked from a lineup way back at the beginning and the victim doesn't want to change her mind and the DA only believes DNA evidence when it boosts his conviction count, and he finds it more convenient to shuffle the case to someone else than to take the heat for that view himself.

Re:No different from fingerprint info etc

[xoboots]

Yeah, its an old problem. My apartment was robbed. I wasn't going to report it but friends said it was the right thing to do. The police showed and decided that the perpetrators came through the bedroom window. They lifted fingerprints. The only other person to use that window? *ME* So before they left, the police took my fingerprints.

Nice day, I get robbed and then I get fingerprinted for it. I have nothing to hide, but that day I felt doubly violated.

Re:No different from fingerprint info etc

[cft_128]

Hmmm, I didn't realize that a finger print could be scanned for possible genetic anomalies? Personality traits? .....

The DNA profile that will be stored does not have enough information in it to test for any genetic traits (thinking about it however, they might notice extra chromosomes). Having said that, I still voted against that proposition.

Re:No different from fingerprint info etc

[ChrisMaple]

How's this?:

State accumulates DNA on all residents. Insurance company files FOI request and gets all the data, then refuses to issue health insurance for anyone they think might have a genetic predisposition for certain diseases. Since many now think that homosexuality is genetic, and homosexuals are more likely to get AIDS, they might refuse to insure all persons whose DNA might imply homosexuality.

Re:No different from fingerprint info etc

[ikkonoishi]

No they couldn't

http://www.usdoj.gov/04foia/referenceguidemay99.ht m#how

Likewise, files relating to another person regarding a matter the disclosure of which would invade that person's privacy ordinarily will not be disclosed. For example, if you seek information that would show that someone else (including even your spouse or another member of your immediate family) has ever been the subject of a criminal investigation -- or even was mentioned in a criminal file -- you will be requested to provide either: (1) a statement by that other person, authorizing the release of the information to you, that has been signed by that person and either was witnessed by a notary or includes a declaration made under penalty of perjury (using the language quoted in the preceding paragraph), or (2) evidence that the subject of your request is deceased, such as a death certificate, a newspaper obituary, or some comparable proof of death. Without proof of death or the subject's consent, in almost all cases the Justice Department will respond to a request made for information concerning another person's possible involvement in a law enforcement matter by advising that it will "neither confirm nor deny" the existence of responsive records. Such law enforcement information about a living person is released without that person's consent only when no privacy interest would be invaded by disclosing the information, when the information is already public or required to be made public, or when there is such a strong public interest in the disclosure that it overrides the individual's privacy interest.

Also due to the fees involved making such a wide request would be hideously expensive.

Re:No different from fingerprint info etc

[n.wegner]

>Likewise, files relating to another person regarding a
>matter the disclosure of which would invade that person's
>privacy ordinarily will not be disclosed ...
>Also due to the fees involved making such a wide request
>would be hideously expensive

What stops the insurance company from raising their signup fee to include the check, and raising the fees of people who do not submit to having the check made? Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Re:No different from fingerprint info etc

[ikkonoishi]

Competition.

Switch to an insurance provider that doesn't. So long as the goverment doesn't get into the insurance industry (medicaid cough cough) things will work out.

Re:No different from fingerprint info etc

[hurfy]

"Such law enforcement information about a living person is released without that person's consent only when no privacy interest would be invaded by disclosing the information, when the information is already public or required to be made public, or when there is such a strong public interest in the disclosure that it overrides the individual's privacy interest."

Sounds rock-solid safe to me...not

I bet it's not the person involved that decides it is in the greater interest ;p
Hell we have practically defined everything as being more important than a person privacy already, if not Bushboy will simply get a law saying it is.

Re:No different from fingerprint info etc

[tx_kanuck]

If they don't have your fingerprints, how can they tell which ones are yours (and can therefore be ignored), and which ones they need to search for in databases? It's the same way that if you come across a crime scene on foot, they will take your shoe prints so that they know whose are whose? I say you've gotten a little sensitive about this and need to chill out.

Now if your neighbor got robbed and they took your prints, that would be a different story.

Re:No different from fingerprint info etc

[xoboots]

I think you may have read me wrong -- I did cooperate but that didn't make me feel better. Neither did the fact that they told me that the chance of finding the perpertrators was virtually nil. Perhaps if it happened to you, your appreciation of it would be different.

Re:No different from fingerprint info etc

[erwin]

Must be all that science fiction that makes them parnoid. Stuff like 1984, Brave New World, and The Terminator, etc. I'm sure once the State has completed the Sum Total of All Knowlege National DNA registry, we'll be able to get a grant to analyze the data to find a common genetic profile for people drawn to such subversive rubbish.

We'll have some nice camps in the desert for them to stay at...

Re:No different from fingerprint info etc

[rastos1]

Why is it that people think that new technologies always mean new risks to rights?

I don't know. But ask Alfred Nobel.

Re:No different from fingerprint info etc

[Shakrai]

Switch to an insurance provider that doesn't. So long as the goverment doesn't get into the insurance industry (medicaid cough cough) things will work out.

Yeah, because it's not like insurance companies ever collude to keep prices high.

Re:No different from fingerprint info etc

[Pathwalker]

Why would they need to go to the state?

Back in 1999, when I needed cheap individual health insurance fast, a DNA sample was one of the requirements of the insurer I went with.

They were pretty much my only choice at the time, as they had FAR better coverage than the other insurers in my price range.

Re:No different from fingerprint info etc

[term8or]

Why is it that people think that new technologies always mean new risks to rights?

Because new technologies *always* have a down side as well as an up side. Your example is a good one. DNA fingerprints are in fact substantially different to "normal" fingerprints. For a start, various people have suggested that DNA could be used to determine race, susceptibility to inherited illnesses, physical appearance and intelligence, and even criminality. In other words information you would not have wanted the NSDAP party to know since it would make a euthanasia policy much more feasible.

Re:No different from fingerprint info etc

[anvil {UK}]

Actually if anything there is better reason to be happy about DNA evidence, (so long as lawyers can use statistics responsibly) than there is to be happy about fingerprint evidence. Fingerprint evidence became common currency before courts got very science savvy, so there is in fact little scientific evidence that fingerprints are reliable identifiers. (http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18124 321.100)

Re:No different from fingerprint info etc

[PsiPsiStar]

I've always wondered if a high testosterone level was a marker for STDs. They can do spit tests for those. Of course, I don't know anything about the legality of using that kind of information.

Re:No different from fingerprint info etc

[Kombat]

State accumulates DNA on all residents. Insurance company files FOI request and gets all the data, then refuses to issue health insurance for anyone they think might have a genetic predisposition for certain diseases.

When I apply for car insurance, they ask me all kinds of things - things I can't control, such as my age (younger people pay higher rates) and my sex (males pay higher rates). Why do they do this? Because young males are statistically more likely to have an accident, so we pay higher rates. Is this fair? Well, the statistics back up the prejudice - young males do cause more accidents (by dollar value, at least).

Now, if there were a way that they could tell for sure whether or not someone was more likely to have an accident or not, shouldn't they modify the rates they charge based on that information? Why should all young males, even the safe ones, pay to subsidize the expensive accidents of a few, reckless punks?

Now, extend this to medicine. Diseases are expensive. If my DNA tells me that I'm very likely to have an expensive disease, aren't I lying or cheating by hiding that information from the insurance company when applying for new coverage? If I know that my family has a history of heart disease or cancer, should I be allowed to lie and hide that from State Farm? They already ask me a ton of questions about family medical history - why would it be wrong of them to take it to the next step and test my DNA to be sure?

In fact, when I apply for new coverage, they already take blood samples and analyze it. This is ALREADY HAPPENING. And I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not. People who will have expensive diseases should pay more for insurance under the US system. Otherwise, all you have is a fancy implementation of a socialized health care system where the majority end up subsidizing the care of an expensive minority. And by privatizing health care, the US has already declared that they want individuals to be responsible for financing their own care, right?

Of course, I'm in Canada, so it's all moot anyway. We already have socialized health care, so the majority is already subsidizing the health care of those who are actually using the system more than their fair share. But it's something to think about.

If the US wants people to be able to play the insurance "lottery," and hide their true medical future from insurance companies, then why not go the whole nine yards and just socialize the whole system? It's the same thing anyway, isn't it? Why delude yourself with this make-believe privatized, capitalistic system when in reality, you want people with expensive disease to be able to keep that information from the insurance companies? You want healthy people to have low premiums, and you're saying you want candidates for expensive diseases to not be required to disclose that info to insurance companies (thereby preventing them from being able to charge fair rates to those people), so in the end, who's paying for the expensive clients? Where's that money going to come from?

Who cares, right? They're just slimy insurance companies, let them eat the loss. Everybody hates insurance companies, right? Yeah, great plan. And what'll you do when all the insurance companies go away, because they're not allowed to charge high rates to provably health people, nor are they allowed to conduct genetic screening on potentially expensive clients?

Re:No different from fingerprint info etc

[Kombat]

Since many now think that homosexuality is genetic,

It must be. I mean, when I was 12 or 13, I didn't "choose" to be straight. I just was. I'm convinced it's genetic.

On a related note, I am really, really looking forward to the day when science finally identifies the "sexual orientation" gene, and it is irrefutably proven that the direction you swing is hard-wired from birth. I cannot wait for the conservative talk shows to tackle that one, and try to find a way to continue claiming that it's a sin to be gay, after it's been proven that nobody gets to choose their orientation. The religious squirming and moral dancing will be truly delicious to observe.

Re:DNA is hushed

[ackthpt]

It's amazing what new clothes, a hat or hair net, and thoroughly bathing beforehand can do to leave no useful evidence.

"That man, get him!"
"What? He's just standing there."
"Can't you bloody see? He's shaved off all his hair, even his eyebrows!"
"Cor! Must be planing a nefarious crime alright!"

In the future...

[Black Art]

No one is innocent.

Everyone is a suspect.

The computer is your friend.

They will get it past the Supreme Court

[Ars-Fartsica]

The Supremes have become a mirror of the cultural tolerance of the nation...which of course is choosing security over freedom. Lawmakers will simply craft something that will be palatable enough to the Supreme Court and then the law will be in deed as well as fact.

Too many "easy" counterargs

[Ars-Fartsica]

It will be trivial for lawmakers and judges to route this around the 5th. They will likely start by saying that DNA alone is simply a "fact" and not a statement of action, therefore you are not incriminating yourself until you act. I am not in favor of this but if you think the Constitution will stop this, you're wrong.

Re:Too many "easy" counterargs

[angle_slam]

This stuff has already been decided. A DNA sample is not covered by the 5th amendment.

Re:Too many "easy" counterargs

[pete-classic]

But it is pretty clear to an English speaking person that it is covered by the forth amendment.

Too bad we don't feel compelled to interpret the constitution in the obvious way.

-Peter

Re:Too many "easy" counterargs

[Doc Ruby]

It's been decided in our recent context of police invasion of privacy (the Baby Boomer era). Perhaps once this police state has run its course, we'll return our government to the business of protecting the rights described in the Constitution. If we survive.

Re:Too many "easy" counterargs

[Doc Ruby]

Between the right not to self-incriminate, and the right to security in our papers and effects (our own information about us), the signers of the Constitution were clear about where government power ends, and personal dominion holds sway. Like evidentiary documents in our possession, our DNA should be available only through proof of probable cause to an accountable judge, on their order. It's just these Republican-appointed activist judges who have destroyed the letter and spirit of the Constitution in their expansion of government power into our personal lives.

Re:Too many "easy" counterargs

[pete-classic]

It's worse than you make it out to be. Here's the text. I've emphasized the key word.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

It seems like you are giving Democrats a pass in the omission. Both "sides" have blood on their hands.

-Peter

Re:Too many "easy" counterargs

[Doc Ruby]

They all have blood on their hands - the government has inexorably increased its power, unsurprisingly. The Supreme Court, though, is the bench that definitively interprets the Constitution. When you look at the justices installed by Republican presidents vs. by Democrat presidents, it's clear which ones are biased towards protecting corporations and the police, and which are biased towards protecting humans from them.

Re:Too many "easy" counterargs

[pete-classic]

So it's okay to ignore the second amendment and half of the first, as long as you acknowledge the forth and the other half of the first?

I contend that judicial activism is bad, even if they are doing something you (or I) personally like.

-Peter

Re:Too many "easy" counterargs

[Doc Ruby]

What are you talking about with these other amendments?

Re:Too many "easy" counterargs

[pete-classic]

First, will you allow me to simply refer to judges as Democrats and Republicans? While it isn't technically correct, we all know the deal.

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Do you disagree that Democrat judges will curb religious speech before other types? Have you not noticed they way they gleefully disregard the second amendment?

-Peter

Re:Too many "easy" counterargs

[Doc Ruby]

No, I don't see any evidence that your assertions are accurate - except perhaps the party association of appointed judges. What makes you say them?

Re:Too many "easy" counterargs

[pete-classic]

U.S. v. Miller
Quillici v. Morton Grove

I couldn't find anything compelling on the first amendment issue. It is my perception, however, that there is a clear delineation between the establishment of state religion and the oppression of free exercise, and that the courts enforce a different line that infringes on the rights of the religious. (Of which, incidentally, I am not one.)

-Peter

Re:Too many "easy" counterargs

[Doc Ruby]

I've gotta tell you, if you want to discuss preferential treatment of some Constitutional rights over others, depending on party affiliation of the judge, you're going to have to describe these obscure (at least to me) cases, and how they're evidence. Especially after you acknowledge that your assertion that "Democrat judges" are less friendly to the First Amendment is based on some kind of gut feeling, that you can't even back up when you look for evidence.

Well....

[dr_labrat]

Having only read the headline, can't even be bothered with the editorial these days:

I say: resequence them; there are too few innocent people these days.

All for this sort of thing!

DNA matching accuracy

[harlows_monkeys]

Maybe this has changed in the last few years, but the last time I looked into this, there was a significant risk in having DNA on file. The problem was that DNA tests consist of comparing the sample against the sample from the presumed criminal at a small number of positions. There will actually be many people in the world who will match the criminal's DNA.

When properly used, this is not a problem. "Properly used" means that you find your suspects using traditional methods, and afterwards run a DNA test on them. Get a match there, and you've got your criminal. It's a Bayesian thing, basically.

What is not proper is to start with DNA, and test the criminal's against all the people you happen to have DNA on file for, looking for a match.

Using DNA to find suspects is only good when you either have a comprehensive database that has DNA from everyone, or your tests are so accurate that they really do uniquely identify people. Like I said, I don't know if they are accurate enough for that. A few years ago, they were not.

You mean like SSN?

[Ars-Fartsica]

Its illegal for banks etc to require it yet they ask for it on a daily basis. What you discuss is interesting, but it won't stop the Feds from creating a police state around irrefutable data identification. The DNA police state is coming...because people have been cowed into a paranoid fear since 9/11 even though at this point their own govt may be more of a threat to their liberty than some Mullah or other nutjob.

Re:You mean like SSN?

[plague3106]

Wrong. Banks are allowed to ask for it; they have legitimate tax needs to do so. They need to send you a 1099-int for your interest income, just likeyour employer needs your SSN to send you a W2.

I'll tell you what

[Reality Master 101]

Once they have a huge database of DNA, they can start looking for patterns, matching anti-government personalities with DNA factors. Then they can slowly kill off the "anti-American elements" that might cause a bit too much trouble in the future.

The plan would be brilliant -- how could anyone sense the pattern of killing off agitators, before they're even agitators? Eventually, the population would be reduced to sheep content to follow our infallible rulers.

(just kidding -- wanted to see what it was like to wear the foil hat for a few minutes)

Re:I'll tell you what

[t_allardyce]

(just kidding -- wanted to see what it was like to wear the foil hat for a few minutes)

Why is that so far fetched? all thats needed is a machine that can process DNA samples and produce the relevant code (shouldnt be too far off?) and computer to compare everyone's DNA looking for patterns and cross referencing them with behavioural traits (from your criminal record, jobs, political affiliation, shopping list, religion, etc). I could even imagine this being edged in slowly - while anyone who gives a damn about human rights will be appalled, the hick masses will hear something like "we have a way of detecting paedophiles by their DNA" and they're gonna accept that and the mass gassing that ensues.

--not wearing tin foil hat
--just saying its possible

Re:I'll tell you what

[taustin]

Because political dissent isn't genetic, dufus.

Re:I'll tell you what

[t_allardyce]

Not saying it is, just that certain political views could be aligned with certain personalities and traits (violence? passifism? etc) so someone of a certain part could be assumed to be more likely to be violent, so you could then look for a DNA link

all too true

[talaper]

In California, police will be able in 2008 to take DNA samples from anyone arrested for a felony, whether the person is convicted or not, under a law approved by voters in November.

I'm a resident of California, and I voted against this measure for exactly that reason: they provide no way to remove innocent people's DNA from their database.

of course, the way the supporters described it in their propaganda pamphlet was "if you vote against this, we'll have murderers and child molesters running the streets! if you love your children, you'll vote YES!!"

I consider this a case of the general public not being educated enough of the facts to make an informed decision. it's all well and good, until it happens to you..

Re:all too true

[t_allardyce]

You can bet your ass that almost no police/medical records system has even been designed to allow guaranteed deletion, for any record there are probably at least a dozen copies in backup tapes, duplicate lab samples and slides, photocopies and files lost behind furniture, at the very least they could design the system so that after a record wasn't needed you could be assured that there would only be one copy in existence and it would be in a safe place.

but yeah you have absolutely got to think of the children!

Re:all too true

[HikeFanatic]

Ditto - that's why I voted against this act. It got passed solely because of scare tactics, which works very well on the typical California voter, err...idiot, because they can't make an informed decision.

This is ripe for abuse. Naturally they claim "...it's for the children..." and people just eat it up. Just disgusting.

I'm just waiting for some fallout from this law. Watch us end up with some rich person getting their DNA out of the databases because of their wealth, while the typical Joe-Blow get screwed...

Re:others may have the same DNA

[Recovery1]

kill him and take his place.

For that matter...

[NeuroManson]

How about fingerprints? I had to give mine when I applied for a California drivers license, and had to submit them again when applying for a bus driving job. Obviously neither led to a criminal case, but frankly, neither are needed UNLESS I committed a criminal act. So why isn't there a massive cry to remove such records?

Mind you, the California fingerprint rule has been in effect since I originally applied for a DL in 1992, so essentially it's been around for 15 years now.

Might be worth something !

[88NoSoup4U88]

What Will We Do With Innocent People's DNA?

Sell it on eBay ?

Fingerprints

[JCY2K]

I see no reason that an arrested, and booked (that's important), person's DNA should not stay on file. There is no outcry that they keep a person's fingerprints on file. How is DNA all that different?

Mass profiling

[91degrees]

'In California, police will be able in 2008 to take DNA samples from anyone arrested for a felony, whether the person is convicted or not, under a law approved by voters in November.

This bugs me for a different reason. Will they be able to do this whether there was any DNA evidence at the scene of the crime or not. Seems like profiling rather than detection.

Rights

[t_allardyce]

In the US whats the law on criminal records - do you have access to everything the police have on you? can they give it to other people? This is gonna be a very important issue especially if finger-print scanners make it big - which i think is a very bad idea, using biometrics means a) if someone gets a copy theres no way to 'change your biometric pin number' and b) stealing your biometrics can mean cutting off your finger.

You need to at least have the right to know exactly what personal data any organisation has on you (a right enjoyed by the EU)

I'm in California

[Evets]

When this thing came around for a vote last year, I talked to a lot of people about it. To me, it was absurd that the government would be able to take your DNA, profile it, maintain it in a "sexual offenders" database, and never have to remove it - even if you are proven innocent.

It's scary. All they have to do is arrest you for a crime - without any real evidence - and then you are labeled a sex offender for life.

To my surprise, nobody I know - other than my wife - was with me on this one. Most people here equate it to fingerprinting. If you get fingerprinted, then they keep it forever. This is vastly different though. They are not only keeping identifying information, they are labelling it "sex offender", making it a matter of public record, and maintaining that record regardless of conviction.

This has potential for abuse written all over it.

Re:I'm in California

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

So much for California being classified as "Liberal"

One would think Liberals would be against government's assault on personal liberties.

We really need about 60million Americans to vote Libertarian next election.

A coup *did* happen in this country.

[PornMaster]

Dick Cheney's running the country, and he wasn't elected to do so. :)

I voted against this thing...

[jeblucas]

'In California, police will be able in 2008 to take DNA samples from anyone arrested for a felony, whether the person is convicted or not, under a law approved by voters in November.'

For those that think you can just have the record expunged if you are found innocent, here's the fine print from the statute. (Source is here, page 143):

(a)A person whose DNA profile has been included in the data bank pursuant to this chapter shall have his or her DNA specimen and sample destroyed and searchable database profile expunged from the data bank program pusuant to the procedures set forth in subdivision (b) if the person has no past or present offense or pending charge which qualifies that person [for inclusion] and there is otherwise no legal bases for retaining the specimen or sample or searchable profile.

(b)Pursuant to subdivision (a), a person who has no past or present qualifying offense, and for whom there otherwise is no legal basis for retaining the specimen or sample or searchable profile, may make a written request to have his or her specimen and sample and searchable database profile expunged from the data bank program if:

1. Following arrest, no accusatory pleading has been filed within the applicable period allowed by law charging the person with a qualifying offense as set forth [earlier] or if the charges which served as the basis for including the DNA profile [in the data bank] have been dismissed prior to adjudication by a trier of fact;
2. The underlying conviction or disposition serving as the basis for including the DNA profile has been reversed and the case dismissed;
3. The person has been found factually innocent of the underlying offense [pusuant to statute]; or
4. The defendent has been found not guilty or the defendent has been acquitted of the underlying offense.

(c)(1)The person requesting the data bank entry to be expunged must send a copy of his or her request to the trial court of the county where the arrest occured, or that entered the conviction or rendered disposition in the case, to the [lab], and to the prosecuting attorney of the county in which he or she was arrested or, convicted, or adjudicated, with proof of service on all parties. The court has the discretion to grant or deny the request for expungement. The denial of a request for expungement is a nonappealable order and shall not be reviewed by petition or writ.

Emphasis mine. So even if you jump through the damn complicated hoops, a judge can just say "No" and you are done--it's there for good. That's some great law, California! As for the earlier poster that thinks this is OK because we leave DNA everywhere anyway, like Gattaca--that movie did not represent this situation as a GOOD THING. It was a dystopian vision, not something to begrudgingly accept.

The scary part

[Bruha]

As we have all seen information is a commodity that is traded and sold and in some cases stolen to be used in the financial system. This information could be your credit report or medical history. Most of us know about how certain diseases can be detected in DNA. Imagine if your DNA was sampled in a investigation today and 10 years from now you applied for life insurance but was denied due to evidence that you are succeptable to parkinsons or some other genetic disease.

Kinda reminds me of that one movie where the guy could not go into space or something becuase he was not genetically perfect.

Re:You Are All Guilty

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

BINGO.

I'll tell you why it happened

[jayhawk88]

Because the Wichita police department were collectively shitting their pants at not being able to catch BTK. If you lived within a 10 block radius of any site where there was a BTK murder or information drop, you pretty much got swabbed.

Of course that's hyperbole, but it was almost that bad. They swabbed something like over 1000 people. It was ridiculous.

Concentration of power isn't all that recent

[clem.dickey]

In a country where the federal government has been concentrating power in the capital, I can't see where she gets such bizarre ideas.

I picture innocent's DNA filed next to Arlo Gutherie's fingerprints.

(Those who don't get the reference, search for "we don't like your kind" here.)

There are no innocents

[cybscryb]

Just as our elected "public servants" have come to look at us as their subjects, so has our police community come to view anyone not in their group as a "perp". I can't say this is the fault of those who join the LE career community but would rather aver that is comes from our country adopting a "culture of fear" beginning at the end of WWII and continuing to this day.

Re:Time to drag out this old chestnut:

[ackthpt]

You mean Martin Niemöller

The FBI's DNA & Databasing Initiatives (links)

[YetAnotherStyro]

A couple PDFs that some will find useful...

The FBI's DNA & Databasing Initiatives

CODIS Brochure

Source page...http://www.fbi.gov/hq/lab/codis/brochures.h tm

Re:Cancel health insurance before it costs too muc

[MightyMartian]

Well, I think most people realize that DNA, even if we could read it and understand the full extent of the proteins being coded for and their interrelationships, that you could only determine statistically whether specific genes or groups of genes are going to make a person more likely to suffer from this disorder or that organ problem.

What I see as the problem here is that rather jives well with how insurance companies function. I'm sure they'd love nothing more than to gain access to your DNA to test whether you had a higher probability of heart disease.

Tere are not....

[Univac_1004]

....innocent.

What a silly question.

They should keep it

[RyoShin]

While the implications of having DNA on file could allow for some bad things (though I can't think of anything that don't have a similar fingerprint scenario,) I would have to say they should keep it.

Two main reasons:
1) Though this guy didn't do anything now, what's the guarentee that he won't do anything later? I'm not saying he will, but you never know.
2) If he dies some horrible death and other methods of identification (teeth, fingerprints, wallet) are useless, having his DNA on file for comparison will make sure that the family has closure.

Yes, yes, if the government has your DNA on file all sorts of horrible things could happen, people could find out medical conditions, futuristic companies could get their hands on it and clone you if they believe you died, but it was really your friend who said he was you so that you could do shopping for your little girl, creating two of you and a plot device at the same time, etc.

However, unless I'm missing some things (and I am running on a lack of sleep,) the need for tinfoil is mostly misplaced.

Re:OMFG...

[ackthpt]

But if you starved your dog to death, you'd be put in jail (animal cruelty).

And if you had a doctor who would put consenting adults to rest, your government servants would put him in prison to protect you from him.

This is going to be a big issue FAST

[hotspotbloc]

In January 2005 the Truro, MA Police Department announced that they wanted to collect DNA samples from 800 men, the vast majority of the town's male population, in hopes of solving a woman's murder who's solution have alluded the local authorities for three years. The recommendation originated with FBI Investigators assisting with the case. The chilling comment came from Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe who said that investigators "will be compelled to look at why people won't" submit a DNA sample.

What happens if mass testing becomes "routine" throughout the US? The fair and proper terms for the disposal of DNA samples of vindicated people is going to become a big, big thing. And please, don't give me "if you're innocent you have nothing to fear". DNA evidence can easily be altered or corrupted within the first few hours of collection. Especially if you have a sample already in hand. A very uncommon thing today but who can say about tomorrow.

We all know the answer to these questions:

Will the DNA sample of a vindicated person be disposed of after the trial, after all appeals or never? Never

Will the refusal to voluntarily give a DNA sample subject you to further scrutiny than a similar person who willingly submits? Yes

Will employers someday within the next ten years require a DNA sample for employment, similar to how most major retail chains require a test for legel and illegal drug use (Like Wal-Mart or Home Depot)? Yes

Will the US Congress do anything to protect the rights of the individual into this intrusion into one's privacy? No

Welcome to the New Amerika. Please leave your quaint notions of personal freedom at the border.

Here and Now : Truro DNA Case - 1/12/2005
Boston.com / News / Local / DNA testing troubles some in Truro
CBS News ACLU Slams Mass DNA Collection
USATODAY.com - ACLU seeks end to Mass. DNA collections
Cape Cod Times article: "New England town abuzz over DNA dragnet"

Re:This is going to be a big issue FAST

[rampant poodle]

The original precedent was set in the late 1980s in Narborough, Leicestershire, UK. Two teenage girls were raped and murdered. As part of the investigation all adult males, (around 5,000), in several villages were required to give DNA samples. One fellow, with the unlikley name of Colin Pitchfork, was a match. He became the first person convicted of a crime through DNA evidence.

The case also provided another first as a local dishwasher/dullard, Richard Buckland, became the first person ever exonerated through the use of DNA. There was a fair amount of evidence that pointed to him. After a long interrogation he even confessed to one of the murders. It appears that he did "do some things" with one of the girls after finding her already dead. However, his DNA did not match the material recovered from either scene.

Re:This is going to be a big issue FAST

[hotspotbloc]

It was reported that the victim had sex with someone before her death that the police feel is not a suspect but want to interview him (for I guess possible leads or relatives of possible leads). This is a hunt for a sex partner, not a murderer.

As for the town, Truro is no different from any other small New England town. No conspiracies, just a bump in the road on the lower Cape. If someone knows something I'm guessing it's no different from the average crime, maybe a relative or a friend. Secrets this big are normally impossible to keep quiet, especially in a small New England town. While I really, really hope they catch the right person who committed this crime, IMO mass DNA screening and then holding that DNA on file in perpetuity, also using it in wholesale screening of other crimes is going way too far. Also saying that anyone that exercises their right to privacy will be further investigated is also draconian.

Too much of a stretch.

[Timmy D Programmer]

Hiding your identity is not a legal way to protect from self incrimination.

Otherwise we could all cover our faces in drivers license photos too.

The protection against self incrimination means if you are asked something and cannot answer it without harming yourself, you are not obligated to lie. You can simply take the 5th.

Re:Cancel health insurance before it costs too muc

[mikael]

If we can predict suceptability to disease, we can advise people to make lifestyle changes before the disease advances to a non-treatable stage.

Sure, mod me down, but consider....

[mjh49746]

They already have my fingerprints. They already have a picture of me for photo identification. They already have videocameras scatter all over in public looking at me. They already have my SSN, my address, my phone number. Shit, they probably know more about me than even I do. Therefore, everytime I step outside I really don't have any privacy as it is. Meanwhile, when I'm at home, I can be found at will by strangers. So, what difference does it really make anymore if they have my DNA, too?

People can scream about the threat of a police state all they want, but the police state is already here. Where was the tinfoil hat crowd when they were collecting fingerprints, taking my picture, installing cameras everywhere, giving me a number, and assigning to me a color coded threat level? It's going to take a lot more than just sitting on our asses and bitching amongst ourselves if we want to effect a positive change in our government. However, I'm not going to hold my breath, either as the public these days are sheep, eager to be spoonfed the right wing neocon bullshit from our 'Great Leader'. (sarcasm) And don't even get me started with Congress and how they stuck their business where it doesn't belong in the Terri Schivo matter, either.

Rant done.

Not to be pedantic, but

[OneIsNotPrime]

... technically there is no 'Innocent' status under, at least, U.S. law. There is only 'Not Guilty', which is quite different.

What's the problem?

[TheAwfulTruth]

The article submission posits a lot of negativity over the police having your DNA on file but utterly fails to mention why this is a bad thing. It's like the submitter takes it as a given that it is pure evil without even thinking about it at all.

Unless you believe that police are going to start planting evidece in every unsolved case, having our DNA on file with them would more than likely have the benefit of being EXCLUDED from suspiciion without even having to go though the ugliness of becoming a suspect in the first place.

In Ca they already have every single licensed driver's finger print on file. Where's the outrage with that? They could easily fake up evidence based on that as well.

The only real thing that is likely to come out of this is that the ratio of criminals to innocents that will sit in future jail cells may improve a bit from what we have today.

The movie you are thinking of is...

[CaptainPinko]

Gattaca

You Keep Using This Word "Innocent"

[lorelorn]

I think you mean "not yet proven guilty"

I know, I know

[The MESMERIC]

create Jurassic Park.

Re:Don't make DNA a special case

[Teancum]

I agree here that DNA should not be singled out.

Why would DNA be any different from fingerprinting evidence, or any other biometric information (x-rays of bones/teeth, handprints, etc.)?

Keeping the records of convicted felons is one thing, but for people who are merely suspects?

In the past, this sort of information was haphazardly kept track of, and merely moving to another state was a good way to avoid having this information follow you around (under most circumstances). Now that is no longer an option.

I also don't see police give up this information except by major political actions, and even then it might just move this type of information gathering to go underground like most wiretapping has become (used to track people, but not formally presented as evidence when used "illegally").

The sky is falling! The have my DNA!!

[UranusReallyHertz]

I just don't get the concerns about this issue. Personally I think DNA samples should be collected from every baby born and entered into a national database. This would have an incredible benefit for law enforcement. I'd volunteer my DNA for it, for I don't plan on doing anything illegal.

copyright it

[djirk]

"What will be the disposition of the DNA of the innocent?" Some corporation will copyright it. You won't own yourself anymore.

I had my DNA swabbed

[Anonymous Coward]

in the Baton Rouge Serial Killer case. Out of more than ten thousand tips, about 14 were about me. This is because I'm a usenet troll and death metal drummer/lyricist.

I just hope they don't use it against me in the future...

BeDoper - We're not just about BeOS anymore.

Re:This may scare the tinfoil hat crowd, but....

[jasonditz]

Then its not a problem for you.

The problem is that there are people who were arrested for crimes they didn't commit, and some of them aren't thrilled with the idea of the people who did it keeping their data.

Frankly the first thing that hit me when I read this story was "lawsuit opportunity". You've already likely got a case for wrongful arrest... now they're keeping seized DNA samples after you were acquitted? That's a money making opportunity if I've ever heard one.

states rights

[Heisenbug]

Allowing medical marijuana in California, legalizing assisted suicide in Oregon, or voting not to enforce the Patriot Act in Utah would be good examples that fall on the other side of the political fence (though that last one was decided by a Republican state body, IIRC).

Interesting thing to note, though -- every one of those was under legal contention, last I heard, and it's not clear at least for the last two which way it will go. States rights is still a contender.

As far as how the parties support it, I think what it really comes down to is a consolation prize for the party that isn't in power in the legislative branch -- that's why it was a Republican issue for a long time and has recently tilted more towards the Democrats. That's probably also what has kept it significant long after most of us felt much more loyalty towards our country than our state -- there's always *someone* who has an interest in keeping states rights around.

Nothing to Fear (REALLY!)

[piper-noiter]

I'd like to state some facts based on some... missleading things I've read here.

1st Just so everyone is clear, the national DNA database contains only CONVICTED criminal's DNA. States decide on their own to keep a suspect's DNA list and this is not provided on a national level.

2nd The only GENETIC information kept in the database is a simple identity test (for comparison). This is no different than having your finger-print on file. All other Genetic information is discarded from the database.
If they wanted to discover any other information on a person on file those tests would have to be uncovered in subsequent testing; which assumes the genetic sample is still kept in the vault and is still good (this is unlikely).

3rd All eye witness testimonys are suspect, not just little old ladies. Years of research has proven it. Meanwhile, DNA has helped the wrongly convicted go free. Would you rather convict someone of murder based on what some faulty human remmembers or on proof (through DNA) that they were at the scene.

4th Just being at the scene through DNA does not convict you. It's still circumstantial. However any DNA expert will be happy to complain about how the police are getting lazy and expecting the DNA experts to do all the work. This is a dangerous road, but the person must still be convicted in a court of law.

Re:This may scare the tinfoil hat crowd, but....

[mjh49746]

Fair enough, and if I was wrongly arrested, then I'd be more than miffed that someone could keep my DNA. However, AFAIK they're already keeping your fingerprints regardless if you're convicted or not. Where's the outrage in that? I think it's pretty silly to complain about one injustice while overlooking another.

I didn't think 'lawsuit opportunity' when I read it, but after you said it, I'm suprised that I missed it. Looks like another money making scheme to me.

I just saw DNA databasing as just another kind of technology. It's the people that will either use it for benevolant or malevolent intentions, but that's common with a lot of technologies. I just refuse to live in constant state of fear and paranoia just because somebody invented a product or an idea that might possibly get misused for bad things. That's not any way to live, period.

sci fi plot

[chri]

This would make a great Sci-Fi plot. The human race is wiped out and needs to be replaced, but the only DNA on record is that in criminal databases. The story could go many places from there.

No concern

[sycomonkey]

I really don't see what the problem here is. I might just send the FBI my DNA just so that if they need it later they wouldn't need to bother me for it. My DNA is not some secret I have to keep from people, especially not the government. It's just a molecule, one that's just happens to be unique to me.

Why should I care?

[whistler36]

Since I am not planning on commiting a crime why should I care if they have my DNA? The argument that lab mistakes could result in a false arrest seems silly to me. How could this happen? They computerize the DNA analysis once and them compare the numbers with the new sample. Unless I don't understand the process it seems there is no way for contamination to occur. The only other valid reason if you are planning on commiting a crime. Anything else is just being hysterical.

Re:The police...

[Martin Blank]

What police department uses a .50BMG rifle in their SWAT team? I've seen plenty of 5.56mm and 7.6Xmm rifles used, and a handful of other calibers, but never a .50 cal.

DNA

[AC5398]

It should be law that everyone has their DNA recorded into a database, criminally convicted or not. Along with fingerprints and footprints.

And it should be guaranteed by law that one owns ones DNA and that ownership cannot be forfeited, rented, sold, or turned over to another person or entity, no matter what the circumstances are.

This hits close to home - literally

[eric2hill]

I live in Wichita, and I have an uncle that was actually a better match to BTK than Dennis Raider. He graduated from the same university 2 years earlier, lived closer to the railroad tracks, and goes by the name Buk. Buk is only one letter off from btk, btw.

The police came to his house. His wife opened the door. The police asked if they could have a swab of his DNA. He didn't resist, and the police were very polite through the whole ordeal.

Now, in this case there was no police brutality, no coersion, no force, etc. Just a simple "may we get a swab of your DNA". My uncle had the right to say no, but obviously the police would have held him under the microscope.

There are really two separate issues in play here.

First, do the police have a right to request DNA evidense from a potentical suspect. I believe they do have the right to ask. I also believe the fifth ammendment gives the right to not incriminate yourself, so you do have the right to say no. The police will still consider you a suspect, but that's the way the law works.

Second, (and more importantly) once the police have cleared your name, does the DNA evidense get thrown away or warehoused? Everything said in the local papers and news has been that the evidense will get thrown away, but it would be nice to have some confirmation of that fact. I'll tell you that if the evidense doesn't get thrown away, the DA is going to get an ear-full from some 1300 of our swabbed citizens.

Side note, I actually have a family member that works at the prision where Dennis is being held. He said that Dennis didn't like the food. <g>

Always easier getting the genie out of the bottle.

[mr. methane]

I have to admit I winced a little when I had to give my fingerprints to get a certain license.

I wonder how many of these concerns were raised when photography became reasonably common - i.e. the "average joe" could afford a camera and processing.

The only adverse use I've seen of this kind of data was an innocent guy that was identified, in a front-page photograph (snapped by an ATM) as a murder suspect.

Turned out the tech had mis-counted frames by one, and the guy on the front page of the paper was a cabbie who stopped to take out a few bucks. It was cleared up quickly and the police apologized profusely and publicly - though I'm sure he lost a few nights of sleep over it. (there was also some financial settlement from either the bank or the PD, but I don't recall the details on it)

Given enough time...

[pdwalker]

everyone will be guilty of breaking one inane law or another. It is just a matter of time. They need that DNA sample in order to know who to convict later. It's for your own good.

Re:Cancel health insurance before it costs too muc

[catprog]

Why not just advise all people to make lifestyle changes to reduce suceptability to disease.

may I ask a stupid question?

[fullmetal55]

what purpose does a .50 cal have in civilian life? it would tear any game animal to shreds, leaving very little left for food or trophy. It is to cumbersome to use for home defense. about the only thing it is good for is military use. which i suppose is the only purpose. hmm. same with fully automatic rifles. i never understood why civilians would be allowed to purchase those.

Apologies

[rk]

And apologies for the multitude of atrocious spelling errors. I even previewed. I guess I picked a bad week to quit taking amphetamines.

There are no innocent people?

[argent]

To a certain part of the criminal justice system, there are no innocent people... merely people for whom it has not yet been established what they are guilty of.

I wish I was joking.

Re:This may scare the tinfoil hat crowd, but....

[jasonditz]

That's a very good point... if they are keeping your fingerprints (and there's no way to opt out) that too is a big problem.

I may look into that: my parents gave the police my fingerprints when I was 5 years old (as part of some ill-conceived anti-kidnapping campaign)... I wonder if I can demand they remove them from their database (assuming they actually kept them in the first place).

If not, I can probably make an interesting lawsuit :)

This is already law in the UK

[IIH]

This already happens in the UK, if you are charged the police can take DNA samples, etc, and under laws passed a few years back, keep them as long as they like, even if the charge proves groundless. (previously you could witness them being destroyed)

It's going to be a close race between the UK and the US as to which becomes the full police state earlier!

Gun control and DNA

[edbarbar]

I'm just wondering, how many of the people that find the government's keeping DNA is "ominous" also feel that gun control is a good thing?

I also wonder how many people who have a gun feel that the government keeping DNA is ominous?

Re:Time to drag out this old chestnut:

[Anonymous Coward]

First they came for people who had sex with children,
and I didn't speak up, because I never had sex with children.
Then they came for people who had sex with farm animals,
and I didn't speak up, because I never had sex with farm animals.
Then they came for people who had sex with vegetables,
and I didn't speak up, because I never had sex with vegetables.
Then they came for me, but I was too busy having sex with myself to notice.

A Question about DNA and proof of evidence

[azbot]

Finger-prints were ok, as your average Joe could see for himself that one set matched another, and that no special equipment was really needed (except perhaps a eye-glass). We assume that the prediction about "no two people have the same fingerprint" as being correct, as it seems to make sense.

But there is no way a Jury of average people would be able to 'understand or produce the information from a sample of DNA required to match it with another' by their loansome. I feel a little worried about this, as the information is given on trust of the reporter of the information. Evidence doesn't lie but people do.

Information

[Z00L00K]

I'm not worried about giving out my DNA in an investigation, since the only thing that actually can be proven is that I was at a certain location, but not necessarily at the defined time. One reason that is more important is that giving DNA actually can help to exclude you from an investigation.

Unwillingness to provide a DNA can actually increase the suspicions against you.

It's simple...

[Nefarious Wheel]

...read my sig. Turn the RIAA away from the dark side.

is it just me, or any of you notice that

[ketamine-bp]

the court hearing is said to be held in 1st april?

Reminds of The Shawshank Redemption

[krunk4ever]

Your analysis is great! It reminded me of The Shawshank Redemption, although it's fictional.

***BEGIN SPOILER SPACE***

Andy Dufresne was convicted for murder because they found a motive and many other evidence that points out the fact that he had a similar gun and was near the location during the murder. However, for those that have watched the movie, he had a valid reason for everything, but it just wasn't as believable as him killing his own wife. After years in jail, the real truth comes out, but it's too late now.

***END SPOILER SPACE***

I really like your analysis on the fact that the law and order is merely a way for the government to give us a sense of security. of course, we hope that the people convicted are truly guilty for what they're convicted for, but with many people claiming not guilty, it becomes really hard to tell. Then there's the cases where we know the defendant is definitely guilty, but we just don't have enough evidence and have to let him walk.

But I'm curious. how do you suppose the justice system can improve. Judge by peers I learnt was an Scandinavian idea where the peers (well, only men back then) were the ones who decided if you were guilty or not and you had a chance to defend in front of everyone once a year. and during this time, all the cases collected year long will be decided. However, if the person doesn't like the decision, he's able to choose to fight and all his friends/relatives will fight the plantiff's friends/relatives and the winner of course gets to decide on the decisoin. The coolest part about their laws was the "eye for an eye". if you killed someone in family X, the people from X are legally allowed to kill someone from your family.

I sidetracked there for a moment, but jury system is good, but how does one make it better without impeding on the people's freedom and anonymity.

Re:Cancel health insurance before it costs too muc

[cyril3]

We did. They didn't.

False positives

[Krazark]

A while back I saw an article in a reputable German science magazine where they calculated the probablity of false positives. I cannot remember the actual numbers, but there was something like 6 predicted matches in a city of 1 million. Maybe someone has the real numbers, but it was suprisingly high. I see this is a huge potential for misuse if used to find suspects. Especially in light of how they would turn the probablilies around saying stuff like there's only a 1 in 50,000 chance this isn't the guy when it is really more like 5 out of 6.

De Ja Vu

[saqmaster]

Some similar bullshit happened to me once. Two police officers came to my place of work because someone had called "CrimeWatch" (UK show about crimes) to say I looked like the photo-fit for a particular case (Rape, nice). So after a few preliminary questions they insisted I undertake a DNA swabbing, either there at my workplace or back at the station. I chose the easy route and had it done there.

So, first of all its quite annoying to think someone who knows me that well to report me to the cops as a suspect, but then having them turn up at the workplace, swabs in-hand, takes the biscuit!

8 MONTHS LATER, I finally get a letter from the police saying "Thanks for helping us with our enquiries, you have been removed as a suspect". No mention about destroying my DNA evidence, nothing. I bet its still on computer somewhere. Corrupt.

Government Databases

[carcajou]

The same arguments for and against storing fingerprints were put forth when the state and federal governments began to store them. Now it is accepted as part of life. The technology certainly exists to fake someone's fingerprints from a file copy and present it as evidence, yet this does not happen, at least not that we know of...

The question boils down to "Is the storing of DNA a further reduction of my personal freedom?" I feel the answer is yes, but not in a substantial way.

When you consider the info that is tracked on you, then you realize that there is nothing that is not available now. Tax forms, credit applications, credit/debit card purchases, payroll/hr info, auto tags, drivers license, concealed weapons permits, passport, insurance questionaires, etc., you soon realize that if the government wants to know all about you they will.

There is no privacy. You eat government approved food, drink approved water, drive approved cars, live in approved houses, brush your teeth with approved toothpaste, work in approved environments, wear approved clothes (fire retardence, etc.), see rated movies, go to licensed professionals, and on and on and on...

If they chose to they could tell you what you eat, where you go, who you are with, how often you have sex, what your preferences are in paint colors, clothing, autos, and just about everything else.

This is called "Your Tax Dollars At Work".

Adding your DNA to the list of things that they know about you will just give them a common identifier for all these other things...rather than using your name on the file, it will have your DNA imprint.

When you really see how you are controlled, very like a rat in a cage, you will see that this is just the next step.

Someone once said that the illusion of freedom is more important than freedom itself. So you are told you can vote, and move from one state to another, and all of these things...but is that freedom, or the illusion of freedom in a controlled society...sorry if I am a little off topic...one of my pet peeves!

Mandatory DNA samples

[mrogers]

In California, police will be able in 2008 to take DNA samples from anyone arrested for a felony, whether the person is convicted or not

In the UK, police can already take a DNA sample if you're arrested for any crime (even if you're not charged, let alone convicted). Samples are kept indefinitely and added to the national DNA database, which could be sold to private companies or cross-referenced with the National Identity Register to find out the subject's current name and address.

Happened To Me

[gsibbery]

This happened to me. During the Baton Rouge serial killer investigations, when they thought the killer was a white guiy, I was targeted and tested to eliminate me as a possible suspect. The cops were really very nice about it and so far as I know, I haven't been cloned, so what's the big deal?

Already on record

[Vulturejoe]

My DNA is already on record. My father works for the State Dept., and they have my DNA on file for posthumous identification in case of a terrorist attack, although I'm sure they could do whatever they want to with it.

I didn't do it!

[rutegard]

It was my evil twin, I tell you!

Already thought of in the UK...

[mikerich]

But don't get hopeful...

All DNA samples are retained indefinitely. Even if you willingly provide a DNA sample and are found innocent you do not have the right to ask for your DNA to be deleted. The police are also authorised to take samples without your permission.

Airstrip One - over and out.

Mike.

This is much ado about nothing.

[mmell]

The data which the police will be maintaining is a "fingerprint" of the DNA -- NOT, the actual DNA sample, with its genetic data.

Okay, so the police will have a new kind of "fingerprint" to keep track of. What of it? They already routinely fingerprint suspects, as well as gathering suspect fingerprints (and bodily fluids) from unpriveledged sources ("Oh, let me take care of that empty soda can for you.", "We found it in the trash which was out at the curb.").

The kind of detailed data which will show, say, a predisposition to cancer or heart disease might be useful to an unscrupulous insurance company, but the P.D. won't have that -- just the results of electrophoresis. They can prove that it's HIS/HER DNA, but whether or not he/she carries Tay-Sachs disease, well . . . you'll need another DNA sample and a vastly more detailed (and more specific and more expensive) test for that.

Putting my tinfoil hat back on now . . .

Oh, my God, what have I said?

Here's an idea

[obi]

Make use of the draconian copyright protections you guys have over there. His parents should sue the state for copyright infringement ;-)

Hell, you might even use several provisions of the DMCA, because DNA is digital information after all.

What? you're reverse-engineering our 'leet basepair encoding? Off to jail with you! (well, it worked for Sklyrarov, right?)

Of course, if his parents died a long time ago, his DNA might be out of copyright and in the public domain, but of course, thanks to the Mickey Mouse Protection Act there's no way such a thing can happen anymore. ;-)

More to add

[lorcha]

Anonymous Coward had some good responses, but I want to add a little to what he said.

(1) As someone who, many years ago, regularly cheated on his girlfriends, I can say that using death is a great way to get out of a sticky situation. No one is going to fuck with "I have to be at a funeral so I can't go to your best friend's birthday party" or "I'm sorry I haven't had any time for you lately but my $relative is in the hospital and only has a month or so left to live and I am spending a lot of time visiting," etc.

It's also a great excuse for his refusal to commit to this other woman. My cousin's fiancee died in a plane crash 15 years ago. She hasn't had a stable relationship since then and has only flown a few times since then (and doing that required some serious drugs).

You get the idea. Death is a great cover for getting someone to back off. I feel guilty as hell now for using an actual dying and now dead family member as an excuse to keep together an impossible web of lies, but that is another story.

(2) Renting a car for long trips is not a strange thing to do. My wife (no, I have never cheated on my wife, btw) used to have to make a weekly drive to a city that is 100mi from our house and she regularly rented a car for the trip so she didn't put so many miles on her car. Many people rent sports cars for the weekend for fun. There are 100 reasons to rent a car when you already own one. Maybe he lent his truck to someone. Maybe he was trying to sell it. Maybe he just had it cleaned. Maybe he finds his truck to be uncomfortable to sit in for long stretches of time and prefers a car.

All I know for certain is that renting a car when you already own one most certainly does not make a person a murderer.

(3) If my wife were to suddenly disappear, to say that I would experience grief would be a monumentous understatement. You can't fault a man for grieving over his wife's disappearance.

I have not heard anything to make me certain beyond a reasonable doubt Scott killed Laci. If I were on that jury and this was all the evidence that I was given, I would have hung that jury from here to Kalamazoo.

I mean, really, motive plus circumstantial evidence is now proof beyond resonable doubt? I think not. That is way too easy. Are you trying to tell me that if my wife was murdered, all that would be needed to convict me would be motive (we have a $150,000 life insurance policy on each of us) plus a lack of an airtight alibi? I would not want to live in such a society.

Re:More to add

[Monkelectric]

plus a lack of an airtight alibi

I think scott probably did it, but the notion that you could be asked by the police at any time to prove your whereabouts is frightening. Can i prove that I spent all night playing savage in my apartment? Can i prove I was stuck in traffic?

Re:More to add

[lorcha]

Can i prove I was stuck in traffic?

Well, at least I don't have to worry about that one. I live in the Washington DC area, and if I said that I was stuck in bumper-to-bumber beltway traffic at 2:30am, no one would think twice about it.

Re:More to add

[Kombat]

I mean, really, motive plus circumstantial evidence is now proof beyond resonable doubt? I think not.

It helps that there wasn't a single other person anywhere on the planet with motive to kill Laci. Only Scott. She wasn't raped or robbed, she wasn't a mob informant or on the receiving end of a bad drug deal. Nobody else in the world had reason to kill her. But Scott did. A few other people had the means and opportunity to kill her. Scott did. Only one person fits into all of the pieces of the puzzle - the boat, the anchor, the timing, the lack of alibi, the circumstantial evidence... it all points to Scott. But not only does it point to Scott; it couldn't possibly point to anybody else. THAT is the same conclusion the jury reached.

You are 100% wrong, read the laws regarding SSN

[Ars-Fartsica]

Wrong! It is illegal for a non-government agency to ask for your SSN. There is no legal ambiguity here, it is clearly spelled out in law, you are 100% wrong.

Re:You are 100% wrong, read the laws regarding SSN

[plague3106]

Um, I did, perhaps you should learn to read, asshat.

http://ssa-custhelp.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/ssa.cfg/php/en duser/popup_adp.php?p_sid=_uCHQ2Bh&p_lva=&p_li=&p_ faqid=78&p_created=955482891&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPSZwX3Nv cnRfYnk9JnBfZ3JpZHNvcnQ9JnBfcm93X2NudD02NDQmcF9wcm 9kcz0mcF9jYXRzPSZwX3B2PSZwX2N2PSZwX3BhZ2U9Mg**

Have some faith in the government!

[aminorex]

If they were innocent, they wouldn't have DNA.
That's what original sin is all about! Sheesh!
Besides, if you were innocent, you would want
the government to know everything about you, to
help stop the evil warmong...terrorists.

Welcome to Amazon.Com

[knight37]

Welcome to Amazon.Com! According to your DNA sample on file, the following list of items should meet your approval:

one reason to worry

[rkww]

All the 'billions to one chance' likelihoods of there being a DNA match which you read about assume a random distribution, but that's never really been proven, and (to put it delicately) in some closed groups (small communities, racial enclaves) the variety is likely to be significantly less than that.

Now, as long as the DNA is used as an additional proof on top of other evidence, it doesn't matter so much, but when the police work backwards from the DNA database to the suspect - as they will if they can - there will be ample scope for wrongful conviction.

Imagine a car park containing 210 million white cars (representing the population) and three red cars (representing DNA matches to a sample). If you pick up a car because you have evidence that it might be the one you want, and it turns out actually to be a red car, the probability's 70M:1 it's the one you're after.

But if you already know about one of the red cars, and you just select it with no other evidence, the probability's 1:3 that you've got the right one.

The problem we don't know how many red cars there might be. The only way to find out would be to DNA finger print the whole population.

And for all you know, you might have an identical twin out there committing all sorts of unpleasantries; how would you get out of that?

SSN laws aren't what you think

[billstewart]

Go read the FAQ if you don't have time to go read the Privacy Act of 1974 and its successors. Private companies don't have the power to force you to give them an SSN, but they may not feel like doing business with you if you don't, or in some cases they may not be allowed to do business with you if you don't. Governments do have the power to force you to give them information, and the original Privacy Act of 1974 was written to limit the extent to which governments (mainly local and state) and government officials could use that - and it's been increasingly weakened, with new exceptions being added and new laws being written to radically increase the extent to which governments must demand SSNs. (After all, the Privacy Act was just a law, and can easily be changed or replaced by other laws whenever 51% of the politicians feel like it; there's nothing magic about it, unlike Supreme Court decisions.)

Banks are being increasingly required to "know your customer", including getting photo id and collecting SSNs. Just about any business that pays you money needs to collect an SSN - it used to be possible to get a non-interest-bearing checking account without one, but I don't think you can do that any more in the US, at least not at a regular bank.

And yes, it's police-state stuff, quite deliberately.

Re: States' Rights???

[GI Jones]

I think the Civil War settled the States' Rights issue once and for all. The federal government has felt the right, since 1819, to walk over a sovereign State's rights whenever it feels it has a moral high ground to do so. If it didn't, slavery would have existed much longer in this country and racial segregation even longer than that.

Hey, if you don't like it, fight it and if you don't want to fight it, leave it. Maybe there is some utopian society out there that conforms to your pipe-dream of the way a governed society should live.

Here is a good plan: live a good life, help your fellow man, don't commit a felony, keep your nose clean and never give up a DNA sample without a fight. And just in case you haven't seen an episode of CSI or watched the movie GATTACA, your DNA is everywhere, if someone wants it, they can get it.

Clone him to make more innocent people.

[doorbender]

eh thats all just the subject...

oh no wait .....

The jail is full of innocent people, just ask them.

and

Everyones guilty, we just have to figure out for what.

DNA fingerprint != sequence

[Java Ape]

I hate to squelch slashdot paranoia, but keep in mind that a DNA fingerprint is nothing like a full sequence. In fact, there are various ways of making a DNA fingerprint, depending on what you're trying to illustrate.

In the most general case, the PCR amp technique is used with a handful of standard probes, and run through several iterations. This creates duplicates of some whatever sections of your DNA are located between those probes. So, the lab has a beaker full of chunks of DNA, split at known sequences, but not representing specific genes. They then run this on a gel,(along with a standard set of control fragments), and print the result.

Generally, only about 50-100 bands are produced on the gel, which is nothing like a complete map of your genetic makeup. This is exactly like a one-way hash in computers. There's no way to take the handful of bands on a gel, and reconstruct the original DNA, any more than you can use and RSA hash to reconstruct the original file. Also, DNA fingerprints are succeptable to collisions, just like hashes, and (again like hashes), increasing the size of the fingerprint (or adjusting it to probe areas of high genetic variability) decreases the probability of collisions, but increases the cost and time required for analysis (as well as the amount of starting material required). As a result, most DNA libraries are pretty low-resolution.

Most "standard" DNA-fingerprint methods give a probability of one in a couple million, which is hardly diagnostic (in most large cities, there are probably two or three other individuals who would produce the same genetic fingerprint as you, using a simple test).

I'm not saying there isn't potential for misuse/abuse of DNA fingerprints, but it's not the same as if they were extracting a full DNA sequence.

When did you first notice that we're not free?

[CloaknDagr]

I think we're going to have to change the national anthem. The "Land of the free and home of the brave" line is obsolete now and getting worse. The "home of the brave" part still applies but the "land of the free" has been a misnomer for a long time.

The military has always, since the introduction of the technology to search data either manually or electronically, taken and stored fingerprints that have since ended up in the NCIC (National Crime Information Center). DNA is identification and won't be any different.

This debate seems pretty simple to me. If your genitic coding isn't private, nothing is. If your government has access to your very basic cellular composition you have no "expectation of privacy" in anything.

If you're arrested for ANYTHING it goes in a database. If you're exonerated for ANY reason, that database may or may not show the fact. Even if it does reflect the fact that you were exonerated, pardoned, etc. the presence of that data is sufficient to heighten suspicion and justify further prying into your life. After all, you were arrested by people that don't make mistakes and you were probably guilty and "beat the system".

This isn't a partisan political problem. The left wants your DNA, fingerprints, credit history, etc to "help" you and the right wants the same to "catch" you. The reasons can be juxtaposed arbitrarily depending on who wants to do what to you.

We in America have become a society of fear. There is virtually no one that doesn't have some kind of record. Those without any negative record at all fear any mistake that will remove that status and precipitate a fall from grace. Identity theft means that is in no way under their control. Those with a negative record of any kind know that they'll never again have full status (they "might" be a suspect at any time) no matter what the disposition of their situation. Those who have done something truly wrong know that redemption is impossible under any circumstances. In ALL cases everyone has to fear errors and omissions in the system. George Orwell got it all wrong, Big Brother isn't watching you, he doesn't need to. All Big Brother needs to do is lodge a request with ChoicePoint or similar and you're stuck with the results. ChoicePoint and similar probably won't have direct access to DNA samples, that would make them responsible for their data. They'll just have the results and speculations, erroneous or not.

If your DNA isn't in that particular database, hey look! Your neighbor of 30 years ago IS even though you never lived within 500 miles of that address, so now you're "suspicious". You might have conspired with that non-neighbor and just didn't turn up in the investigation.

It's not just the DNA issue, it's the whole system of prying into, warehousing, and data-mining our lives. The DNA issue is just another brick in the wall, granted that it's a BIG brick. Unfortunately it's going to take the equivalent of a September 11th to wake people up to this problem.

How many people even knew of ChoicePoint and similar before they got scammed and were forced by law to take action? How many people follow current events enough now to know anything about ChoicePoint et.al.? How many people will know if that kind of organization is referencing DNA records? How many times are you in databases that you don't have any awareness of? How accurate are those databases?

Further down in this post some folks mention that the vast tendency is to go after the easiest suspect to convict, disregarding the truth for convience. Keeping DNA records from innocent people will make that even more likely. "We found the suspect's DNA on a cigarette butt {chewing gum, envelope, booger, etc.} near the crime scene, this proves guilt". If everyone has a DNA record there is ALWAYS going to be SOMEONES DNA near a crime scene, depending on how "near" is defined. Your DNA falls off of you constantly in skin exfoliation, hair, etc.

DA Nola Foulston and ilk are part of the pro

I really don't understand

[mrmeval]

It seems that in recent times California is becoming less free than most redneck utopias.

It's not supposed to be that way.

its the future

[xpyr]

I think it's the future. Any scifi program, like star trek, has everyone's dna on file when they investigated crimes. It also helped with identifying the deceased when no one comes to claim the body. Also there are numerous crimes where they collect dna evidence but they don't have a match to the current database at hand because the person that likely did it, never had a criminal record nor was a suspect in another crime where their dna sample was collected to clear them as a suspect. People's dna can be added if they were a suspect in a previous crime, even if they were cleared of it, the dna is still kept. Now the only thing we gotta worry about is if a dna sample gets messed up and wrongly identifies someone in a crime. My opinion, it is a good thing to have everyone's dna on file. Same thing with thumb prints. Just make sure measures are put in check to make sure nothing can get messed up. Having multiple databases would help.