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

[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

[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

[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]

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

[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]

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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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 ...

[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 ...

[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 ...

[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.

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.

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.

I shall use it to create

[darth_MALL]

A Grand Army Of the Republic!

No bad can come of that...right?

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

[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

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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?

[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: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?

Sadly, an appropriate quote

[Stiletto]

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

-George Orwell

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...

[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.

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.

[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.

[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: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.

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?

innocent?

[tverbeek]

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

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

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: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.

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?

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...

[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..

In Michigan

[Anita Coney]

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

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!

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...

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.)

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

[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: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.

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.

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.

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

[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

[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

[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: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.

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.

Re:Too many "easy" counterargs

[angle_slam]

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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: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.

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:I'll tell you what

[taustin]

Because political dissent isn't genetic, dufus.

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.

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.

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!

You Keep Using This Word "Innocent"

[lorelorn]

I think you mean "not yet proven guilty"

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.

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: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).

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.

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>

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.

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?

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.

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?