Convicted Hacker Adrian Lamo Refuses to Give Blood

CaliforniaCCW writes "Hopefully everyone here remembers the case of Adrian Lamo, a so-called 'gray hat' hacker who plead guilty to one count of computer crimes against Microsoft, Nexis-Lexis and the New York Times in 2004. He got a felony conviction, six months detention in his parents' home, and two years of probation. Today, as a condition of his probation, he must provide a sample of his DNA in the form of a blood sample, something which he has refused to do. Should convicted felons on probation have privacy rights over their DNA? Or is a blood sample like a fingerprint, something that everyone should provide to their government?"

Comments

The logic escapes me

[Mostly a lurker]

He was convicted of a computer crime. How likely is it that, if he does something similar in the future, it will be of any help to the authorities that they have his DNA on file? I suppose, though, the same goes for fingerprints. If the law is not specific on the subject, I think he has a right to refuse.

Re:The logic escapes me

[Ohreally_factor]

Well, F me for not Ring TFA. He is refusing to give a blood sample, not refusing to give a DNA sample. His reasons for not giving a blood sample are religious. He offered instead to give hair and nail clippings, both of which he brought in, both of which were refused. So long as he is willing to comply with the law, even if not with the the particular collection method, I think he'll win this.

Re:The logic escapes me

[Scrameustache]

He was convicted of a computer crime. How likely is it that, if he does something similar in the future, it will be of any help to the authorities that they have his DNA on file?

Not likely at all.

This isn't about his crime and prevention/ease of conviction. This is about gathering DNA of everyone they can. Pictures, fingerprints, blood samples, they want it all, from everyone. They start with convicted criminals, because no one cares about their rights. Then they added people flying in (only pics and fingerprints for now, baby steps, baby steps).

The phone calls of everone, add a lil' voice recognition software, cameras all over the place, GPS transponders in every car, RFID in every compulsory ID cards.

They're creating a perfect police state, and we're letting them.

Re:The logic escapes me

[ArsenneLupin]

I don't think there are any exceptions made for white collar crime.

Would you find it logical if a convicted burglar, rapist, etc. would need to supply, for example, the MAC addresses of all his computers?

It's not about white or blue collar crime, but about whether the type of "identification" supplied would actually be useful for the type of crime.

What will DNA help if the crime does not involve physical presence?

Re:The logic escapes me

[Descalzo]

"His reasons for not giving a blood sample are religious."

I wonder what his religion has to say about breaking the law.

Re:The logic escapes me

[Catbeller]

And this is said while the FBI is raiding the home of the former number 3 at the CIA; the Vice President is about to be indicted for outing a CIA operation monitoring Iranian nuclear bombmaking; the entire administration has created a nationwide spy operation they didn't feel Justice lawyers needed to be consulted about; the Admin has been running covert special forces ops in Iran for over a year - an act of war, illegally done in secret; the Pres has been outed for secretly delaring war on Iraq on false pretext, killing over 30 thousand civilians...

What does religion have to say about all that? And why does the "law" care more about a teenager pulling pranks than about slaughtering 30 thousand people for no reason at all?

I should respect the law, why? The President has adopted Nixon's notion that the President IS the law, and therefore cannot ever break the law. I guess I just suppose this kid is the law, and cannot break it either. Either statement is equally constitutionally correct.

When the law is obviously manipulated to smash the relatively innocent and pardon the murderous, who cares about it anymore? The law enforcement agencies obviously don't. Powerful people make a call, a kid goes to prison, make another call, and 30 thousand people dead don't count, even as a news story.

Felons don't have the same rights...

[LamerX]

I'm pretty sure that because he's a convicted felon, that he doesn't posess the same rights as a regular citizen. I don't think he can even vote. Bummer to get caught.

False Dichotomy

[ergo98]

Should convicted felons on probation have privacy rights over their DNA? Or is a blood sample like a fingerprint, something that everyone should provide to their government?

Nice transitions from convicted felons to "everyone" there.

WTF?!?!

[schon]

is a blood sample like a fingerprint, something that everyone should provide to their government?

Why the fsck should *everyone* provide fingerprints to their government?

Re:WTF?!?!

[BVis]

This is, of course, assuming that you WANT your government to treat everyone like a criminal.

I'd prefer that they didn't. If they want my DNA or my fingerprints, they can bloody well get a warrant signed by a judge. If they can't get that, then the Constitution protects my privacy. Bloody annoying, that Fourth Amendment. Requiring that "due process" and all. After all, law enforcement is entitled to be autocratic and lazy and just demand whatever they want on a pretext.

Pretty soon they'll want to put black boxes in your car.. oh wait, we already have those. Then they'll want to video tape you for the sole reason that you've driven down a street.. oh, we've got those too. Then they'll want to know about every phone call you make whether you've been accused of a crime or not.. oh, wait, we just found out about that one this week.

Amazingly enough, there are people who think a police state is a GOOD thing. I like to call those people "idiots" and would like to extend the police state to regulating their ability to breed, telling them it's to prevent terrorism. Fixes the problem neatly and ironically.

Re:Well

[humphrm]

As has already been mentioned several times, those "basic freedoms" you speak of apply to law-abiding citizens; there is no such protection for convicted felons. And, indeed, he plead guilty.

There is plenty of freedom at work here. His freedom to refuse. Note that they are not tying him down and forcing a needle into his arm. His freedom to choose more court proceedings and possibly a five year prison sentence over violating his religious beliefs.

The law is the law, but in this case the law is probably pretty weak, since he did offer up his DNA in another form. I am willing to bet that a judge might very well order the probation department to accept his alternate DNA, if he behaves himself.

Re:Convicted felons never had full rights anyway

[Yartrebo]

Two wrongs don't make a right. I find that denying felons the right to vote to be horrible. It's an awfully strong incentive to jail people whose beliefs are different from your own or oppose your party.

DNA versus Fingerprints

[goombah99]

On the one hand there is clear neccessity for the governement to establish a foresnic identity system. Finger prints, photographs, age, weight, height, eye color, build, race and gender are all legitimate and well established metric the government collects and wisely uses in our collective best interest.

One the other hand, DNA is quite different. You can learn from DNA things the govenrment is not entitled to know. Your lineage, your health prospects, your allegries, and any number of personal attributes. From blood you can learn even more. e.g. are you HiV positive.

So saying DNA and bllod are one more in a long line of useful tools is not a gimme. We have to think it through.

It is quite clear that infinite knowledge of people is not neccessarily in societies best interest. Or at least our society does not agree that it is. And crime deterence is not the sole purpose of governement. protection of privacy and civil lberties needs to be considered. For example, even prisons and navy ships, the most well watched populations on the planet, do not fully prevent crime. And we certainly would not be willing to subject ourselves to that kind of scrutiny just to reduce crime. So there must be a trade between security and liberty and risk. One should not just blindly always trade liberty for security becuase the trade off is without limit.

Yet coming back to DNA. unlike everything except finger prints, it's something that ubquitously taints crime scenes, and it's utility is thus so much above any othe rmetric it's foolish not to atleast consider a DNA databse of former felons and possibly even citizens at large. One solution to this might be DNA hashing. perhaps there is a way to hash a DNA sequence in a manner that would be sufficient to establish presence at a crime scene. Or maybe atleast probable cause for further testing of a particular individual without actually having the governement retain DNA samples of innocent people.

An approach to this would be to identify a long list of biological diversity markers then weed out all the ones know to be associated with any health condition. Then hash these in a way that preserves just enough features to establish likely identity between two samples without revelaing any further details. The govenrment would be required to destroy the original samples and to delete any of the pre-hash specific information. This would have to be done in a manner we can trust them to actually execute this policy. I think this could be done and just to make the point, here's how. Have all testing done in labs in non-networked computers with small hard disks. This would be a physical layer to prevent overt records retention. One could of course imagine ways this could be subverted on a case by case basis but it would impede wholsale collection.

Re:DNA versus Fingerprints

[fyngyrz]

This would have to be done in a manner we can trust them to actually execute this policy.

The problem here is that we can't trust the government. We already know that. They said that the SSN would only be used for social security. They said that there would be no new taxes. They said that there were weapons of mass destruction. They said that eminent domain was a tool never to be used for commercial interests. They said that no citizen could be held without a right to a hearing or the ability to contact a lawyer. They said that no person's privacy could be invaded without a warrant. They said the patriot act was only to fight terrorism. They said that they would make no law regarding the establishment of religion. They say that intrastate commerce is magically interstate commerce. I could go on for pages.

They lie. They lie all the time. They're not lying for our benefit, either — they lie to do us harm, to hide things from us, to get certain people into office (or keep them there), they lie to take our property, our freedom, to erode our rights, and to diminish our ability to hold them accountable.

You give them your DNA, and they'll swear up and down that they'll hash it and throw away the raw data. But mark my words, that DNA will appear in a database not too long afterwards in the hands of not only the government, but your insurance company, your employer, and your potential spouse.

Anything you do to extend the power of the government will be misused. Anything. Our government is completely, utterly, absolutely out of control.

Re:Crossing a line?

[HairyCanary]

Easy. We're pretty sure we know the extent of information that can be determined about you by your fingerprints. Not true for DNA. Not only do we not know the complete extent of information that can be determined from your DNA, with what little we do know, it is already too much. More than mere identification, for sure.

Frog soup

[Scrameustache]

Well, except that one can easily avoid this type of collection by the rather simple expedient of not committing felonies.

When they came for the felons, I said nothing, because I was not a felon...

Re:Frog soup

[HiThere]

You are presuming that all those in jail have comitted crimes. The evidence I have seen leads me to doubt that.

To me it appears that frequently being in jail is the result of annoying someone with power, and not having sufficient power to escape the consequences. This can be as simple as a black or brown person driving a car.

OTOH, even when you are rich, justice may be difficult to get. It's not criminal law, exactly, at least not yet, but consider SCOX vs. IBM. IBM has been trying for three years to find out what they are being accused of, and hasn't yet gotten a straight answer. *Someone* is funneling money to SCOX, but just who is doing it is still a matter of speculation.

Given the rediculous state of our "justice" system, I wouldn't be too quick to presume that someone labelled a felon has done anything reprehensible. Look up plea-bargaining and study a few of the examples. If you aren't powerful, they can threaten you with next to no evidence, and usually get a conviction if they want one...if only by coercing you to agree to plead guilty to a lesser charge so that they don't, e.g., formally accuse you of reping poodles. They don't need to prove you guilty to ruin your life permanently.

OTOH, communication has sped the transmission of information. Now we hear about news from distant cities as if it were local. Things probably actually aren't any worse than they ever were. Probably. But the also don't appear to be any better.

who isn't a felon?

[David Jao]

What you're saying is "gypsy, Jew, black, convicted felon, they're all the same".

Has it ever occurred to you that the legislature can in principle make you a felon just by passing a law against breathing air?

This is not a joke. It's happening already. My guess is that well over half of all Americans have committed a sufficient dollar amount of music piracy to qualify as felony. The fact that you personally think that you are capable of avoiding felonies is irrelevant. If the government wants to make you a felon, then believe me, you will be made a felon.

There are cases on the books where even the text of the laws themselves are not available for you to read. Google for "secret laws" if you don't believe me.

All large organizations attempt to control us

[mrraven]

Well said and a reason I respect Libertarians although I do not consider myself one. And why don't I consider myself a Libertarian? Because big private corporations ALSO work hard to screw us and the world over, do Microsoft, Enron, Nike, Global Crossing, and large oil companies ring a bell? The real problem is allowing any large organization public OR private control over your life either physical or economic. And yes we may be reliant on corporations for computers, medicine, etc, and the government for roads and other infrastructure, but the goal should be to give large organizations the absolute minimum control over our lives we need to survive.

Libertarians who fail to realize the corrosive effects of private greed are blind, and leftists who fail to realize the terrible power of the state to oppress us are also blind.

Re:All large organizations attempt to control us

[mrraven]

Libertarian dude sed:

"You quote Shell using the local police and/or military for their purposes. Were I a local, I would blame the government here; just as the company that wants my land to build a hotel on is not at fault, the government is at fault if they allow it to be taken."

And do you honestly think that Shell wouldn't have hired mercenaries to do the same thing if that had been cheaper or easier? As the record obviously shows Shell as a company is quite willing to do ANYTHING to continue their operations in the Niger delta. The point is, is that Shell is quite willing to kill innocent people to continue it's oil drilling operation in Nigeria. It is exactly this sort of case that makes me mistrust Libertarians despite their excellent well honed admirable contempt they hold towards the state. When it comes to HORRIBLE deeds committed by corporations suddenly Libertarians are as slippery as Bill Clinton talking about what the meaning of is, is... Lets see some more honesty here, BOTH corporations and governments will commit horrible deeds when they think they can get away with it, only by holding BOTH corporations and governments to merciless scrutiny and calling them on their bad deeds will we see any decency, liberty, and a sustainable way of life. Making apologetics for the owners of Nike's production facilities quite literally raping their own employees only makes you look like an asshole, which is really too bad because your original post about not trusting the government not to misuse DNA data was quite excellent. I no more trust Nike to subcontract to other private shoe making corporations that will respect human rights than I do the government to hold my DNA data or my phone records. NEITHER the government, nor Shell, Nike, Haliburton, Bechtel, Microsoft, Monsanto, Maxxam, Wal-Mart, Exxon, etc have earned my trust by engaging in consistent ethical behavior. If you wern't blinded by your Libertarian ideology you would be more honest and admit that, yet for you suddenly crimes become non crimes when committed by private corporations. THAT is why I have some respect for Libertarians outspokenness about the evils of government but do not consider myself to be a Libertarian.

Please apply the same high standards to the conduct to private organizations that you apply to governments, thank you.

And then how far are we from Secret Police?

[theshowmecanuck]

What would worry me even more is if they started moving towards a bastardized old school "inquisitorial system", and start keeping people in remand for a long periods of time for trivial matters. Say they catch you j-walking (or something equally trivial): you are arrested, your DNA is taken, and then they start fishing to see what else they can charge you with. Things start to get blurry and you end up with some sort of Guantanamo Bay situation. Don't get me wrong, I don't like terrororists. But I also don't like secret police and secret trials... that gets too close to Nazi Germany, and Soviet (and some might increasingly say the new Putin-ized) Russia.