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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?"
all they have to do is supply the blonde!
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Quite possibly his DNA has been patented by one of the big bio tech firms, and he is just trying to avoid costly litigation.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
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.
I can't exactly say why, but taking an imprint of my finger doesn't seem like a big deal where taking my blood and analyzing my DNA seems a bit invasive.
Maybe they had the same debate back when the line was between taking down a physical description and taking an imprint of my finger. We all know how that one worked out.
If you think that is bad (having to provide DNA after being *convicted*) you must not have been to jail in the United Kingdom...
Over here if you are arrested for things like littering, speeding, drunkenness and other minor infractions the police are legally entitled to take a DNA sample (and they DO from just about everyone).
You can refuse the order either... If they want a sample they are getting a sample...
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.
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.
> "Or is a blood sample like a fingerprint, something that everyone should provide to their government?"
I'm still yet to be convinced that the government should, or needs to have, a record of everyones fingerprint, let alone DNA.
For example, they can't vote
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?
Well, the way I see it, a government could perform executions by requesting 10,000 copies of a DNA sample, if a person is required to give DNA to any government person that wants it. It's kind of hard to kill someone with 10,000 index finger print copies... It'd just waste a lot of time.
According to his attorney, Lamo's refusal is based on a religious objection to giving blood, and he's willing to provide his DNA in another form.
"He went in there with fingernail clippings and hair, and they refused to accept it, because they will only accept blood,"
Did they take a DNA sample from former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham when they put him in jail for taking bribes from defense contractors?
This guy didn't do close to anything as bad as Cunningham.
I can see his line of thought, why would they need his DNA when his crime didn't involve anything that would require him to be traced via DNA. Seems like they need samples of his IP more ;).
On a more serious note, it is worrying to see a trend in the creation of nation-wide databases of DNA, although it could be argued that they are very effective in tracing criminals, it also goes against some of the basic freedoms that we enjoy in living in such a country.
Business Voyeur
If it's a condition of his probation to which he agreed in order to stay out of prison, then he has no standing on which to object now. End of discussion.
On the other hand, if the requirement of blood (to the exclusion of other types of samples) is a generalized statute that was enacted after his probation was handed down, then he may have a case. TFA is unclear on the timeline.
Here are two particular movies the submitter urgently ought to get for the weekend:
Hopefully he'll be able to do so while neither a blood sample nor a fingerprint are considered "something that everyone should provide at video rental" just yet.
On a related note, what's the law regarding retention of stuff like DNA data, fingerprints, etc? For example, if my next door neighbor got murdered, I might get asked to provide my fingerprints to rule me out as a subject. I might be willing to do this (provided I'm not actually guilty) but what happens afterwards?
Are there restrictions for situations like this that only allow the authorities to use such data for only a specific case? Or does my data get permanently entered in a general database, to be automatically scanned for any and every crime in the future?
I'm not against cooperating with the police, but if it's the later, I'd be extremely wary of volunteering for such things.
When you're a convicted felon, you pretty much lose your right to privacy. Whether you're sentenced to prison or probation, it doesn't matter. Giving a DNA sample is not much different than having to give you fingerprints, which you're required to do when you're arrested, not even convicted.
So personally, I have no problem with it. Don't want to give up your DNA? Don't commit crimes.
Look, more and more, DNA is being used in investigations and that's a good thing. It's getting innocent people out of prison and it's putting guilty people away. As much as I have issues with the government and invasion of privacy, I don't have issues with the police enforcing the law and using the tools available to them to solve crimes.
Once you're convicted, the law makes the assumption that you have a tendency towards crime, so they collect data that will help them catch you if you do it in the future. That makes sense. That's why they've been taking fingerprints and mug shots since those two pieces of information have become part of fighting crime. They're tools that are, for the most part, used for very good things.
The guy broke the law, got convicted, and if the police feel they need a DNA sample as part of their ability to enforce the law in the future, then I'm totally okay with that.
Now, that said, once his sentence is completed and he's no longer on probation, then no, they shouldn't be able to come collect this data from him. Once you've served your time, unless there's a compelling reason to believe otherwise (such as being a suspect in a new crime), you should have your right to privacy back. But as long as you're serving, whether in prison, or at home, you don't. It's that simple.
There are some important differences between fingerprints and blood that get glossed over by calling them both just means of identification. Blood has historically been regarded as much more private than fingertips. Plus, the more we learn about genetics, the more powerful that DNA becomes. The government could theoretically start analyzing it for different genetic traits. They could probably clone you someday soon. Not that they couldn't just follow you around and pick up your hair, of course, and sure, they have no policy of doing any of that stuff, but governments always abuse their powers sometimes. I can understand the guy's reluctance.
If the NSA can tap your phone. Surely the cops can tap his toilet. Instant DNA.
His DNA is like his fingerprints: if he left it in public, the government can just collect or copy it. Otherwise,
Fourth Amendment
" The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
--
make install -not war
I could swear the standard procedure is to swab cells from the inside of ones cheek.
That is how California does DNA collection. Not only is it just as effective, it doesn't require someone with special training in needle handling.
As a side note, California voters passed DNA collection into law 62-38 with Prop 69 in 2004. It specified that DNA be collected from any adult or juvenile convicted of a felony offense; any adult or juvenile convicted of any sex or arson offense, felony or not; and any adult arrested for any murder, voluntary manslaughter, or felony sex offense, or attempt to commit any of those. Those on parole or probation, or who are arrested for any offense and have a prior criminal history, are required to provide samples as well, if they have past offenses that are on that list. In 2009, this expands to any adult arrested for or charged with any felony offense at all. The costs are offset by a 10% addition to criminal fines imposed by the courts. Any person who has been released without being arraigned within the lawfully allowed time, or who has been found factually innocent or not guilty, or who has had their case dismissed, may make a written request to have the samples destroyed and the database expunged of searchable DNA information.
As of the end of last year, 631,913 DNA profiles have been collected, 368,307 of which have been analyzed and uploaded into the database. More than 2000 investigations have been assisted by this, including many cold cases that have been solved through DNA matching. I have read numerous stories about rapes being tied to existing prisoners, and several murderers have been caught based on the evidence. Several times it has been after their release from prison on other, lesser charges, because there's a backlog in the DNA work that is expected to be largely caught up sometime in the next few years.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
We had a ballot initiative to expand the DNA database of felony suspects to include anyone arrested. The previous law only required samples from the ones convicted. It passed with 62% voting yes. Voters are dumb. You can't lose if you sell something as tough on crime. BTW the California law requires a cheek swab, no blood sample.
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.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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...
You can't take the sky from me...
You can't use the red blood cell component of blood for DNA, because red blood cells do not have a nucleus. When they undergo their final divisions they cast off their DNA to make more room for oxygen and nutrients. Just before this they "bulk up" by making a lot of the proteins they will need when serving as a red blood cell. Later in their life, when the protein supply is exhaused, there is no DNA available to template to make more, and the cell is useless and dies.
There's a lot more in blood than just red blood cells though. The white blood cells have DNA for example, so you can get DNA from blood very easily.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
It's a condition of his probation. If he doesn't want to give it, that's up to him: Probation revoked.
There is a huge world of difference between DNA and fingerprint samples. You leave fingerprint evidence behind when you commit a crime with your bare hands. On the knife or the gun or the doorknob, what have you. But with DNA, you may have simply walked by a crime scene coincidentally, DNA samples sloughing naturally from your body as you go.
DNA is much, much more easily abused than fingerprints. There are vulnerabilites with DNA samples that people do not anticipate when they try to say the two are the same.
It's that the most common method of obtaining a suspect's DNA is via a cheek swab. Why do they need his blood?
A woman was raped and killed in a small town on Cape Cod. So what did the police do? Set up DNA collection stations around town and asked men to submit DNA samples. "Well, nobody said 'if you don't submit a sample you must be guilty'"m you say? WRONG.
"A few people have declined to give samples, according to news reports. Police said investigators will closely watch individuals who fail to "volunteer" their genetic code."
"Well, if you're innocent, you won't mind us taking your DNA."
"Well, if you're innocent, you won't mind us searching your car."
"Well, if you're innocent, you won't mind us searching your house."
Doesn't work that way. NEVER has, NEVER will. If I'm innocent I don't HAVE to give you my DNA, or let you search anything- I'm INNOCENT. If the police or prosecutors of a crime wish to collect evidence from you or your personal property, they need search warrants- and they don't just hand those out for shits and giggles over at the local court. What is frightening is that 5-10% of the population of Truro apparently felt it was OK for the police to just ask for their DNA- and gave it!
Please help metamoderate.
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.
Which nation are you from?
In the US, at least, Constitutionally-recognized rights aren't all lost upon a felony conviction, though you're limited in some of them. That's why it's illegal to experiment on prisoners, or torture or kill them.
Nor do you give up the rights administered by states. You can still vote, in most states. See the list at http://www.righttovote.org/state.asp
Here's the really neat bit. Since January this year every criminal offence is arrestable. This is includes littering and speeding...
So there is at least one area in which the UK with it's New Labour government leads the US with it's rabid Reuplican one: destroying it's citizen;s civil liberties.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Hell, why not just say "Ok you win" and then offer him drink on the way out? Swab it off the glass. Or steal it in his sleep, collect it from hair or nail clippings...
CSI has also taught me you can zoom on on a reflection in a window that's a reflection off somebody's eye, that's a reflection off somebody's glasses, that's a reflection off the UFO outside his window, that's a reflection off a knife that's a reflection off a mirror with picture-perfect accuracy.
Yet, they are us, and we elected them.
Are you so sure?
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
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.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
This is another example of the fact that all of us are merely out on our "own recognizance" until some thug with a badge and a gun decides otherwise. I think most slashdot readers already know this. Our cultural mythology includes a document called "The Constitution of the United States" which is, as we all know, fictional. Appended to this work of fiction are amendments, the first ten of which we laughingly call "The Bill of Rights". This list of privileges provides employment for needy lawyers, primarily, as it certainly does not actually extend any "rights" to ordinary citizens. Anyway, perhaps I just don't know what the definition of "is" is, since I mistakenly believe that the fifth amendment extends the privilege of not being compelled to testify against one's self. As better qualified people interpret this, it does not prevent your blood or breath from being compelled to testify on one's behalf. Thanks to "democracy" we have only ourselves to blame.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
They are not me. I did not elect them. There is no one in federal office that I have ever cast a vote for, nor anyone I perceive would represent even a fraction of my views should I vote for them. Those in office, and even those who run for office from the two parties and fail to obtain that lofty goal, do not represent my views. They do not do, or assert they will do, as I would have them do, nor do they show any signs of understanding my views.
I am ready to consider, however, that those in office may "be you", as you so artfully put it.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
This is retarded, what do they need blood for they can get DNA without blood and besides what has he done or what do they suspect him of doing that would have anything to do with matching his DNA, is he a rapist now? No, this is basically a punishment, they want to show him who's boss, they know he'll have a problem with it so they're doing it to piss him off - cruel and unusual punishment is unconstitutional and they are fucking morons who should go and find some murders instead of eating donuts.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Just give the blood or spend two years in jail. Like most branches of government, the judicial system is incapable of common sense, and corruption aside, will enforce every law and follow every procedure to the letter without fail, right or wrong.
Ok, the legal services say DNA profiles are needed for ID'ing suspects and there's some validity to that point. But the privacy people have a point to that the full DNA of a person can cause problems with privacy about possible diseases that person will get and so on. In computer science, it's possible to very strongly identify a file via a long enough MD5 or SHA1 checksum, but the checksum itself doesn't deterministically allow you to recreate the actual file from just the checksum. Why can't the persons DNA be sent to a disinterested third party (a testing center), which would read the DNA (or even better a unique set of DNA sections that are known not to transcribe proteins related to known diseases but transcribe mostly boring things like hair color, etc), translate the GCTA's into a standard data representation (say 00,01,10, 11 in bits) and then checksum that. That checksum would then go to the court to ID the suspect in the case. The odds that any two random people would have the same DNA checksum would be tiny value like 0.000000001% but privacy dangerous info would ever be in the hands of the police. The main problem would be making sure the original sample wasn't stolen and retained under the covers.
In some ways - it's quite simple. He can refuse the terms of the probabtion (other criminals have done so) - the down side is you get to stay in the pen - BUT if you stay your full term, and walk out - there IS no probabtion terms
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
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.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.