Vast DNA Bank Pits Policing Vs. Privacy

schwit1 writes "Today a Washington Post story discusses the vast U.S. bank of genetic material it has gathered over the last few years. Already home to the genetic information of almost 3 Million Americans, the database grows by 80,000 citizens a month." From the article: "'This is the single best way to catch bad guys and keep them off the street,' said Chris Asplen, a lawyer with the Washington firm Smith Alling Lane and former executive director of the National Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence. 'When it's applied to everybody, it is fair, and frankly you wouldn't even know it was going on.'"

Comments

Re:What a dolt.

[orthogonal]

Translation: If I had my way, we would be doing this now, without any debate, because I think it is justified under existing laws and precedents.

This reminds me of a certain Unitary Executive and his henchmen.

Let's understand that the FBI prefers not only to keep the DNA database (which records only thirteen "genes"), but also the original sample, from which the donor's entire genetic code can be recovered.

Nowadays, the government doesn't discriminate against Jews. On May 14th 1940, it would have been perfectly safe for Anne Frank to have her "Jewish DNA" recorded by the Dutch government. On the next day, the Dutch government surrendered to Nazi Germany, and suddenly any Dutch government records were, legally and in fact, German government records.

Someone will shout "Godwin!" at this point, and some other patriotic American will claim, "it can't happen here."

Oh?

Ask your Japanese-American friends what happened to their grandparents in the America West in 1942. Or ask the parents of any your black friends about how, even after World War II, a black man risked his life if he tried to vote and broke the law if he used the wrong water fountain in many of these United States.

Or ask a gay man about how before Bowers, he could be put in prison for what he did with other consenting adults behind the locked doors of his own house.

Plenty of zealots, scientifically correct or not, have claimed to find genes that mark for "Jewishness" or "Negro blood" or even "criminal tendencies" or "homosexuality". Plenty of times, these zealots have gotten their prejudices written into laws: Nuremberg laws, Jim Crow laws, or, in 1927, the U.S Supreme Court's upholding of the forced sterilisation of Americans based on then-prevailing genetic theories:

In 1924, a teenager in Charlottesville, Virginia, Carrie Buck, was chosen as the first person to be sterilized under the state's newly adopted eugenics law. Ms. Buck, whose mother resided in an asylum for the epileptic and feebleminded, was accused of having a child out of wedlock. She was diagnosed as promiscuous and the probable parent of "socially inadequate offspring."

A lawsuit challenging the sterilisation was filed on Ms. Buck's behalf. Harry Laughlin, having never met Ms. Buck, wrote a deposition condemning her and her 7-month old child, Vivian. Scientists from the ERO attended the trial to testify to Vivian's "backwardness." In the end, the judge ruled in the state's favor.

On appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark case Buck v. Bell (1927), ruled 8-1 to uphold the sterilisation of Ms. Buck on the grounds she was a "deficient" mother. Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., an adherent of eugenics, declared "Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

According to University of Virginia historian Paul Lombardo, evidence was later revealed that supports the claim that Carrie Buck's child was not the result of promiscuity; Ms. Buck had been raped by the nephew of her foster parents. School records also indicate her daughter Vivian was a solid student and had made the honor roll at age 7. A year later, Vivian died of an intestinal illness.

Then, the zealots' hobbyhorse was eugenics. Today the politicians keep the people worked up by riding the hobbyhorses of "the war against terrorists" and "homosexual marriage". But Big Government has demonstrated time and time again that there are things with which it cannot be trusted. Our genetic codes are clearly one of those things that Government will eventually misuse. Our only defense is to prevent Government from getting it