Slashdot Mirror
US Set on Expansion of Security DNA Collection
An anonymous reader dropped us a link to this New York Times article about a 'vast expansion' of DNA sampling here in the US. A little-noticed rider to the January 2006 renewal of the 'Violence Against Women Act' allows government agencies to collect DNA samples from any individual arrested by federal authorities, and from every illegal immigrant held for any length of time by US agents. The goal is to make DNA collection as routine a part of detainment as fingerprinting and photography. Privacy experts and immigrant rights groups are decrying this initiative already. Many are also skeptical of lab throughput, as FBI analysts indicate this may increase intake by as much as a million samples per year. There is already a backlog of 150,000 samples waiting to be entered into the agency's database.
Being from the USA, I've always been puzzled that people visit my country. We have Yellowstone National Park (for now, anyway), the Grand Canyon, and some other beautiful scenery, but politics aside, the country is too big. The middle is essentially empty. It's too expensive to get a hotel room, too expensive to travel, and when you add in the political climate, borderline xenophobia, religious fundamentalism, the fact that so many people are armed to the teeth and don't like foreigners, and so on, I can't figure out what makes it so attractive. I understand the point of emigrating from Cuba or Myanmar or even Mexico, but why visit? I'm not saying that the entire country is a disaster, only that I myself, after living outside the country for several years, don't feel safe there anymore, am aghast at the political environment, and am basically embarrassed by much of what goes on there. If I was your guide, I wouldn't know where to take you. But maybe I'm reading too much into it, and everyone feels more or less the same way about their own country. There is probably a lot of chauvanism in my outlook. I cringe around hicks in my own country, but illiterate farmers in, say, Thailand don't bother me in the least. Too much self-consciousness, I guess. I know we don't have a monopoly on jerks or idiots, but sometimes it feels like we have all the Grade-A specimens.