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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.
Of course, the innocent have nothing to fear from this. We Love Big Blair.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
i don't think keeping a dna database is much a problem. people just fear that the government would abuse this system and possibly set people up and what not. it just shows people don't trust democracy any more and that they definitely don't trust the people that they voted into power.
There are many quotes by our forefathers regarding this. It's a slow death, a slippery slope. We must avoid national security cards, mass DNA fingerprinting, etc, otherwise we will become like the old Soviet state, where you were screwed if you didn't have your "papers".
..........FULL STOP.
Lynn Parrish is quoted saying: "Rapists are generalists. They don't just rape, they also murder."
brr.
I can see where this is heading. "Robbers don't just rob, they also murder." --> "Beggers don't just beg, they also murder." --> "People spitting on the ground don't just spit on the ground, they also murder."
Basically what she's saying is that all criminals are inherently equal, and potential murderers, and thus deserve to be treated in the worst way.
Now pray, do tell me that that is not a scary viewpoint.
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
The first is the "show us your papers" police state behavior that has a camera on every street corner, national identity cards, huge databases of citizen info, warrantless monitoring of telephone and internet traffic, computerized gerrymandering, cell phone location tracking, etc, etc, etc.
/me puts tinfoil hat back on and crawls back under the bed.
The second is the "buy now!" corporation state behavior that has every purchase, every click, every commercial fast-forwarded through monitored and recorded and analyzed, while MAFIAA-DRM "loss prevention" and RFID tags in your underwear close the few remaining loopholes.
Between the politicians greed for limitless power and the corporations limitless greed for wealth, the average citizen doesn't stand a chance. Like the frog in the pot of water, they keep raising the temperature and we keep not noticing. When I read these stories I think: "By God, if there was anywhere to go, I would".
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
DNA is far from perfect. Semen in a rape case, victims blood on murderers clothes, those are workable applications. But when you hoover a crimescene and test everything, suddenly people with even multiple degrees of seperation become suspects. You may not have commited the murder, but your eyelash was found on the victim. It fell onto that guys shoulder that you bumped into on the street. He's the murderer.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
... well, we are all thinking of goverment as big brother - what about private contractors wanting this?
What will you do when goverment decides private firms (haliburton, or one of your private health insurance corporations) are the best entities to run these things. Outsourcing, anyone?
How do you absolutely guarantee that the DNA database wont be used for employee application selection, or for deciding your premium on your health insurance?
I'll just mention that Sweden has a (for medical use only - but that's currently under discussion) DNA database of all in sweden newborns since 1975 (if you havent specifically asked for non-participation), called the PKU database. It's still ongoing (my little dude was just last week registred - he's a couple of weeks)
Certain "high profile" crimes have been resulted in that the use of this database is under discussion - and the debate is for what uses this database could/should be used.
My hopes are that never, ever will this database be sent to the US/Feds/CIA (as flight iternaries are), and also that private corporation use is prohibited. Think of the society where your employer knows all about your DNA... (go see GATTACA).
"If it can be thought up, there exists at least one person trying to make it happen for real" - Phil
I'm a European, I love to travel, and I've recently decided I'm not going to travel to the USA until things improve there. How sad is that?
How quickly things can change...
Riders is a total loophole in the democracy that's possible to drive a dictatorship through. Given your use of power internationally (both diplomatic and violent power), we would prefer if you had a better functioning democracy. Do you have any estimated time-to-fix? Even a time-to-start-working-on-a-fix would be helpful.
Thanks!
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
How many criminals wear gloves? That's how many criminals will potentially carry a bottle of somebody's cultured DNA.
Fingerprints are bad enough, but at least they aren't much use beyond identification (and any abuses of identification).
But DNA? They say they are collecting it for identification, but it's practically your personal biological blueprint. Once enough of the population has their DNA recorded, you can expect to see all kinds of non-identification uses and novel abuses. Expect to see the data sold to companies that do background checks, so that potential employers can check for the "alcohol abuse gene" or the "predisposed to violent rage" gene, or subtle forms of racial discrimination like the gene that causes sickle-cell anemia.
Who knows what the future holds? Privacy is like Pandora's Box - once you give it away, you can never get it back. Anyone clinging to the, "If you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about" meme just lacks imagination.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
As I understand it, they keep actual samples to allow future testing after technology has improved. This means that in 30 years, we could imagine a scenario where insurance companies deny your grandchildren coverage because of your genetic makeup. Or, less realistically, the government could decide that some set of genes were bad- for example, caused a tendency for violence- and they would have the tools ready to round people up and arrest them. I can't imagine the government doing this, but the 20th century taught us we always have to be vigilent againt totalitarian regimes developing.
Finally- remember that you don't have to be arrested for them to get your DNA. You may be a model citizen, but have a family member who, eg, because he is at an anti-war rally, gets arrested and gets his DNA taken, and then the government essentially has your DNA too.
More a question than a comment, but if old uncle Jethro decides to up and rob a liquor store (we always knew how much Jethro loved his liquor) and they collect DNA from him, what does that mean for the rest of the family? I mean, DNA isn't just a way to identify the person. It's a way to identify entire familial relations. So, having never knocked over a liquor store myself (despite those selfish bastards for not giving it away free!) by virtue of a froward uncle, now whenever a liquor store is hit and DNA left behind, not only can they say "looks like Jethro was here" they could conceivably say "looks like a family member of Jethro's was here". What next? Does that give them Probable Cause to DNA test the rest of us...I mean, they KNOW it was one of us, and I do look drunk most of the time.
I hate to invoke the ol' Slippery Slope argument, but it sure seems like a classic case where the government is poring grease on the slope as we speak.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
-Tom
I see lots of posts about how this portends the US as a totalitarian police state.
Sorry, but that camel's nose is under the tent - you already let him in. You (the public) has begged and begged for a nanny state that watches over you and caters to your every whim. Got a problem with your neighbor? Let the courts decide. Your crop failed this year? Beg the government for disaster assistance. Hurricane wiped out your below-sea-level home? It *must* be the government's fault for not protecting/saving you, and then complain because the government handouts are insufficient or slow.
It goes back to the line from "A man for all seasons" - (IIRC) would you tear down the law to get at the devil? Of course? Then what will you hide behind when he comes back at you with his terrible power? If you demand the government keep you safe, employed, fed, housed, and happy, you're a hypocrite if you don't realize that logically this requires extensive surveillance. Kind of like the parent of a toddler.
Sorry, but we're getting exactly what we've spent at least the last 50 years begging for - government uber alles. Is it such a shock that the government (in order to protect us from stubbing our toe) wants to begin tracking where we are, what we do, and whom we do it with?
-Styopa
For years, the hospitals have been collecting DNA from every live birth. They also have records of hand and foot prints. So I don't see whats the point of resisting this. The gov is collecting data on us left and right from the time we are born.
i'm an immigrant to canada, my ultimate destination was the US until i saw how ape-shit crazy and nationalistic americans became after 9/11, so i stayed in canada. later i had to pass the border to get my passport stamped for the landed immigrant visa, i swear when i passed the border even the sun lost it's sparkle, everything was gray, the buildings were gray, the cars and people were gray, the only thing that was bright and pink were the grossly overweight G.I. Joe border patrol guards and their black/blue uniforms, guns were present EVERYWHERE! it was like dirty harry had become a place and was asking me if i was feeling lucky. i got my picture and fingerprints taken like a common criminal (under the kindly grimace of a framed picture of dick cheney hanging on the wall) and then had my papers stamped and got the hell out of there back to canada, back to freedom, somewhat. this DNA collection won't make things worse, they're already at rock bottom, i purposely missed my cousins wedding because it entailed doing a stop-over in new york and you know what? fuck america, i'm never spending a dime on an american comapny if i can avoid it and i'm not playing the little fascist game they have going on there. sorry i had to rant but it's sad to see what once was a vibrant and relatively open society that trumpeted it's freedom turn into a fear mongering, polarized and confontrational society. maybe it was always like that and it's just my illusions that got brought down to reality but i like to think that there was something special about the US before the '00's.
In Michigan, when a child is born, a government official comes in with a card including all identifying information and takes 5-6 samples of blood and places it on the card. Some are used to test for various rare genetic diseases (which could also be done at the hospital).
Then the card is placed on file at a "secret location" where security includes a "locked gate", and kept until they're 21 1/2, although I don't think the program has been active that long, so no actual destruction of records has taken place.
Luckily, when my child was born, I was able to get them to certify that they had destroyed the blood sample, but they really resisted it.
I tell people about this and they think I'm a nut, but I don't want my kid's DNA in a government warehouse for mass importation into some database.
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
Pick a European country (and yes I know Europe isn't a country but the original post wasn't being specific) and let's compare and contrast those free speech rights.
My point was that the original post lamented about how horrible things were getting in the US while ignoring the fact that many personal rights are more restricted in the majority of European countries.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
You are ignoring the truth that markets can be manipulated with money as easily as with political power. In a free market system wealth invariably concentrates in fewer and fewer hands. Even if you don't buy that, you must see that wealth is distributed so inequitably that there will exist some class of people for whom the only good economic alternative is to sell themselves into slavery.
When all the world is owned, those who do not own the means of production become the slaves of those who do, as otherwise they have no means of supporting themselves. The owners are the wolves, the people who do not own and must sell themelves into slavery are the lambs. Get it?
I aqree that there must be limits on what the majority can do. In business as well as politics. I fail to comprehend how so many people can think that domination, extortion and control are okay if carried out through economic means but not if carried out through political means.
In regards to free market types scaring the crap out of me, I am refering to people who think that the unregulated free market is a more equitable and fair way of excercising control than democracy. As in the ancient Greek kyklos, people in a Democracy are free to elect a tyrant, and often do. It makes no difference whether that is a political or economic tyrant.
Syndicalism, as practised by the Mondragon Collective, a large group of Basques in Spain, has done far better than capitalism by any objective measure. Look them up and get back to me if you disagree.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
* Yes, it's possible to obtain DNA in ways equally (or less) invasive than collecting finger prints.
* Yes, a catalog of finger prints seems rather bening.
* Yes, there is a difference between a finger print catalog and a DNA catalog.....
DNA can show if you are a carrier for a variety of genetically based health problems, and as has been mentioned already, the chances are that this information would most likely be managed if not also obtained by the private sector at the behest of the government. Now, how much do you think insurance company "A" will pay DNA warehouse "B" for access to such records? Is it okay to be denied health insurance for a genetic fingerprint?
There are certainly other similar issues that could arrise, not to mention that we're still learning just what the DNA can tell us... who knows what they'll be able to gleen from your DNA in 5, 10, 20 years...
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr. Seuss