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DHS to Begin Collecting DNA of Anyone Arrested
Foobar of Borg writes "The AP is reporting that the US will soon be collecting the DNA of anyone who is arrested by a federal law enforcement agency and any foreigner who is detained, whether or not charges are eventually brought. This begins to bring the US in line with the UK which, as discussed before on Slashdot, is trying to collect DNA of 'potential criminals' as young as five. DHS spokesman Russ Knocke stated that 'DNA is a proven law-enforcement tool.'"
It is beyond reason to even think that genetics can predispose someone to crime. Anyone that thinks so has the ignorance of those who think other races are inferior. It may be a small factor, but it is nowhere near as important as their development and current situation. And then I hear dolts that say, "well statistics say that blacks are more likely to commit a crime", but statistics also say that blacks live more impoverished conditions, and I bet you'll find an indisputable correlation between the two. This will be terrible news for anyone who may have the "criminal gene" (the idea is so stupid it's on par with the "likes to watch baseball gene"). He could be a innocent person that is more likely to be accused simply because of his genetic inheritance. Or worse he could be framed. How easy would it be for lazy policemen to "find" the hair of a local "predisposed criminal" to "solve" a murder case (which has been done, minus the predisposed part). Rather than even bother with these expensive programs, we should focus on the other factors that cause crime, such as lack of education.
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That's simply not true. DNA and fingerprints are taken on arrest, regardless of whether or not you are charged. There is no system in place to remove this data once it is taken, even if you are found to have been wrongly arrested (I have had first hand experience of this).
How else could there be over 3 million, almost 5% of the population on the database?
As a British citizen I can't decide which scares me more, DNA databasing or CCTV cameras. I can't wait to move to Patagonia.
Under the Criminal Justice Act 2003 if you are arrested for anything more than a minor offence (no need to be charged) your DNA can be taken and stored on the UK National DNA Database. It does not get destroyed.
Well, even the DNA samples have been called into question. Yes, if you actually recorded every single piece of DNA in a person, you'd probably have something close to foolproof. But not quite.
As it is though, I think we only look at a 130 some markers... so the changes of "collisions" are greatly increased. Also, it's been shown that some people actually have two sets of DNA. It's not been ascertained how many people may have two sets of DNA in them.
Almost anybody who works around children, or at least that's been the case in Maryland for about twenty years or so. I worked in the IT department of a children's hospital and was fingerprinted along with every other employee including the doctors. (As I recall, we were also all tested for AIDS). As a parent, and as an employee, it doesn't bother me. I'd prefer not to consign my children to the care of someone with a criminal background. Your alternative if the privacy question bothers you would be to seek employment where children aren't involved.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
Unlike fingerprints, once you build up a sizeable DNA database, you can also to a certain extent work out the DNA of people related to the person whose DNA you sampled. (or more accurately, from the DNA, you can establish that the DNA of perpetrator was relative of someone in your database). This "creep" allows you to effectively have a DNA database for the entire population with only a small proportion of records.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
I saw this story on Good Morning America this morning and they phrased things a little bit differently than this article. What is obvious to some but not all readers is that if you are being arrested by federal agents it is for a "federal crime". This has nothing to do with somebody being arrested for stealing a car, identity theft, simple assault etc.
I was supposed to donate bone marrow until they found a better match.
The person who would have received my marrow would have my dna in their blood but their own dna in skin and hair samples, etc.
Interesting times.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Just fucking wow!
How do they define 'detained'
The move towards a near police state in the US is rather alarming.
I, for one, won't set foot in the US any more, and I know I'm not alone. I'm just not willing to subject myself to the absolutely insane level of bullshit that America is subjecting its visitors to. Sadly, the level of xenophobia and isolationist sentiment is just too scary for me.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
This reminds me of the how my high school civics teacher put it:
Let's say I go to the supermarket with a hand gun, demand all the cash from the registers, and shoot several patrons just because I can. So far, all state crimes.
On the way out, I see a postage machine and realize I need stamps, so I shoot it open and remove a single stamp. *Now* I have committed a federal crime.
Oh shut up. "The most productive people?" Are you fucking kidding me? What EXACTLY does a CEO produce? If someone makes 1 million a year (and I'm hard pressed to think how any job that justifies that much) pays 50% tax, they still have a hell of a lot of money left. Compare to someone making 30k, 15% is a HUGE amount taken. And for what? An intrest free loan to the government? Wow.
Look, once you have the ability to use DNA fingerprinting, it's more or less inevitable that authoritarian groups will mount a long-term plan to use it. And for every group like the Innocence Project which is using it to exonerate people, there's five groups that go out after a political protest with mops and buckets to grab DNA samples of people who were there to run through the Federal Crime Database.
I'm not *for* this, I'm simply noting that once the science is there, trying to stop it being used in obvious ways which have some tangible social benefits (rape becomes very, very much harder to get away with) is very hard, even if the social costs (political protests become hard to get away with too) are also very real.
I have a partial solution to this problem.
http://guptaoption.com/4.SIAB-ISA.php
It's a proposal - done on a DoD grant - for using strong cryptography and division of powers to separate the biometric database from the identity database, so that all the metadata about a DNA sample - name, for example - is encrypted in a way which requires court orders to retrieve and - *critically* - stored by a separate agency so that it requires three separate groups to work together to bind a name to a DNA sample.
* the DNA database must run the sample
* the Court must agree to decrypt the name information when it is presented
* the Identity database must agree to provide the encrypted data to the court
This approach gives excellent security to the individual, and acknowledges the simple reality that we can't make DNA analysis and other biometric technologies go away. We have to use other technologies to counterbalance them (strong crypto) rather than hoping to turn back the clock.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
An old analogy:
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve.
"Since you are all such good customers", he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20". Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his "fair share?"
They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
"I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, "but he got $10!"
"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!"
"That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!"
"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
More Twoson than Cupertino
If that's true, then we could cut taxes on the poor to 0% and make the lost revenue up by raising taxes on the "rich" by less than a percent.
The cake is a pie
In the distant future... When aliens come on the charred remains of earth, they salvage the digital remains of the human civilization.
Alien cultural scientists studies the record and analysed the DNA data recorded. They evaluated whether the species should be resuscitated thru cloning.
Unfortunately, this was finally rejected because they found that overwhelming number of the recorded DNA was found to contain anti-social genes and concluded that the humans were fundamentally flawed in that they were anti-social and when the society hit critical mass, they self-destructed
If it's taxes you're looking to avoid, and you haven't already, consider contributing to a traditional IRA.
;)
Already have a 401k. The 'more taxes' part comes in that because I'm looking to retire early I can't put all my money into tax deferred accounts. Because I'm looking to have the same or more income when I retire, I'm maxing out a roth first.
companies not paying living wages and making sure the poor STAY poor.
You know, I find it sad that here we've been exporting jobs to china and india to save wages, yet people still aren't making 'living wages'.
I agree that you can make smarter choices with your money, but if your choices are having a 'safety margin' and eating, well, you'll probably choose to eat.
I have an interesting view on life, especially what minimum income levels it takes to survive on, what's critical and what's luxury, but yes, I agree that eating comes first. If you're having trouble making food bills, then you're poor(and probably qualify for assistance). I once, on a challange, drew up a budget for somebody making the old minimum wage because somebody said it's impossible to live on it. It can be done. It's just not nice.
Still, I only worked for minumum wage for about 3 months when I was still in HS. Ever since then, I've exceeded that wage by varying amounts.
Part of that is that I DO have knowledge, specifically money management skills. I don't keep track quite like I could if I wanted to, and my budget is fairly flexible, but it's that way because I can afford to be that way. I could probably save some money if I started clipping coupons more, but it just isn't worth the time to me for the moment.
Where you and I could probably borrow at around 7% for that two-year-old used car, the guy with no money has to pay 20% interest or more in a lot of cases.
Unavoidable consequence in that the poor guy with no money is far less likely to pay his loan back on time. Some poor people have good credit, many don't. Many can't handle it, viewing a credit card as 'free money'. For the poor guy who's likely to haul himself out of that category, a $500 decade old car out of the paper is probably a better option. Heck, my car is now 5 years old and still works fine. I really enjoy not having that car payment, but it's getting socked into investments for the eventual purchase of another car, as I know it won't last forever. Of course, I've never had 'bad' credit. I got my first CC back when I was 18, unsecured even. Still have that account*. Use it almost like a debit card; paying it off in full each month.
I've also said that any company that wants to pay that little shouldn't expect employees with cars. Works best in a labor-tight economy, of course, but I've heard of businesses in the past doing stuff like send out a van to pick up their cheap labor. Heck, over in China many factories provide dormatories and dining facilities for their workers.
You can't get a checking account if you don't make enough money, so you lose a chunk of your paycheck to a place that WILL cash it for you. You get charged service fees on your checking account if you don't have enough money in it. The whole setup is regressive.
If there's one business type that I'd throw a brick through the window on just general principal, it's the payday loan/check cashing businesses.
In reality, I've found that a little shopping around will get you a bank account without all that stuff. I've had a no-minimum, no fee** checking acount since I was 14-15. Heck, even a $5-10 montly fee would be cheaper than many check cashing places. Heck, last year I 'upgraded' it to a new plan that also gives me interest*** and 2 free foreign ATM withdrawals. Not bad, huh?
*Well, it's changed numbers because I got a bad/fradulent charge on it once; turned out the company handed a CC number off one line than what they should have. I wrote a letter and got it straightened out. Haven't had any problems since.
**As long as I don't go bouncing checks.
***On average, about 18 cents a month
I don't read AC A human right
I've stopped laughing at people into voodoo and magic who thought that by stealing part of their intended victim, some hair or maybe a fingernail, they would gain power over them.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.