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.'"

Comments

Re:Simple Solution

[The Frogstar]

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.

Re:Simple Solution

[pinny20]

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.

Re:Balance of power.

[plague3106]

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.

It's worse than that, he's dead! Jim

[maroberts]

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.

Re:Balance of power.

[contrapunctus]

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.

Re:Cut taxes until the federal government collapse

[ArcherB]

I would argue that the rich get tax cuts, the poor get social support and the middle class gets the shaft. What is rich? I only ask because I got a tax cut and I can barely pay my bills. Tell me, am I rich? Can you please put a number to you RICH claim?

We built it. They came.

[vkg]

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.