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House Votes To Expand National DNA Arrest Database
suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from CNET: "Millions of Americans arrested for but not convicted of crimes will likely have their DNA forcibly extracted and added to a national database, according to a bill approved by the US House of Representatives on Tuesday. By a 357 to 32 vote, the House approved legislation that will pay state governments to require DNA samples, which could mean drawing blood with a needle, from adults 'arrested for' certain serious crimes. Not one Democrat voted against the database measure, which would hand out about $75 million to states that agree to make such testing mandatory. ... But civil libertarians say DNA samples should be required only from people who have been convicted of crimes, and argue that if there is probable cause to believe that someone is involved in a crime, a judge can sign a warrant allowing a blood sample or cheek swab to be forcibly extracted."
I would like to add a line amendment that anyone running for any government elected position also be required to submit DNA to the database.
What is good for the goose.
You know what to do, guys. Call into the anonymous tipline and accuse all of your Congressmen of burglary.
FTFY
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Wouldn't the results from a DNA test of a cheek swab of someone arrested for prostitution be, uh, somewhat confusing?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Seriously. Where is all this pressure to bypass warrants coming from?
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Somewhere in the Middle East, there is a group of Al Qaeda operatives sitting around smoking hookah under a banner that reads "Mission Accomplished"
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Call into the anonymous tipline and accuse all of your Congressmen of buggery.
Fixed that.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Seriously. Where is all this pressure to bypass warrants coming from?
An apathetic citizentry kills democracy faster than any group's ambitions.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
You can vote right wing or you can vote left wing but both wings are on the same bird.
This is just a horrible, horrible idea. And once the government gets a hold of your DNA:
* You will have no idea what it is used for, by whom, nor how often
* You will never really be able to get that data removed
* You will be put in a position to have to prove innocence instead of being assumed innocent
* You are giving up yet more control over your life and privacy to the government
* The data WILL be used to make assumptions about you
* Your DNA data WILL be unreasonably searched, every time a search is done, and without probable cause
* The data WILL be shared with other agencies- state and fed
* The data WILL be leaked in one way or another
* The data WILL be used to also implicate others in your family with "close" DNA profiles
There are lots of other ramifications, these are just the ones that pop into my mind immediately. Perhaps it is time to Email/Fax/Call your Senator and tell them what you think before the House gets its way... http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
I find it ironic that the US should decide to introduce this measure under a new government when the old one was notorious for abuse of authority.
Meanwhile, here in the UK, we just handed electoral annihilation to the administration that introduced a similar guilt-by-suspicion DNA system here, not long after the European level courts ruled that keeping innocent people's DNA on the database indefinitely was illegal anyway.
One of the first proposals brought up by our new coalition government, indeed one of the points where both parties agreed on almost everything despite their general political differences, was a "Freedom Bill". That will basically be a mass repeal of all the draconian, intrusive, guilt-assuming laws that the previous lot brought in under a climate of fear that they perpetuated more effectively from the corridors of power than any terrorist group ever could. Introducing safeguards so that innocents' DNA is removed from the database in a timely fashion will be an acid test of that bill: they've talked the talk, now will they really follow through?
DNA evidence is increasingly used to convict even where the rest of the evidence is tenuous at best. Jurors, who mostly do not understand the science behind DNA, will accept that DNA evidence must mean the accused is guilty. The problem is that there are many ways in which an innocent person can be convicted on the basis of DNA "evidence". First of all we have cross-contamination of a crime scene. Next up. cross contamination (or downright incompetence) in the lab. Next we have increasing evidence that the current science behind DNA forensic analysis is not fool-proof: the tests only look for a finite number of specific markers on the DNA sample, and it appears that there is a non-zero chance that you share a genetic fingerprint with some other person. In fact the methods used are so weak that you may even share a marker with someone who is a different race than you. As the available DNA database grows the chances of such a false positive also increases.
Darn, the 'insightful' meter stops at 5.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
That Uncle Sam is flipping you.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
The biggest problem I have with it is that while it has a process for expungement of people who are acquitted or whose guilty verdict is overturned, I didn't see anything in there requiring states to initiate the process when one of these events occurs.
In other words, it's like the TSA banned flyers list. Easy as hell to get onto, impossible to get off of. Throw in "poorly maintained" and "prone to errors/misfiles" and we'll have the TSA list all over again, except one that juries believe because they saw something about DNA on CSI.
Would this ever happen here in the US (you know, the home of the free)?
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
It is exactly the same, if more invasive, as fingerprinting. You get arrested, you get fingerprinted. Period. It stays in the database forever.
I'm not sure how many people have tried to fight fingerprints, but there has obviously never been a successful constitutionality challenge against it. DNA is simply a more complete, and more invasive, fingerprint.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Your DNA reveals a lot about you and so unauthorised access to is a clear invasion of privacy, which could only be justified by any protection against crime it causes.
Furthermore, any national database which can act as a primary index for further information held on you is a genuine totalitarian threat.
The outgoing Labour Government, which has been repeatedly noted on /. for its frightening attacks on UK liberty, insisted that the retention of DNA of innocent people was necessary to stop serious crime. However, after 9 years of retaining the DNA of innocent people, this hadn't even aided in the solving of a single serious crime.
The new coalition Government is committed to only retaining DNA of convicted criminals and temporary retention for those charged with violent and sexual offences, a model already applied in Scotland.
It should be noted that DNA is retained from crime scenes and that DNA of arrestees is checked against that before being destroyed. This is a world apart from the blanket retention that the outgoing Goverment pretended was necessary to solve certain cases.
It's now:
"You're guilty of something; We've Just not decided what it is yet..."
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
Somewhere in the Middle East, there is a group of Al Qaeda operatives sitting around smoking hookah under a banner that reads "Mission Accomplished"
And in the corner is one lone jihadi, the one who went to the notoriously liberal University of Tehran and who everyone says thinks too much, muttering "But this is but one small victory in a long and costly war! That banner and its declaration are completely inappropriate and premature!"
The enemies of Democracy are
"Not one Democrat voted against" seems an odd way to word it. Why not actually give the totals? There are 435 Representatives, but the given 357 yes / 32 no count only adds up to 389. That means the difference of 46 were conveniently absent or didn't vote. And there are currently 253 Democrats and 178 Republicans in the House, so that means even if all the nonvoting ones this time were Republican, fully 100 Republicans voted for it. (And I'd like to hear the excuses of the members who didn't vote, from both parties).
I can't call a bill that more than half of the opposition voted for anything but bipartisan, so why word the results in a partisan way? The blame should correctly fall on *all but the 32 who voted no*.
And third, you can be FRAMED with DNA. It is not difficult, and it is hard to "prove your innocence", which seems to be the necessity now. I can frame someone with DNA far easier than trying to frame them with fingerprints...