Local Police Departments Are Building Their Own DNA Databases (ap.org)

Slashdot reader schwit1 quotes the Associated Press: Dozens of police departments around the U.S. are amassing their own DNA databases to track criminals, a move critics say is a way around regulations governing state and national databases that restrict who can provide genetic samples and how long that information is held. The local agencies create the rules for their databases, in some cases allowing samples to be taken from children or from people never arrested for a crime. Police chiefs say having their own collections helps them solve cases faster because they can avoid the backlogs that plague state and federal repositories...

Frederick Harran, the public safety director in Bensalem Township, Pennsylvania...said he knows of about 60 departments using local databases... "The local databases have very, very little regulations and very few limits, and the law just hasn't caught up to them," said Jason Kreig, a law professor at the University of Arizona who has studied the issue.
One ACLU attorney cites a case where local police officers in California took DNA samples from children without even obtaining a court order first.

Comments

Forget it? Unlikely

[markdavis]

>"state and national databases that restrict who can provide genetic samples and how long that information is held."

If you really believe that the government actually completely lets go (forgets/purges) DNA information it collects, I have some nice swamp land for sale in Florida...

Re:Forget it? Unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, but there really is nice swamp land in FL. Don't you mean in the desert or something?

First Glance

[drinkypoo]

At first glance I read this as "Lego police departments..."

Like wow, talk about a left-wing Lego set! Shades of the Playmobil TSA playset, eh?

Re:Forget it? Unlikely

[rmdingler]

>"state and national databases that restrict who can provide genetic samples and how long that information is held."

If you really believe that the government actually completely lets go (forgets/purges) DNA information it collects, I have some nice swamp land for sale in Florida...

Now that the storage of such data is trivial, it simultaneously unleashes the potential for great advancements and great abuses.

The best weapon we still wield against the most egregious abuses is the freedom to disseminate sketchy practices such as this, and to demand some accountability. Law enforcement is a necessary, often thankless job. My hat's off to those who keep the peace, but, if left to the police, the Police State is inevitable.

Re:Forget it? Unlikely

[cdrudge]

I have some nice swamp land for sale in Florida...

It is only swamp land on the weekends. During the week it drains to another location.

Re:Fix'd

[BarbaraHudson]

Dozens of police departments around the U.S. are amassing their own DNA databases to track *everyone*

Actually, it should be "Dozens of police departments around the U.S. are amassing their own DNA databases to track everyone stupid enough not to say "get a warrant."

Bureaucrats with Guns

[PopeRatzo]

There are people in the United States who hate the government but love the police. Never really understood that.

Re:Bureaucrats with Guns

[hey!]

Actually, neither position is peculiar, if you understand how republics actually work, as opposed to how they purport to work.

Going all the way back to Rome, powerful organs of the state (like the army or praetorian guard) tend to become autonomous and ungovernable. Over the years countless minor acts of expedience become traditions, and their constitutional role in the republic is either undermined or revised.

Today you can see this most clearly in Middle Eastern "republics", where it is never safe to talk about the "regime" without specifying which part. In Egypt the military is a major force in the economy, running businesses (like China's PLA does), and acting as a major source of social welfare and employment for its veterans. In Turkey the military plays an independent role in politics, exercising a kind of veto (sometimes unsuccessful) of populist Islamist politics. Americans are often mystified by our military aid to Pakistan, when its "government" so often acts like an enemy. It's not mysterious at all if you understand that that government is a collection of rival power centers.

Here in the US, one very useful extra-Constitutional tradition we have is the separation of internal security (local policing, federal law enforcement) and external security (the military). This introduces a fissure in the deep state that works against its tendency to become independent and ungovernable. Internal security always poses the greatest immediate risk to liberty; external security the greatest potential for becoming ungovernable. It's by default seen as unpatriotic to deny the military anything it claims it needs.

This is why Trump calling ICE raids a "military" operation was a big deal. Blurring the line between external and internal security is a radical, pseduo-conservative move that underlines a long and successful American tradition.

Am I Paranoid?

[puddingebola]

We seem to be moving towards a future where anonymity will no longer be possible. In a world where we carry pocket computers that track our location 24/7, and the police have personal databases of our genetic information, what opportunity will there be to simply be a face in the crowd. Technology continues to provide more and more of the tools that can make a perfect police state.

Re:TRUMP DNA

[sabri]

Local Police Departments Are Building Their Own DNA Databases...ok, good luck.

If you don't see the danger here, please see your local eye doctor.

I just signed up as an ACLU member.

Re:TRUMP DNA

[ShanghaiBill]

If the local police are incompetent at maintaining a database, and/or analysing DNA, then this is more dangerous. Innocent people will be charged and convicted based on bogus data, faulty evidence, or unwarranted "scientific certainty" that they did it.