Posted on 04/18/2009 6:57:25 PM PDT by zaphod3000
Law enforcement officials are vastly expanding their collection of DNA to include millions more people who have been arrested or detained but not yet convicted. The move, intended to help solve more crimes, is raising concerns about the privacy of petty offenders and people who are presumed innocent.
Until now, the federal government genetically tracked only convicts. But starting this month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will join 15 states that collect DNA samples from those awaiting trial and will collect DNA from detained immigrants — the vanguard of a growing class of genetic registrants.
The F.B.I., with a DNA database of 6.7 million profiles, expects to accelerate its growth rate from 80,000 new entries a year to 1.2 million by 2012 — a 17-fold increase. F.B.I. officials say they expect DNA processing backlogs — which now stand at more than 500,000 cases — to increase.
SNIP
But criminal justice experts cite Fourth Amendment privacy concerns and worry that the nation is becoming a genetic surveillance society.
SNIP
Sixteen states now take DNA from some who have been found guilty of misdemeanors. As more police agencies take DNA for a greater variety of lesser and suspected crimes, civil rights advocates say the government’s power is becoming too broadly applied.
SNIP
This year, California began taking DNA upon arrest and expects to nearly double the growth rate of its database, to 390,000 profiles a year from 200,000.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Soldiers are required to give DNA samples on enlistment.
Liberty v. security. America was founded on which precept?
I suppose to help identify them if they die in combat.
Yes, of course - like when they took my fingerprints way-back-when.
They still have them on file, still use them for various checks - did you think that they wouldn’t?
My mother was fingerprinted in the hospital right after I was born, and that wasn’t recently. Nobody asked permission either — it was done while she was unconscious.
http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/26025944.html
There is a strong implication that DNA databases may be severely compromised, for the same reason that “partial fingerprints” are no longer valid as evidence. The limited number of data points used in both make them prone to error far greater than the official FBI assertions.
And when this was discovered, the FBI’s response was “shut up!” and to threaten any State that conducted similar research, that might demonstrate that DNA identification is not a perfect system.
DNA is just like fingerprints from days of old. Nothing to be feared. (Well unless your some degenerate criminal )
why couldn’t you refuse by claiming the 5th amendment protection against self-incrimination?
well why don’t we just let the cops come rummaging around our houses any time they want because after all if we haven’t done anything wrong we have nothing to fear. Right?
Bunch of queers. As if not having all of our IP addresses and everything we do Online isn’t enough, they have to have our physical bodily code.
Damn good thing to be American, we scare even the bastards in DC when we group.
“why couldn’t you refuse by claiming the 5th amendment protection against self-incrimination?”
I would if I were guilty... but I would tell them to screw off anyway.
I think I’d have to sue the government to produce proof of destruction, and they’d fight me all the way even if rules required the destruction. They’d probably bankrupt me in legal fees just to set the precedent that you don’t question the Almighty Government.
Mellow out. Each time I’ve risen my right hand, and sworn to defend and protect the Constitution, I’ve also given them my fingerprints. DNA is the same.
“mellow out” good advice. I’m trying to not make my wife a rich widow before my time. ;-) “each time I’ve risen my right hand, and sworn to defend and protect the Constitution” Thank You for your service to your country. It would be a shame to give away that which you sacrificed to save. I’ll keep my rights thanks.
They took all of us in Kindergarden to the police station on a field trip while there most of us were fingerprinted. We didn’t get to keep them and I always wondered if they had kept them? They didn’t get mine though, I hated having my fingers or feet dirty and screamed when they tried to do it to me, so much so that they had to calm me down because I was so freaked out about the stuff on my fingers.
AS WELL AS
FROM EVERY BABY BORN IN EVERY HOSPITAL IN THE NATION.
HORRIBLE.
Interesting question. From what I could find, SCOTUS ruled in Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757 (1966) that the 5th Amendment protection against self-incrimination doesn’t apply to non-testimonial (non-verbal) evidence. The case involved a drunk driver whose blood sample was taken over his objection. This has been applied through other cases to fingerprints, urine samples, skin scrapings, handwriting and voice samples—they can be obtained with or without a warrant.
So neither the Fourth Amendment (search & seizure) or the Fifth Amendment (self-incrimination) would protect against genetic sampling.
Wait till they use it to deny you insurance for having a “genetic disposition” for a disease.
“nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself” I guess it would depend on what “be a witness against himself” means exactly. How giving them my DNA doesn’t make me a witness against myself is strange although maybe no stranger than giving my prints. In the case you referenced the police weren’t testing his blood so much as testing his blood for alcohol, so it wasn’t his blood that testified against him so much as the presence of booze in the blood. Maybe I’m splitting hairs here. Just thinking out-loud. I guess that’s why SCOTUS makes the big bucks. Thanks for the info.
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