US Set on Expansion of Security DNA Collection 162
An anonymous reader dropped us a link to this New York Times article about a 'vast expansion' of DNA sampling here in the US. A little-noticed rider to the January 2006 renewal of the 'Violence Against Women Act' allows government agencies to collect DNA samples from any individual arrested by federal authorities, and from every illegal immigrant held for any length of time by US agents. The goal is to make DNA collection as routine a part of detainment as fingerprinting and photography. Privacy experts and immigrant rights groups are decrying this initiative already. Many are also skeptical of lab throughput, as FBI analysts indicate this may increase intake by as much as a million samples per year. There is already a backlog of 150,000 samples waiting to be entered into the agency's database.
This has been done for a while over here. (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, the innocent have nothing to fear from this. We Love Big Blair.
Re:This has been done for a while over here. (Score:1, Informative)
the library and school meals, and this is done without
the consent of (or even consultation with) parents.
Let the demise of freedom in the UK be a salutory warning
to others around the world. It is only the inactivity of
my stupid stupid countrymen that has allowed this nighmare
to arise.
Re:Mod Parent Up (Score:1, Informative)
True. But there still is context to consider even in these cases. All you have to do is look at the Duke rape case to see what race, rape, and DNA did or did not do. "Workable applications" means absolutely nothing to prosecutors these days; the people collecting this database currently and historically are there to rip apart civil rights, not enforce them.
Further, juries do not tend to deliberate all that intelligently, as DNA is often seen as *the* magic bullet (or eraser). See, DNA has been built up as some "one in a billion" sort of scheme with the allele counts and comparisons, yet no one did a full blown study to see if this was actually true (it is largely based on mathematical models). When Arizona did some comparisons on their prisoners database, they found *3* matches within that limited prison population that, well, if the probabilities were to be believed, was impossible on a 10 allele comparison. Yet there it was.
"But when you hoover a crimescene and test everything, suddenly people with even multiple degrees of seperation become suspects."
Yup. Police, law enforcement, and DAs don't give a shit about this. Again, note that these are the ones that building this damn database. The way they think is to hoover, then eliminate. If you can't explain being there, tough, you're a suspect; your eyelash that fell off onto a passerby is merely evidence that you were in the vicinity--hence you are deemd a "person of interest" or suspect.
And you better believe, that by extension, if you come close enough to a relative that may have been there instead, they will come for you and your family.
btw, in a limited suspect pool, according to the models, you can lift enough DNA from fingerprints, according to a Science article circa 1996/97. At least that study had it right; they went from a known and firmly identified suspect pool (not a hypothetical population) and worked to figure out.
Finally, no one seems to be bringing up the 2 big problems here--(1) overbearing "victim" rights legislation, as victims rights has been used repeated to undermine the judicial system (I won't go into this further); (2)
they don't need to build an entire database of the population in order for this to screen for the *entire* population. They merely need to get enough. Because DNA is inherited, they can build cases merely on close enough matches. Say an uncle is in jail, his DNA is on record, then another crime is committed--his family are now considered suspects. If they know geneology, they can roughly figure out when descendants may carry, so your grandfather's DNA on record who protested the war 25 years ago and mother's brother who got caught pissing in public and is a registered sex offender for indecent exposure who's DNA is on file now is enough to bring up their grandson/nephew.
Many people will say this does not present a problem at all still--well, certain racial minorities are already targeted by police for the mere color of their skin or ethnic background; this puts their entire lineage under increased scrutiny, and hallmarks back to the days when your fathers crimes were your crimes as well. DNA profiling sets aside the entire swath of your actual known or evidenced behavior, and makes your blood relations your criminal background. (Not to mention, as already noted above, that such information as shown in the Arizona case may be simply wrong.)
Anyone who wants a better and brief summary of some of these issues, there was a 1 or 2 page article in the December 2006 Scientific American that covered the impact of wider DNA profiling.
Re:This has been done for a while over here. (Score:4, Informative)
I suppose you're referring to this [yorkpress.co.uk], which affected eleven schools in a single city, and like I posted elsewhere [reddit.com]:
So no, our government doesn't fingerprint children in schools, unless you count one city where it was tried and rejected by the public and politicians alike.
That's Nothing (Score:4, Informative)
Then the card is placed on file at a "secret location" where security includes a "locked gate", and kept until they're 21 1/2, although I don't think the program has been active that long, so no actual destruction of records has taken place.
Luckily, when my child was born, I was able to get them to certify that they had destroyed the blood sample, but they really resisted it.
I tell people about this and they think I'm a nut, but I don't want my kid's DNA in a government warehouse for mass importation into some database.