Convicted Hacker Adrian Lamo Refuses to Give Blood 673
CaliforniaCCW writes "Hopefully everyone here remembers the case of Adrian Lamo, a so-called 'gray hat' hacker who plead guilty to one count of computer crimes against Microsoft, Nexis-Lexis and the New York Times in 2004. He got a felony conviction, six months detention in his parents' home, and two years of probation. Today, as a condition of his probation, he must provide a sample of his DNA in the form of a blood sample, something which he has refused to do. Should convicted felons on probation have privacy rights over their DNA? Or is a blood sample like a fingerprint, something that everyone should provide to their government?"
The logic escapes me (Score:5, Insightful)
Felons don't have the same rights... (Score:5, Insightful)
False Dichotomy (Score:3, Insightful)
Nice transitions from convicted felons to "everyone" there.
Goverment's bio databank (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm still yet to be convinced that the government should, or needs to have, a record of everyones fingerprint, let alone DNA.
Convicted felons never had full rights anyway (Score:2, Insightful)
WTF?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the fsck should *everyone* provide fingerprints to their government?
Re:The logic escapes me (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The logic escapes me (Score:5, Insightful)
Not likely at all.
This isn't about his crime and prevention/ease of conviction. This is about gathering DNA of everyone they can. Pictures, fingerprints, blood samples, they want it all, from everyone. They start with convicted criminals, because no one cares about their rights. Then they added people flying in (only pics and fingerprints for now, baby steps, baby steps).
The phone calls of everone, add a lil' voice recognition software, cameras all over the place, GPS transponders in every car, RFID in every compulsory ID cards.
They're creating a perfect police state, and we're letting them.
Re:Patented? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:WTF?!?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well (Score:4, Insightful)
There is plenty of freedom at work here. His freedom to refuse. Note that they are not tying him down and forcing a needle into his arm. His freedom to choose more court proceedings and possibly a five year prison sentence over violating his religious beliefs.
The law is the law, but in this case the law is probably pretty weak, since he did offer up his DNA in another form. I am willing to bet that a judge might very well order the probation department to accept his alternate DNA, if he behaves himself.
Re:Convicted felons never had full rights anyway (Score:3, Insightful)
not the same (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:WTF?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd prefer that they didn't. If they want my DNA or my fingerprints, they can bloody well get a warrant signed by a judge. If they can't get that, then the Constitution protects my privacy. Bloody annoying, that Fourth Amendment. Requiring that "due process" and all. After all, law enforcement is entitled to be autocratic and lazy and just demand whatever they want on a pretext.
Pretty soon they'll want to put black boxes in your car.. oh wait, we already have those. Then they'll want to video tape you for the sole reason that you've driven down a street.. oh, we've got those too. Then they'll want to know about every phone call you make whether you've been accused of a crime or not.. oh, wait, we just found out about that one this week.
Amazingly enough, there are people who think a police state is a GOOD thing. I like to call those people "idiots" and would like to extend the police state to regulating their ability to breed, telling them it's to prevent terrorism. Fixes the problem neatly and ironically.
Re:The logic escapes me (Score:5, Insightful)
Would you find it logical if a convicted burglar, rapist, etc. would need to supply, for example, the MAC addresses of all his computers?
It's not about white or blue collar crime, but about whether the type of "identification" supplied would actually be useful for the type of crime.
What will DNA help if the crime does not involve physical presence?
Re:Felons don't have the same rights... (Score:1, Insightful)
DNA versus Fingerprints (Score:5, Insightful)
One the other hand, DNA is quite different. You can learn from DNA things the govenrment is not entitled to know. Your lineage, your health prospects, your allegries, and any number of personal attributes. From blood you can learn even more. e.g. are you HiV positive.
So saying DNA and bllod are one more in a long line of useful tools is not a gimme. We have to think it through.
It is quite clear that infinite knowledge of people is not neccessarily in societies best interest. Or at least our society does not agree that it is. And crime deterence is not the sole purpose of governement. protection of privacy and civil lberties needs to be considered. For example, even prisons and navy ships, the most well watched populations on the planet, do not fully prevent crime. And we certainly would not be willing to subject ourselves to that kind of scrutiny just to reduce crime. So there must be a trade between security and liberty and risk. One should not just blindly always trade liberty for security becuase the trade off is without limit.
Yet coming back to DNA. unlike everything except finger prints, it's something that ubquitously taints crime scenes, and it's utility is thus so much above any othe rmetric it's foolish not to atleast consider a DNA databse of former felons and possibly even citizens at large. One solution to this might be DNA hashing. perhaps there is a way to hash a DNA sequence in a manner that would be sufficient to establish presence at a crime scene. Or maybe atleast probable cause for further testing of a particular individual without actually having the governement retain DNA samples of innocent people.
An approach to this would be to identify a long list of biological diversity markers then weed out all the ones know to be associated with any health condition. Then hash these in a way that preserves just enough features to establish likely identity between two samples without revelaing any further details. The govenrment would be required to destroy the original samples and to delete any of the pre-hash specific information. This would have to be done in a manner we can trust them to actually execute this policy. I think this could be done and just to make the point, here's how. Have all testing done in labs in non-networked computers with small hard disks. This would be a physical layer to prevent overt records retention. One could of course imagine ways this could be subverted on a case by case basis but it would impede wholsale collection.
Re:Crossing a line? (Score:5, Insightful)
Frog soup (Score:5, Insightful)
When they came for the felons, I said nothing, because I was not a felon...
Re:The logic escapes me (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder what his religion has to say about breaking the law.
Re:DNA versus Fingerprints (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem here is that we can't trust the government. We already know that. They said that the SSN would only be used for social security. They said that there would be no new taxes. They said that there were weapons of mass destruction. They said that eminent domain was a tool never to be used for commercial interests. They said that no citizen could be held without a right to a hearing or the ability to contact a lawyer. They said that no person's privacy could be invaded without a warrant. They said the patriot act was only to fight terrorism. They said that they would make no law regarding the establishment of religion. They say that intrastate commerce is magically interstate commerce. I could go on for pages.
They lie. They lie all the time. They're not lying for our benefit, either — they lie to do us harm, to hide things from us, to get certain people into office (or keep them there), they lie to take our property, our freedom, to erode our rights, and to diminish our ability to hold them accountable.
You give them your DNA, and they'll swear up and down that they'll hash it and throw away the raw data. But mark my words, that DNA will appear in a database not too long afterwards in the hands of not only the government, but your insurance company, your employer, and your potential spouse.
Anything you do to extend the power of the government will be misused. Anything. Our government is completely, utterly, absolutely out of control.
Big Difference (Score:2, Insightful)
There is a huge world of difference between DNA and fingerprint samples. You leave fingerprint evidence behind when you commit a crime with your bare hands. On the knife or the gun or the doorknob, what have you. But with DNA, you may have simply walked by a crime scene coincidentally, DNA samples sloughing naturally from your body as you go.
DNA is much, much more easily abused than fingerprints. There are vulnerabilites with DNA samples that people do not anticipate when they try to say the two are the same.
Re:Frog soup (Score:2, Insightful)
I find that thought offensive. What you're saying is "gypsy, Jew, black, convicted felon, they're all the same".
People being oppressed, simply because they belong to a particular racial, ethnic, or religious group is NOT the same as an individual whose rights are reduced because he or she commits a felony.
Re:Frog soup (Score:5, Insightful)
To me it appears that frequently being in jail is the result of annoying someone with power, and not having sufficient power to escape the consequences. This can be as simple as a black or brown person driving a car.
OTOH, even when you are rich, justice may be difficult to get. It's not criminal law, exactly, at least not yet, but consider SCOX vs. IBM. IBM has been trying for three years to find out what they are being accused of, and hasn't yet gotten a straight answer. *Someone* is funneling money to SCOX, but just who is doing it is still a matter of speculation.
Given the rediculous state of our "justice" system, I wouldn't be too quick to presume that someone labelled a felon has done anything reprehensible. Look up plea-bargaining and study a few of the examples. If you aren't powerful, they can threaten you with next to no evidence, and usually get a conviction if they want one...if only by coercing you to agree to plead guilty to a lesser charge so that they don't, e.g., formally accuse you of reping poodles. They don't need to prove you guilty to ruin your life permanently.
OTOH, communication has sped the transmission of information. Now we hear about news from distant cities as if it were local. Things probably actually aren't any worse than they ever were. Probably. But the also don't appear to be any better.
Re:Frog soup (Score:3, Insightful)
Precisely. Guess what? When they came for the murderers (terrorists, embezzlers, pedophiles, gas-station stick-up men, et cetera), I said nothing. Know why? Because those are groups of people who should have their rights restricted, by virtue of the fact that their own voluntary actions violated someone else's rights. To compare that to someone having their rights restricted due to circumstances beyond their control is not only offensive, it's positively stupid.
Re:Frog soup (Score:2, Insightful)
The truth it, the vast majority of people that have been convicted are guilty. There are some that slip through the system in both directions, because nothing humans do can be perfect. Unfortunately, there's no way short of letting all the criminals out to guarantee that no innocents are jailed. Is it a price worth paying? Society says yes. My opinion is left as an exercise for the reader.
Given your tendency to commit logical fallacies in your statements, I have serious doubts about the state of your opinions.
Re:Frog soup (Score:3, Insightful)
If your objection is on the general grounds that the current system is less than perfect, and that therefore people are occasionally wrongly imprisoned, I'd sure like to hear about the perfect, error-free system you propose to replace it with. Or even about a system that will substantially reduce the prevalence of such errors while not making it impossible to imprison real, actual criminals. Who, I might remind you, do actually and in fact exist, whether or not we choose to believe that a substantial fraction of felons are simply being oppressed by The Man.
who isn't a felon? (Score:5, Insightful)
Has it ever occurred to you that the legislature can in principle make you a felon just by passing a law against breathing air?
This is not a joke. It's happening already. My guess is that well over half of all Americans have committed a sufficient dollar amount of music piracy to qualify as felony. The fact that you personally think that you are capable of avoiding felonies is irrelevant. If the government wants to make you a felon, then believe me, you will be made a felon.
There are cases on the books where even the text of the laws themselves are not available for you to read. Google for "secret laws" if you don't believe me.
Re:The logic escapes me (Score:2, Insightful)
Considering that in some states _copyright infringement_ is considered a felony and can potentially get you more time than actually physically hurting someone, I am greatly unimpressed at the "serious and egregious" attribute of many crimes.
I've always felt that it should actually be a Constitutional Right that even criminals, no matter what the "classification", should be given the opportunity to vote. It gives a much-needed source of negative feedback to out-of-control legislators - if you put too many of your constituents in jail, you will face a dedicated voting bloc who hates your guts and won't be swayed much by how much money you spend on propaganda. Right now, it is pretty simple for a fascist-leaning legislator to make sure that classes of people that they don't like can be disenfranchised and become a non-factor in political calculations.
For those alarmists who would whine about serial murderers & rapists getting to vote, I'd point out that there aren't enough of those to make a significant percentage of the voting public, so it's a baseless worry.
Fingerprints are not voluntary (Score:1, Insightful)
We used to make jokes about (with German or Russian accent) "show me your papers" and we used to say how horrible it was that they needed internal passports there. Now we have all the same stuff here, and for the same reasons.
"Convicted felon"? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The logic escapes me (Score:5, Insightful)
What does religion have to say about all that? And why does the "law" care more about a teenager pulling pranks than about slaughtering 30 thousand people for no reason at all?
I should respect the law, why? The President has adopted Nixon's notion that the President IS the law, and therefore cannot ever break the law. I guess I just suppose this kid is the law, and cannot break it either. Either statement is equally constitutionally correct.
When the law is obviously manipulated to smash the relatively innocent and pardon the murderous, who cares about it anymore? The law enforcement agencies obviously don't. Powerful people make a call, a kid goes to prison, make another call, and 30 thousand people dead don't count, even as a news story.
Re:The logic escapes me (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Lies (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you so sure?
All large organizations attempt to control us (Score:4, Insightful)
Libertarians who fail to realize the corrosive effects of private greed are blind, and leftists who fail to realize the terrible power of the state to oppress us are also blind.
Re:WTF?!?! (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm a European who has in the past co-developed some European IT technology that is currently being marketed worldwide by a US company, creating jobs for US workers. And what do I get in return? They want to treat me like a criminal! I'm sorry guys, but not with me!
Re:All large organizations attempt to control us (Score:3, Insightful)
No corporation can force me to give them my DNA. No corporation can jail me. No corporation can force me to give them money. No corporation can force me to work for them. No corporation can encourage me to do anything with any force stronger than dissasociation from that corporation's products, services, or opportunity at a job with them. I retain my freedom to travel, speak, act, and so on outside the domain of the corporation with complete impunity, regardless of what they might want to do.
But the government can do all these things. They can force me to give them DNA. The government can jail me for arbitrary terms. The government can take my money without my co-operation, any recompense, or requirement for a criminal conviction, and to add insult to injury the government can, and does, then use that money for purposes that are morally and ethically repugnant to me. The government can cause me to be ostracized by my community by accusation and/or hounding me publicly. The government can make me join the military, and they can keep me there against my will. The government can keep me from getting jobs by declaring I am a security risk, a sex offender, a felon, and so on. No matter if I am, or not. They can prevent me from flying by putting me on a list. Should they do so, I can't get off the list, and they will refuse to tell me why. They can cart me off to jail, deny me access to communications and representation, directly steal my land, stipulate what I may do to and with myself in my bedroom, my living room, eavesdrop on me, sell and give away information about me... and there is not one blessed thing I can do about it.
I have seen the government do all of these things in the last few years with the single exception of drafting people into the army from civilian life, but that I saw in the 60's and 70's and I have no doubt they will do it again, given another war, perhaps in Iran or somewhere similar such that our cannon fodder becomes a wee bit too thinned out for their requirements.
I don't see corporations as any kind of a serious threat to liberty. I see the current state of government as the very antithesis of liberty. I look around me, and all I see are sheep. Mutton Jeff, as it were.
Re:All large organizations attempt to control us (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure they can, just get thier staff to point loaded rifles at you and i'm sure you'll comply. The only thing there is to stop them doing so is the government.
No corporation can jail me.
once again the only reason corps don't imprison anyone is trouble from the govemenment
No corporation can force me to give them money.
ditto
I retain my freedom to travel, speak, act, and so on outside the domain of the corporation with complete impunity, regardless of what they might want to do.
so when the roads cartel of america that forms after the privitisation of the road network bans you from using thier roads you think there will be anything you can do about it?
Re:All large organizations attempt to control us (Score:5, Insightful)
"You quote Shell using the local police and/or military for their purposes. Were I a local, I would blame the government here; just as the company that wants my land to build a hotel on is not at fault, the government is at fault if they allow it to be taken."
And do you honestly think that Shell wouldn't have hired mercenaries to do the same thing if that had been cheaper or easier? As the record obviously shows Shell as a company is quite willing to do ANYTHING to continue their operations in the Niger delta. The point is, is that Shell is quite willing to kill innocent people to continue it's oil drilling operation in Nigeria. It is exactly this sort of case that makes me mistrust Libertarians despite their excellent well honed admirable contempt they hold towards the state. When it comes to HORRIBLE deeds committed by corporations suddenly Libertarians are as slippery as Bill Clinton talking about what the meaning of is, is... Lets see some more honesty here, BOTH corporations and governments will commit horrible deeds when they think they can get away with it, only by holding BOTH corporations and governments to merciless scrutiny and calling them on their bad deeds will we see any decency, liberty, and a sustainable way of life. Making apologetics for the owners of Nike's production facilities quite literally raping their own employees only makes you look like an asshole, which is really too bad because your original post about not trusting the government not to misuse DNA data was quite excellent. I no more trust Nike to subcontract to other private shoe making corporations that will respect human rights than I do the government to hold my DNA data or my phone records. NEITHER the government, nor Shell, Nike, Haliburton, Bechtel, Microsoft, Monsanto, Maxxam, Wal-Mart, Exxon, etc have earned my trust by engaging in consistent ethical behavior. If you wern't blinded by your Libertarian ideology you would be more honest and admit that, yet for you suddenly crimes become non crimes when committed by private corporations. THAT is why I have some respect for Libertarians outspokenness about the evils of government but do not consider myself to be a Libertarian.
Please apply the same high standards to the conduct to private organizations that you apply to governments, thank you.
Re:who isn't a felon? (Score:3, Insightful)
There are so many problems with your suggestion to fix bad laws through voting that I don't even know where to begin. Perhaps George Orwell said it best ... if there is any hope, it lies with the proles. But let me try to list the problems anyway.
In the first place, any individual voter's influence on the federal government is exceedingly limited, because a voter can only vote for senators/republicans/electoral votes in their own state, and frankly, the problematic laws in question are not being sponsored or supported by congressmen from my state, but rather congressmen from other states, for which I have no vote. Likewise, I have no direct vote in presidential elections, because my right as a voter is limited to electing an elector to represent my own state, and frankly, the electors from my own state are not the problem -- it's the electors from other states that are screwing us over.
Election procedures are of course defined in the US Constitution, and amending the Constitution is a Herculean task bordering on impossible, so like it or not we are stuck with the two party electoral vote system instead of the proportional voting system which is what most of the world thinks of when they think "democracy".
Related to the previous item is the fact that unconstitutional legislation is practically routine these days, thus seriously raising the question of whether the federal government would allow itself to be thrown out by the voters even if the voters voted it to be so. It is already plain to see that the executive branch of government in the US (the branch responsible for enforcing laws) has utter contempt for all laws and constitutional obligations. Who will be left to enforce a transition of governance, if the executive branch does not enforce it?
I need not mention the numerous problems with Diebold voting machines (which as of this writing are still on slashdot's front page). These machines are legally mandated to be used in polling booths in many states. It is common knowledge by now that the Diebold CEO has publicly pledged to do everything in his power to deliver Republican votes to Bush. How do we know that our votes are even being counted? How can we know?
The point is, representative democracy is not a panacea. It requires cooperation from our leaders in order to run well, and right now we're not getting cooperation from our leaders, we're getting opposition.
Re:All large organizations attempt to control us (Score:3, Insightful)
And then how far are we from Secret Police? (Score:4, Insightful)