Vast DNA Bank Pits Policing Vs. Privacy

schwit1 writes "Today a Washington Post story discusses the vast U.S. bank of genetic material it has gathered over the last few years. Already home to the genetic information of almost 3 Million Americans, the database grows by 80,000 citizens a month." From the article: "'This is the single best way to catch bad guys and keep them off the street,' said Chris Asplen, a lawyer with the Washington firm Smith Alling Lane and former executive director of the National Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence. 'When it's applied to everybody, it is fair, and frankly you wouldn't even know it was going on.'"

Gattaca

[Nick Driver]

Sure, you can try and make the argument that DNA will list all of genetic faults while a fingerprint won't, but i think Gattaca is still a long way off and protections can be built into law which will prevent such genetic profiling.

In Gattaca, genetic profiling was technically against the law, but was the de-facto standard way of life regardless of the law.

Re:Bad guys

[PatrickThomson]

As the available amount of data increases, so do unfortunate coincidences. They get some guy on circumstantial evidence, he has no alibi, therefore he's guilty.

Big??? try the UK.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so 3 million may seem shockinly large for you americans, but thats only 0.5% of your population, move to the UK, and you get a larger database, ok so only 3.4+ million DNA samples, covering 5% of the population.
Take a look at this:
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/science-research/usin g-science/dna-database/ [homeoffice.gov.uk]

Re:Bad guys

[Mr. Slippery]

the search must still be ordered through a FISA court judge. It STILL goes through courts in other words.

The fact that the FBI gets an order rubber-stamped by a special secret court specifically set up to grant such stamping, does not change that the process is done without the Constitutionally-required warrants based on probable cause, in violation of state confidentiality laws, and using unconstitutional gag orders.

See this analysis by the FCNL [fcnl.org]:

Rhetoric: Ms. Comstock noted the requirement for the FBI to receive "a court order," elaborating that FBI agents can obtain business records "only by appearing before the FISA court and convincing it that they need them."

Reality: When the Justice Department says that section 215 requires a "court order," many people assume that the FBI has to produce evidence for a court to weigh, that the FBI has to have probable cause of commission of a crime (past or present), or that the judge can refuse to issue the warrant if the judge doesn't think the evidence justifies issuing the order. None of those assumptions apply to a section 215 application. Normal judicial supervision of the search warrant process is reduced to a rubber stamp of the application's careful preparation by the FBI.

Applications for warrants under section 215 are made to a FISA court judge (a federal judge appointed by the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court without confirmation by the Senate), or to a federal magistrate judge, also especially appointed by the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. The proceedings are ex parte, meaning that they are obtained without notice to the suspect. The order may not specify that it is issued for the purposes of the terrorism investigation. And, the individuals served with the order and responding to the order are prohibited from informing the suspect or any third party that the order has been served.

Section 215 allows the government to obtain records without probable cause of past or planned criminal conduct. The FBI's application must merely certify that the investigation is relevant to an ongoing investigation. Once this request is presented in the proper format, the FISA judge must then issue the warrant. The judge has no discretion to refuse the FBI's request for a section 215 business records search warrant unless the certification is incomplete.

In addition, the work of the FISA court is all conducted ex parte (without notice to or participation by the other party; only the FBI even knows the court is considering the application). Add to this secrecy the a gag order preventing the business served with the order from telling anyone about the order, and what results is that the people whose records are being searched have no way to defend themselves. For example, they have no way to present an argument to any court that there has been a mistake in identity, or that the search arises solely from protected First Amendment activity.

And further, many people assume that "court proceedings" are monitored by the press and through the press is available for public scrutiny. Again, these assumptions are not true when applied to the FISA court. The FISA "court" is a secret chamber with very different rules and procedures than those most people in the United States associate with a "court." The Justice Department is using familiar language, but with unstated definitions.

It is also important to note that under constitutionally sound procedures, approved by the U.S. Supreme Court, courts and prosecutors have the ability to shield warrants from the view of the suspect in cases where evidence may be destroyed or other security needs are at risk. The Justice Department does not need this tool to safeguard sensitive searches.

Untermensch Explained

[TubeSteak]

How is rehashing a small part of the parent post in another language considered "insightful?"

Because, if you go to the Wikipedia page for "Untermensch" [wikipedia.org] you'd learn that the Nazis used it to describe inferior people.

However, the roots of the word (in it's Nazi context) go deeper than that. It originated in 1922 from the writings of an American named Stoddard [wikipedia.org] who was racist, a WASP and a white supremacist.

From the wiki:

Quoting Stoddard: "The Under-Man -- the man who measures under the standards of capacity and adaptability imposed by the social order in which he lives.

SO, yea, it's relevant that he's "rehashing a small part of the parent post in another language." If you had bothered to look it up (or even just guessed at its Nazi heritage) you would have understood the social commentary being made.

I don't know if the OP knew that the word was originated by an American, but it adds an extra layer of meaning to his short comment.

Re:Untermensch Explained

[Arker]

Yeah, I did know. Believe it or not, I've actually read Stoddard. I've also had the displeasure of seeing several episodes of COPs, and seen similar things up close once or twice.

And while the explicitly racist edge of it tends to be surpressed (heck, in some cases it's reversed!) it's the same mindset at work. Those that the system wishes to eat, it first dehumanises in the eyes of its servants. Whether it's 'bad guy' or 'untermensch' the functional content is the same - these people are below us, not fully human, and can be treated like animals. Well, actually in many cases worse than animals.

I've actually found that many of the people involved in treating their fellow humans as something less are just /frightfully/ careful to be nice to animals, actually. Not that I'm saying everyone that's nice to animals is bad to humans ;) I can't stand cruelty to animals myself. But still, it's interesting to watch people try and imbue animals with rights at the same time they try to strip their human brothers and sisters of theirs.

Re:Bad guys

[SatanicPuppy]

It's misleading to even refer to him as Bi. Back then such distinctions didn't exist. Hell, it's only been a few hundred years since we decided they did!

Really, you can't refer to him sexually as anything other than "not abnormal for the time period". In Greece they didn't have contraception, but they did have strong motivations for limiting their population (scarcity of arable land), so it's not surprising to see a population gravitate towards same-sex encounters for casual sex play. Despite what the radicals would have you believe, it's not uncommon behavior among animal populations.

Re:Bad guys

[TapeCutter]

"In all honesty, how has your life changed in the past five years?"

Unless you live in a cave....hang on I'll start again. Everybody living on the planet had their life changed after 911, wether they realise it or not. The change was not the threat of another 9/11, it was the (planned?) reaction to it. World oil production has peaked and so has the USA's political, economic & military power, regardless of who is running the planet the "cheap energy ride" is over and we are all in for a much rougher ride over the next few decades as global population makes it's downward "correction". Hopefully those who come out the other side will have more than goats and thorny weeds.

Also please don't lecture me about civil rights and McCarthy, it is the fact that these things are fresh in the social memory that people now scream so loudly when they see the political pendulum swing wildly to EITHER "side" (ever notice how both extreme left/right look different but produce the same results for joe sixpack). Rummy is nothing less than a carictature of McCarthy, he has been foaming at the mouth about terrorists/communists and suicase nukes since the seventies.

I was born in the 50's, where I live the government was still taking children from natives in bark huts (often violently), the kids were adopted out to white families in the suburbs, the natives were not told what happened to their kids and did not get voting rights untill 1969. Today the Aborigines are back on the front page, this time it's all about family violence, drugs and petty crime, and for some strange reason these people simply don't understand "law and order" and see the cops as their enemy. It's also reported in such a manner that one would assume isolated, uneducated white families don't exist.

I ask myself, is this current political push to force aborigines to abandon their "unviable communites" in any way connected with our mineral boom and sudden interest in exporting more uranium?

Re:Frightening

[EndlessNameless]

O rly?

Sure, you can avoid Wal-mart for now. But Wal-mart isn't even close to being the only place you'd ever make a financial transaction.

To stay completely out of the databases, you'll have to forgo making any reservations at hotels, airports, or rental agencies. They pretty all require a credit card on file (usually that's just one tidbit among many).

And cash doesn't work for big purchases. Assuming you even have the cash for it--most people don't--go down to the nearest car dealership and pay cash for a new car. By law, they are required to report cash transactions in excess of $10,000. Given how eager most salesmen are to wrap up a deal and get you out the door, you may have more hassle paying cash compared to just financing it. I've been financed during a 5-minute sit-down, and all I had to do was 3 sign three times (and they didn't have my SSN before we sat down, so they couldn't have done much in advance). The more people use credit, debit, store credit, and stored-value cards, the more cash is going to raise a red flag.

My grandpa was going to buy a new car with cash... cash which he legitimately earned while saving for his retirement and which he withdrew from the bank by giving them the required advance notice for a large cash withdrawal. Guess what happened? The dealership told him it would be easier for him to go back to the bank, deposit it, and write a check. Either the paperwork for registering significant cash purchases is so onerous that they risked a sale to avoid, or MOST PEOPLE LIKE HAVING A FINANCIAL "PAPERTRAIL" (including the people you want or need to engage in a transaction).

And regardless of whether it's regulatory burden or a fear of not having everything "in the system", the result is the same. Everything can be moved into the sytem if cash is made too inconvenient to use.

And this doesn't even mention the questionable policies at some retail outlets, such as the absurd policy at Best Buy. Yeah, just try to get a cash refund of over $250 from them. Go buy $250 of cables or video games or DVDs or whatever with cash, and go back the next day with your receipt and everything in its original box. And ask for cash back. Nothing special, just American bills equal in value to ones you handed over yesterday.

Now suppose you needed to get that money for some more-or-less emergency situation because you only pay with cash.

Re:What a dolt.

[orthogonal]

Translation: If I had my way, we would be doing this now, without any debate, because I think it is justified under existing laws and precedents.

This reminds me of a certain Unitary Executive [rawstory.com] and his henchmen [usatoday.com].

Let's understand that the FBI prefers not only to keep the DNA database (which records only thirteen "genes"), but also the original sample, from which the donor's entire genetic code can be recovered.

Nowadays, the government doesn't discriminate against Jews. On May 14th 1940, it would have been perfectly safe for Anne Frank to have her "Jewish DNA" recorded by the Dutch government. On the next day, the Dutch government surrendered to Nazi Germany, and suddenly any Dutch government records were, legally and in fact, German government records.

Someone will shout "Godwin!" at this point, and some other patriotic American will claim, "it can't happen here."

Oh?

Ask your Japanese-American friends what happened to their grandparents in the America West in 1942. Or ask the parents of any your black friends about how, even after World War II, a black man risked his life if he tried to vote and broke the law if he used the wrong water fountain in many of these United States.

Or ask a gay man about how before Bowers, he could be put in prison for what he did with other consenting adults behind the locked doors of his own house.

Plenty of zealots, scientifically correct or not, have claimed to find genes that mark for "Jewishness" or "Negro blood" or even "criminal tendencies" or "homosexuality". Plenty of times, these zealots have gotten their prejudices written into laws: Nuremberg laws [ushmm.org], Jim Crow laws, or, in 1927, the U.S Supreme Court's upholding of the forced sterilisation of Americans based on then-prevailing genetic theories:

In 1924, a teenager in Charlottesville, Virginia, Carrie Buck, [cfif.org] was chosen as the first person to be sterilized under the state's newly adopted eugenics law. Ms. Buck, whose mother resided in an asylum for the epileptic and feebleminded, was accused of having a child out of wedlock. She was diagnosed as promiscuous and the probable parent of "socially inadequate offspring."

A lawsuit challenging the sterilisation was filed on Ms. Buck's behalf. Harry Laughlin, having never met Ms. Buck, wrote a deposition condemning her and her 7-month old child, Vivian. Scientists from the ERO attended the trial to testify to Vivian's "backwardness." In the end, the judge ruled in the state's favor.

On appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark case Buck v. Bell (1927), ruled 8-1 to uphold the sterilisation of Ms. Buck on the grounds she was a "deficient" mother. Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., an adherent of eugenics, declared "Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

According to University of Virginia historian Paul Lombardo, evidence was later revealed that supports the claim that Carrie Buck's child was not the result of promiscuity; Ms. Buck had been raped by the nephew of her foster parents. School records also indicate her daughter Vivian was a solid student and had made the honor roll at age 7. A year later, Vivian died of an intestinal illness.

Then, the zealots' hobbyhorse was eugenics. Today the politicians keep the people worked up by riding the hobbyhorses of "the war against terrorists" and "homosexual marriage". But Big Government has demonstrated time and time again that there are things with which it cannot be trusted. Our genetic codes are clearly one of those things that Government will eventually misuse. Our only defense is to prevent Government from getting it