DHS to Begin Collecting DNA of Anyone Arrested

Foobar of Borg writes "The AP is reporting that the US will soon be collecting the DNA of anyone who is arrested by a federal law enforcement agency and any foreigner who is detained, whether or not charges are eventually brought. This begins to bring the US in line with the UK which, as discussed before on Slashdot, is trying to collect DNA of 'potential criminals' as young as five. DHS spokesman Russ Knocke stated that 'DNA is a proven law-enforcement tool.'"

Balance of power.

If you let the balance of power fall too far to the state, it's grossly naive to think it wont lead to use of that power over you, your friends and your children. History supports that as do numerous social studies.

Re:Balance of power.

You are absolutely correct.

"DNA is a proven law-enforcement tool."

and this might be true, but it also remains true that standard policing is proven, as is forensics.

There is yet to be ANY evidence that infallible ID of every citizen leads to better security, better safety, or in fact anything better.

In the end, its ONLY use is control.

Criminals with no record, no arrests, and perhaps no citizenship fall outside the view of such a system creating yet another situation where only the innocent are inconvenienced.

REAL ID and biometric IDs have only one purpose, control of the citizenry. period. anytime. in. history.

I could spend days figuring out several ways to defeat any system of ID presented, and if I can you can be absolutely certain that criminals will. In fact they have much better resources than I do and would probably do a much better job. When you have networks of 'friends' to help you out on both coasts, and on other continents, it's easier to fake things etc.

When criminals want to do something the phrase "papers please" do not stop them. These ID schemes will in fact ONLY harm citizens and their rights to do as they constitutionally are allowed.

Re:Balance of power.

Well, even the DNA samples have been called into question. Yes, if you actually recorded every single piece of DNA in a person, you'd probably have something close to foolproof. But not quite.

As it is though, I think we only look at a 130 some markers... so the changes of "collisions" are greatly increased. Also, it's been shown that some people actually have two sets of DNA. It's not been ascertained how many people may have two sets of DNA in them [thetech.org].

Re:Balance of power.

I was supposed to donate bone marrow until they found a better match.
The person who would have received my marrow would have my dna in their blood but their own dna in skin and hair samples, etc.

Interesting times.

Re:Balance of power.

If you let the balance of power fall too far to the state, it's grossly naive to think it wont lead to use of that power over you, your friends and your children.

The question is, is this really true.

Consider for a moment. Do the supporters of oppressive regimes actually suffer under them? Is it not the case that those who tacitly or overtly support this kind of power imbalance actually benefit? Certainly a minority of top supporters do, but what about the silent and not so silent majority that prop up the regime? Does their support not in fact, pay off?

Are registered Republican voters who attend church every sunday, protest against abortion, call for lower taxes and "family values" really going to suffer under these DHS policies? I invoke Godwin because it is inevitable. Look at 1930's Germany. If you weren't communist or jewish, then you, as a german, probably did rather well under the Nazi's. Why wouldn't you support them? It's not like you valued abstract concepts like "freedom" and "democracy" now did you?

Most americans, no, most people in the western world, do not value these concepts. They support internment, executions, secret trials. I'm not being rhetorical here. As long as you mention the right groups; terrorists, pedophiles, minorities, lower classes, etc, the average joe will not see their freedoms as something worth valuing anymore. People do not believe in universal rights for all, only in rights for the right people, which of course includes themselves. It's sad, but that's the way it is.

Re:Balance of power.

That is perhaps one of the most insightful comments I've ever read on Slashdot.

Most people don't quite look at it that way, but you've got a point there - folks automatically assume that just because people support a regime that does bad things, the same people will suffer under that regime. That is not necessarily true. The reason they select the regime is because bad things happen to "others" that they've been conditioned to hate (brown people, Muslims, immigrants, whatever).

The Christian right is no different. The average Joe Republican is probably rejoicing at Gitmo and the fallout of our human rights, because hey, he's not affected - it's "someone" else. And if he does get pulled over, he feels proud that he's helping the system further its goals.

It is usually the powerless ones who are always affected - Jews, minorities and in today's America, the non-citizens. And I am particularly riled up about this because I'm typing this from an airport in Texas, where as a "brown man", I was "randomly selected" to be searched. Yet again. I told the guy that I travel twice a week, and that in the past couple of weeks, I've been "randomly selected" at Texas almost every single time. His answer? "Do you tell the cop that you've never gotten caught speeding except when he's patrolling"

I was at a loss for words, and this is the irony of it all.

Re:Cut taxes until the federal government collapse

The more you cut taxes, the more the government will collapse.

In the real world however ... taxes gets cut for the rich, and the poor pay for the infrastructure, education, military, ...

Re:Cut taxes until the federal government collapse

I would argue that the rich get tax cuts, the poor get social support and the middle class gets the shaft.

Re:Cut taxes until the federal government collapse

In the real world, the U.S. taxcode is extremely progressive. The rich pay a far greater share of ALL taxes than anyone else.

The data shows the progressive tax structure of the U.S. federal income tax system on individuals that reduces the tax incidence of people with smaller incomes, as they shift the incidence disproportionately to those with higher incomes - the top 0.1% of taxpayers by income pay 17.4% of federal income taxes (earning 9.1% of the income), the top 1% with gross income of $328,049 or more pay 36.9% (earning 19%), the top 5% with gross income of $137,056 or more pay 57.1% (earning 33.4%), and the bottom 50% with gross income of $30,122 or less pay 3.3% (earning 13.4%).[9][10]

From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org].

It's bullshit to say that taxation in the U.S. is somehow regressive, or that the poor pay for everything.

Re:Cut taxes until the federal government collapse

The "rich" ... who make up about 5% of the population pay the vast majority of taxes in this country.

You, sir, have a strange notion of "vast majority". According to the Congressional Budget Office, the top 5% (for whom the average income is $457,400) of the population account for 41.4% of all tax revenue*. That percentage is a far cry from a "vast majority." Perhaps you meant the top quintile (average income = $214,500) who account for 67.2% of the tax revenue. The effective tax rate for this group is 25.2%.

How much blood do you expect to extract from the lowest quintile (average income = $15,800) anyway? Sure their effective tax rate is only 4.3%, but increasing their tax rate to 25% won't have much impact on the massive deficits to which we've grown addicted.

*Like so many tax critics, you have forgotten that income tax is but one source of tax revenue. Once you account for the additional sources (social insurance, corporate income, and excise taxes), the picture changes considerably. The upper quintile account for 58.5% of income tax revenue, but only 41.4% of all revenue.

perhaps I'm missing something

anyone who is arrested by federal law enforcement agency

How is this different than getting your prints taken when your arrested? Or do they only take prints when your charged where as this wants DNA if you're charged or not...?

Re:perhaps I'm missing something

The difference is DNA is more than an identifying trait. DNA defines your physical characteristics - the basis of you.

I'm not sure about *you*, but I'm a little uncomfortable with ANY government agency being able to tell me more about myself than I myself know.

This road leads to a Police State - plain and simple. Perhaps your comfortable living in a police state - I'm not.

What's next? Refusing you the vote cause your DNA shows a tendency to irrational behaviors or mental disease? Perhaps denying you a federal student loan cause you have genetic tendency of lower mental function? We aren't there yet - but moves like these are the first step

The government does NOT have the right to collect and store my DNA without my permission - PERIOD.

Anon.

Re:perhaps I'm missing something

"The difference is DNA is more than an identifying trait. DNA defines your physical characteristics - the basis of you." You are mistaking DNA with DNA profiles - which is what the government want. DNA profiles are more like an md5 hash of your data (i.e. DNA) rather than all the actual data which makes up you. Storing all that data would require absolutely immense processing and storage capabilities which simply don't exist. Besides, it will be a long, long time before DNA can be properly "read" and not just "compared" (which DNA analysis basically consists of at present). A DNA profile can identify you and basic traits but it can't "identify tendency to irrational behaviors" etc.

Re:perhaps I'm missing something

That still does not make me feel any better.

Re:perhaps I'm missing something

DNA profiles are more like an md5 hash of your data

DNA profiles are a lot more than that.
Depending on the type of profile, you could for example calculate blood relationship between people. You do not need tthe whole dna for that, close relatvies will also have close matches for the indicators used for profiling.

Some ways to abuse this:

"The crime DNA does not match this person exactly, but he is probably a close relative of the criminal, detain and question him!"

"This person is closely related to several convicted criminals, keep watching him"

"This person is related to a charged terrorist, deny him the goverment job"

"This person is related to several people who died early, let's raise his health premiums and offer him life insurances"

Re:perhaps I'm missing something

I don't know if the method here is different (does hair or a cheek swab provide a useful sample?)

The article said cheek swab, but still "we need you to open your mouth so we can stick this in" sounds like something the government is telling us to do a lot lately...

Shred and Incinerate

Some criminals already plant cigarette butts in stolen cars, to confuse the evidence and implicate innocent people, and I predict more of this. It's not hard to collect fake evidence from someone else's trash, to place at the scene of a crime.

To avoid identity theft, not only should you shred everything with your name and address, but now you also need to flush or incinerate everything with your DNA on it.

Re:Shred and Incinerate

you also need to flush or incinerate everything with your DNA on it.

I predict mass outbreaks of nudity, hilarity and squeamishness soon to follow.

Re:Shred and Incinerate

It's not hard to collect fake evidence from someone else's trash, to place at the scene of a crime.

Don't bother with a particular person's trash, just go to a bar or a bus stop in a poorer area of town and pick up cigarette butts. Those poor people are probably on the database and are unlikely to have good, believable alibis. They'll go to prison instead of you.

Rich.

"DNA is a proven law-enforcement tool."

"DNA is a proven law-enforcement tool."

Yes, and removing hands prevents stealing. It doesn't mean it is a good idea.

It's worse than that, he's dead! Jim

Unlike fingerprints, once you build up a sizeable DNA database, you can also to a certain extent work out the DNA of people related to the person whose DNA you sampled. (or more accurately, from the DNA, you can establish that the DNA of perpetrator was relative of someone in your database). This "creep" allows you to effectively have a DNA database for the entire population with only a small proportion of records.

A question of trust

While on the surface it may appear to be no more onerous than the fingerprinting system in use today, a DNA database would have far greater potential for abuse. What happens if they decide to use the DNA to detect ancestral or genetic heritage? Not to Godwin the thread, but technology like this would have clearly been misused in the not so recent past.

With the recent abuses of the Patriot Act, I don't trust the government not to overstep the stated purpose of this policy either.

Tourism

As a Canadian living close to the border, I'm feeling less and less welcome, and much less likely to pop over to the US to spend my dollars shopping or sight-seeing, given the growing risk that I'll be detained, finger printed, DNA stolen, laptop hard-drive taken or copied, and given a terrorist risk rating.

Really, "welcome" to the land of the free.

Here's hoping the coming election brings SOME kind of change.

Re:Simple Solution

That's simply not true. DNA and fingerprints are taken on arrest, regardless of whether or not you are charged. There is no system in place to remove this data once it is taken, even if you are found to have been wrongly arrested (I have had first hand experience of this).

How else could there be over 3 million, almost 5% of the population on the database?

As a British citizen I can't decide which scares me more, DNA databasing or CCTV cameras. I can't wait to move to Patagonia.

Re:Would you DNA the Pope ??

Heck, just find one of his altar boys. DNA all over.