Juveniles' DNA recording defended (BBC)

[norml]

Juveniles' DNA recording defended


None of the 24,000 were charged with an offence or cautioned

The government has defended storing the DNA profiles of about 24,000 children and young people aged 10 to 18.

The youngsters' details are held on the UK database, despite them never having been cautioned, charged or convicted of an offence, a Conservative MP found.

Grant Shapps obtained the figures in his campaign to have the DNA profile of a wrongly arrested teenager erased.

He fears a juvenile database is being created by "stealth". The Home Office said no-one lost out by being on it.

Suspects who are arrested over any imprisonable offence can have their DNA held even if they are acquitted.


snip


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4633918.stm

[saigon68]

1. That's one fucked up country with laws like that

[Silverhair]

2. How is that different from being fingerprinted and photographed? NT

[norml]

4. Fingerprints and photographs don't tell nearly so much about you as DNA.

Let's see, what can we figure out about you by knowing your genetic code?

How about almost everything.

Also since you shed hair and skin cells everywhere you go, maybe some of your DNA might be found at any number of crime scenes, making you look like an easy win for some clueless prosecutor.

[Silverhair]

9. For ID they don't use the entire code. Too much work.

They only use certain markers. It is very much the same as fingerprints. And you can innocently leave fingerprints at a crime scene too.

[norml]

15. Yes, but to leave fingerprints you actually have to touch something

where as shedding happens everywhere you go.

Also I suppose if you had a sample of DNA you could use as much of it as you like.

[Silverhair]

19. You don't shed enough for a sample. You pretty much have to

have a serious contact. Semen in a raped & murdered woman is a typical DNA source. There have been a bunch of rapes solved by running the old semen sample for DNA, then profiling the DNA of sex offenders who were convicted from DNA.

I have no problem with DNA as a method of ID.

[Silverhair]

21. Full sequencing of one person's gene costs well over $20 million.

It was only a few years ago that the human genome project used $3 BILLION dollars to sequence ONE entire human genome.

Your local police department will NOT be reading your entire genome anytime soon.

There is a HUGE technological difference between mapping a entire genome, and mapping just enough for an ID.

[Trillo]

5. To see DNA, a cell wall must be broken.

Think of the "cell wall" or cell "membrane" as a "locked door" which must be broken before its contents can be "searched and seized."

[Silverhair]

10. But the cell is not attached to you when it is processed.

That is like claiming that a letter that you have thrown away can't be opened and read.

This is nothing more than very positive ID, and I see no problem with it. I have been fingerprinted so many times in my life that I have lost count.

Having DNA samples has solved some crimes. Arrested people's DNA has been run against computer files and matched with unsolved rapes. I think that is a good thing.

[Trillo]

22. It all comes down to ownership, from my perspective.

Most people are happy that crimes, especially violent ones, are solved and the truly responsible party is caught and given due process of law.

If a suspect goes to work, are police free to search and seize from a suspect's residence without a warrant? After all, the suspect left the residence behind while they were at work. In the case of a letter, it can be shredded or otherwise destroyed before placing in the trash, indeed, governments are opening some mail before delivery: leaving unattached cells behind you wherever you go seems mostly unavoidable in the normal course of one's activities. What's to prevent the police from taking live cells from a person for the stated purpose of DNA sequencing, and clandestinely saving some of those live cells for the purposes of planting evidence at a future crime scene?

What is today's value of this database the police are compiling? What about tomorrow's value? Who owns the database, and will any derivative products or services be derived from it, ever? Will the database owner or contributors profit from those future products?

Who will have access to the information in the database? Who gets to verify that the information in the database is as it is represented?

What's to prevent the police from concealing a DNA match to a real killer for, say, political reasons?

Should those not guilty of crimes have their genetic information parasitized (by whomever) either today or at some point in the future simply because police want their DNA information?

I see a can of worms that has already been opened by authorities, and as usual, related issues have not been dealt with to any level agreeable to a majority, only to the satisfaction of an elite few.

If a person doesn't own his or her unique combination of DNA, then s/he doesn't own the critical life material inside each and every living cell still attached to their body. If one doesn't own the critical cell content in each and every cell, they why does one own groups of living cells attached to a live body?

Does one own one's own kidney or hand? How so if citizens don't own their own unique DNA in each and every cell?

[Silverhair]

24. Who watches the watchers? That is what you are asking.

If you are unable to trust the police not to plant DNA evidence, then you can't trust them with any other kind of evidence either.

If you allow the police to have the tools to catch criminals, some will abuse that power. If you make sure they do not have the power to abuse, then the criminals run free. The question is where is that balance.

I am willing for them to be able to positively ID me. A positive ID can also clear me.

Touching a swab to the inside of you cheek does not effect any function anything you may want to do, whereas the loss of a body part would. Your argument fails because you are not considering the scale.

[Trillo]

26. It was a part of what I wrote.

You wrote: "I am willing for them to be able to positively ID me. A positive ID can also clear me."

My understanding is that DNA can absolutely clear a suspect when DNA doesn't match, but it cannot absolutely ID one: DNA can rule out, but it can only guess to some statistical confidence interval an identification. It cannot make an absolutely positive ID to 100% certainty.

What about the ownership issue? That was the main thrust of my prior post boiled down to one word.

[Silverhair]

27. DNA can make a positive ID.

I consider your ownership argument a rabbit, and I won't chase. Your real objection is to police being able to positively ID who a person is. I have no problem with not having an alias.

[Trillo]

28. my real issue is the seizure of information

from autonomous individuals for the purposes of future profit--Ownership--Who owns what, and who profits from such ownership.

Do you have a link to a respectable scientific source to back up your assertion that "DNA can make a positive ID"?

Edited to add: Here's an alleged case of DNA misidentification:

"He was arrested despite his protestations of innocence and alibi evidence that he was babysitting a sick daughter at home. Police dismissed these protestations stating that "it had to be him" since the DNA matched. The odds of the arrestee's DNA being wrongly matched against that of the crime scene were said to be one in 37 million.
...
In other words, despite the statistical calculation of 1 in 37 million on six loci, that does NOT mean that the six loci cannot match more than one person in 37 million. According to population geneticists, it is indeed possible to have the six loci match in perhaps many dozens of individuals whose DNA is contained in a databank of 700,000."
http://www.forensic-evidence.com/site/EVID/EL_DNAerror.html

Here's another statement, emphasis added by me:

"While a positive forensic-DNA match is persuasive evidence of a suspect’s association with a crime, it is not absolute proof."
http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/library/PRBpubs/bp443-e.htm

[Silverhair]

31. You add more loci, that should be obvious.

Use twelve loci, and the odds are in the trillions. Use 15 loci, and the odds become truly astronomical.

DNA is part of the forensic crime puzzle, rarely the entire puzzle.

Basically, you desire an ineffective police force. I want to see some criminals off the streets.

[Trillo]

32. I disagree with your characterization of my words.

Others can read my words and decide what I said for themselves.

I really don't see how it weakens policing to ask police and corporatists to follow constitutional principals at the same time they are identifying criminals.

FYI, here's an interesting article on case law and DNA, and what the Supreme Court has said, and what it (possibly) hasn't yet decided:

But with the rise of new technologies, the Supreme Court has begun to understand that one's privacy can be effectively invaded without physical intrusion, simply by collecting what has ostensibly been discarded. In Kyllo v. United States, the Supreme Court said that collecting and recording heat that emanates from a person's home represents a Fourth Amendment search of that home and thus requires a warrant.

The heat in question was discarded (and thus, like garbage, not owned by the resident). Furthermore, its collection entailed no physical entry onto anyone's premises. Nonetheless, the Court recognized that the pattern of the heat revealed information about the inside of the home that was private - and that the privacy of such information must be protected by the Fourth Amendment.

In Ferguson v. City of Charleston, another recent case, the Supreme Court held that cocaine-testing urine collected from women giving birth in a public hospital implicated the women's Fourth Amendment rights.

Once again, urine, like thermal emissions from a home, is garbage that a person has eliminated and disseminated to third parties. And the women in Ferguson had voluntarily surrendered their urine to medical personnel for some testing. Still, the Court said, performing an additional test on that urine to find out other information constituted a Fourth Amendment search.
http://writ.corporate.findlaw.com/colb/20040908.html

There is nothing in that article that suggests a cell wall being breached for an inside the cell search is a possible 4th amendment intrusion, but that perhaps remains to be decided.

Technology is moving much too fast for the law to be fleshed out in a timely manner, and that time disparity seems to be precisely what the corporatists leverage when they undermine our laws with their lobbyists and corruption.

:hi:

[awoke_in_2003]

6. And don't forget

that not long ago, our Great Leaders were debating getting DNA samples from anyone that was arrested for any crime. Don't think that idea won't come back

[Silverhair]

8. Everybody that is arrested is fingerprinted and photographed.

Sorry, but I see this as nothing more than ID.

[muriel_volestrangler]

17. In which case they ought to be honest and fair

and take the DNA of everyone in the country, not just those who are the victims of police mistakes. If they announced they were going to keep the DNA profile on record of the entire population, they'd face much more opposition. So they're just discriminating against one group instead.

[Silverhair]

18. Do you oppose fingerprinting of arrestees? NT

[muriel_volestrangler]

23. The fingerprints should be destroyed

if they are neither cautioned nor convicted. "Innocent until proved guilty" - it goes for fingerprints as well as verdicts.

[Silverhair]

25. Many criminals are caught because their prints are on file.

If you have ever been fingerprinted, your prints are on file at the FBI. New computer programs allow for quick searches of the hundreds of millions of prints on file.

I take it you would destroy those files.

If the police are going to catch and convict criminals, they have to have the tools to do it with. Being able to be certain of the true ID of an individual is an important tool.

[muriel_volestrangler]

29. In Britain, the fingerprints of victims are destroyed after the case

and they used to be destroyed for other innocent people too. However, Blair changed this a couple of years ago as part of his push to give the police anything they demand, by allowing the police to retain the data from anyone they arrest, however bad the arrest was. As I said, the honest thing to do would be to make taking fingerprints and DNA compulsory for the whole population, so that being wrongfully arrested (which may well happen through police malice) doesn't disadvantage you. However, Blair knows that if he sends letters out to people demanding they report to a police station to have their fingerprints taken, the average citizen will realise he is a totalitarian trying to set up a police state. So instead he picks on the people the police are already victimizing, on the grounds that a lot of people think "you must have done something wrong to get arrested". This story is the first time since the introduction of Blair's new law that the media has picked up on the number of people who've had their information taken. Since Blair has now also made any offence whatsoever arrestable, he will be able to get even more people's DNA and fingerprints in the next couple of years.

[Silverhair]

30. My prints have been on file since I was 17. (When I joined the Army)

How has that harmed me?

[muriel_volestrangler]

33. The security services may be able to illegally track you

Do you think everyone's prints and DNA should be on record, and that it should be a criminal offence to refuse to give them?

[Silverhair]

34. What is evil about not being able to have an alias?

That is the only reason I can see for being against positive ID. I would have no problems with it. DNA could be collected at birth. Prints would have to wait some years. A baby's hands are too small for readable prints. At the time of getting a driver's liscense would be a good time for printing.

What is wrong about positive ID? Why the paranoia? Do you want to have an alias?

[muriel_volestrangler]

35. Because the security services and police abuse their power

and if that's what they want, the government should be open about letting them do it, rather than hiding behind false arrests. Fingerprints don't have to be taken only at crime scenes - the government would love to be able to track people who take part in protests. Blair's desire to track us and control us is huge - ID cards (which the Lord Chancellor has now said he wants to be compulsory) that link to a central database which records all our uses of the cards forever, automatic number plate recognition for all CCTV that monitors roads (estimated 30 million pictures per day) with the data kept for 2 years, ability to stop and search anyone 'for terrorism prevention' without any suspicion, all offences now arrestable, DNA and fingerprints able to be retained from any arrest, even if it was a false arrest, the ability to lock up people for 28 days without charge (he wanted 90 days, and is still trying to get 60 days in the Lords) - and he wants to be able to bug MPs phones. At least the last one puts them in the same boat as the rest of us poor bastards.

Taking prints when drivers' licences are applied for would, of course, be pretty useless for crime dectection, since a lot of crime is committed by kids too young to drive, and also by people who don't bother getting a licence (and they'd be even more unlikely to if they knew that was when their prints would be taken - so it would increase the number of untrained drivers on the road, causing more accidents). You could do it when secondary school starts at age 11, I suppose - not much crime comes from those under 11. Those that refuse would be refused entry to school, and could go straight to a detention facility, eh?

[Silverhair]

36. Obviously you want an ineffective police force.

You seem to view all arrests as police mistakes.

I want criminals off the streets. I am willing for the police to have some modern tools to help catch criminals. All we are talking about is positive ID. You want to be able to invent an alias - on the spot - that police can't check out.

You fear police abuse more than you fear criminals. I fear criminal abuse more that I fear police abuse. I have several times in the past been a victim of common crime. I have never been victimized by police.

[muriel_volestrangler]

37. That's what "innocent until proven guilty" means (n/t)

[Silverhair]

38. Red Herring. Positive ID is NOT a conviction of anything.

Why do you want the ability to have a false identity?

[muriel_volestrangler]

39. I want the ability to keep my identity secret from the government

not necessarily create a false one. I might want to demonstrate against the government. I might oppose the Labour party. I might object to police operating a shoot-to-kill policy, and want to organise a protest against it. I might not trust the government not to victimise me if I do so.

It's not a 'red herring' - the British government is not willing to force all the population to have their DNA and prints recorded for state use, but they think they can get away with holding that information for those wrongly arrested.

[Silverhair]

40. Your criminal problem is not the same as ours.

As I stated, you fear the police more than you do criminals. So you want to restrict the police, even at the cost of making things easier for criminals.

Here, I fear criminals more than I do the police. So I am willing to give the police some more tools, even at the risk of abuse. Further, I see no problem with positive ID.

[lovuian]

3. This country is sooo Orwellish its not funny... DNA of children

what are they looking for???

[Silverhair]

11. In America, babies are footprinted at birth.

What are they looking for?

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. For a list of the threats to British freedom currently being introduced

by Blair and his police, see http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=191x14478 in the UK forum.

[saigon68]

13. Blair is a girly man one day and a POODLE THE NEXT

[HockeyMom]

12. Rudy advocated this

It was quite a while ago. He called for obtaining the DNA fingerprints of every baby at birth and establishing a National Database.

[Cerridwen]

14. Gattaca

"Gattaca Corp. is an aerospace firm in the future. During this time society analyzes your DNA and determines where you belong in life."

"...a society that now discriminates against your genes, instead of your gender, race or religion."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/plotsummary

Don't worry - it could never happen here.

We don't discriminate against people based on inherent biological traits. We would never go this far. We're more ethical and too evolved for that.

It could never happen here. I'm just one of those goofy conspiracy theorists.

[Silverhair]

20. You can't uninvent the science involved.

Crying about it won't do any good. The only thing you can try to do is to control the applications.

[f-bush]

16. the US and UK the new axis powers