Legal Commentary

Will Your DNA Soon Be in a Government Database?

By TChris

Americans (and citizens of other democracies) have long resisted the concept of a national identity card. Despite the widespread use of social security numbers as identifiers and the Bush administration's rabid support of Real ID, American citizens who do not drive or fly or work can get by without carrying a mandated identification document.

Will DNA databases make the fear of a national identity card obsolete?

©riminal justice experts ... worry that the nation is becoming a genetic surveillance society.

States routinely take DNA samples from convicted felons. Some states have started to collect DNA from individuals convicted of misdemeanors and from minors. Even more disturbing is the latest trend in privacy violations: DNA collection upon arrest, from individuals who are presumed innocent. The FBI has adopted that practice and expects a 17-fold increase in the size of its database by 2012. {more ...]

“DNA databases were built initially to deal with violent sexual crimes and homicides — a very limited number of crimes,” said Harry Levine, a professor of sociology at City University of New York who studies policing trends. “Over time more and more crimes of decreasing severity have been added to the database. Cops and prosecutors like it because it gives everybody more information and creates a new suspect pool.”

Courts have generally upheld laws authorizing compulsory collection of DNA from convicts and ex-convicts under supervised release, on the grounds that criminal acts diminish privacy rights.

DNA extraction upon arrest potentially erodes that argument, a recent Congressional study found. “Courts have not fully considered legal implications of recent extensions of DNA-collection to people whom the government has arrested but not tried or convicted,” the report said.

The philosophical question that drives policy is complex: Do Americans have a fundamental right to protect the privacy of their own identities? Birth and death certificates are public records, and the fact of our individual existence is in that sense public, not private. Yet Americans expect to exercise some control over the selective decision to disclose (or not) their identities to others, if only to prevent identity theft.

Whether or not to contribute our DNA to a government-controlled database is a decision most of us would like to make for ourselves. Apart from its utility as an identifier, our genetic makeup reveals an enormous amount of information about ourselves that isn't the government's business. After the nation's recent experience with a Republican president, only the foolish trust the government not to misuse the data it collects.

The trend needs to stop before the government requires newborn babies to submit DNA samples.

As more police agencies take DNA for a greater variety of lesser and suspected crimes, civil rights advocates say the government’s power is becoming too broadly applied. “What we object to — and what the Constitution prohibits — is the indiscriminate taking of DNA for things like writing an insufficient funds check, shoplifting, drug convictions,” said Michael Risher, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Not to mention taking DNA from innocent people who are falsely accused.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on April 19, 2009 (boomark / email).