Anyone who believes that he isn’t guilty of violating some law, if the authorities want to target him for investigation, is as naive as someone who believes in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
I’m not. Give me an example that may change my mind. Speeding - which is a traffic violation, not a crime, in my state - is the only thing I can think of. So defend your claim… what kinds of things might I be unknowingly guilty of?
It would be really handy to eliminate a lot of John and Jane Does that show up in the morgue. And keep people from faking their death and collecting insurance money. And for quickly tracking down dead beat parents. Gosh, how horrible!
Technology-wise, biology-wise, there is nothing but a grand canyon-esque difference between the two. One is simply an image, and the other requires biological material from you. Fingerprinting, contrary to popular belief, is far from absolute and will probably become less and less compelling as evidence.
DNA is probably infinitely more complicated, and at this point, contrary to friday night TV shows like CSI, it is not to be relied upon to make a case. That’s another disturbing facet of this argument. DNA technology and the law aren’t yet ready for Prop. 69.
The difference, legally, is that one is an image, and one requires a part of you. One is invasive and one is not. Remember, I’m talking legally, not logically. DNA has been found to be one of the most private things a person owns and the courts generally have protected it(AFAIK, I’m neither a lawyer, nor a legal scholar).
I didn’t say that you do want everyone to be cataloged. What I said several posts back is that if people who support laws like this have no problem submitting their DNA samples, then by extension, why don’t we just open the doors to DNS/hair/blood/semen collection upon adulthood being reached. Why wait for suspicion of having commited a crime?
I’m sure you don’t, but I know many people who do. Mainly because they were wrongfully suspected of having committed a crime, or had a police officer who was in a bad mood that night and were slapped with some bullshit charge-later to be dropped, but still it tends to leave an awful taste in their mouth.
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PS. I agree the health condition thing is silly, as is the trapped comment, they were mentioned in the “Against” section of the proposition as reasons to vote no.
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THink “lowest common denominator”. How do you get people who don’t think civically to vote your way once every 2 or 4 years? Ya, that’s right, hysteria-just like the presidential campaigns.
Sam
Well, you know, they never actually found the Zodiac Killer. 
I’m not finding the DNA fingerprinting technique of swabbing your cheek as being particularly invasive.
For the exact same reason we don’t require adults to submit fingerprints. We HAVE been fingerprinting arrestees for a awful long time and no jurisdiction has implemented across the board fingerprinting.
This will have to be one of those situations where we’re just going to disagree. I don’t feel any particular attachment to my DNA signature, no more than any other identifying characteristic. I don’t see where having it on file is more dangerous to my liberty than an ink fingerprint or picture. The picture is probably the worst of all, it’s frightfully easy to get the wrong picture, and get hassled for something you didn’t do.
By “invasive”, I didn’t mean complicated, painful or anything. I realize exactly how quick, easy and non-invasive the technique is.
Nothing wrong with that. Besides, I don’t believe I’m particularly freaked out by this or passionate about this because I’m rather confident that it will be repealed in the not-so-distant future.
Sam
Wouldn’t insurance companies be very interested in finding out what genetically-determined diseases their potential clients might have before they agree to give them health insurance or life insurance?
Robert J. Sawyer had an insurance company running genetic analyses on potential clients in his book Frameshift. He also mentioned in the book that California is the only state that has a law prohibiting insurance companies from using a person’s DNA to deny them insurance. I wonder if that’s still the case.
Where a fingerprint’s only purpose is to identify you, a DNA sample can tell too much more about you. Information that could, for example, cause you to be rejected for a life insurance policy because you’re genetically predisposed to die in your 40s.
While, in theory, life insurance companies could require a DNA test prior to getting their policy, I’d rather that information came from myself rather than some public database that the companies lobbied their way into accessing.
Heck, with the proper advances in technology, you could clone me from a DNA sample. Equating a DNA sample with a fingerprint simply because both can be used to identify me is a fairly naive position.
But that’s not why I voted against prop 69. I voted against prop 69 because the state is currently spending untold millions of dollars to fingerprint everybody who gets a driver’s license. And I can’t find any links, but around a year or so ago the state came out and said that they might as well throw all the images that they have out and start over, because the current data is so scattered and disorganized that they can’t actually search all of it.
And this is fingerprints, which are a heck of a lot less complicated than DNA. I have no faith in the California government’s ability to actually take all of these samples and put them into a searchable form.
-lv
Or how about this idea: Insurance companies begin routinely denying people whose DNA resides in the felony DNA database because at one time they either were a felon, or were suspected of having committed a felony.
Sam
I voted against this proposition for the exact reason mentioned in the first reply post-- it’s directed at everyone who is arrested, instead of only those who are convicted. I went thru the whole fingerprint argument as well, and that made me realise that I wouldn’t be terribly upset if it passed. I’m having a hard time thinking of nefarious things that the government might do with my DNA profile. Maybe 50 years from now, but not now.
I do believe, though, that many people who voted for this did not take the time to think about the difference between being arrested and being convicted. As for helping to eliminate you as the criminal if you’re innocent, it would be simple then to make the test voluntary for those who want to go the (potentially) quick and easy route.
As someone who works with DNA regularly, I find this alarming.
DNA tells far more than just your identity. It could be used in paternity cases. It could be used as blackmail in rape cases. I could be used for research on disease prevalence in populations. It could be used by insurance companies to determine coverage in population, or even personal coverage.
Why should an suspect be compelled to supply evidence for the prosecution without a warrant? Why bother with search warrants any more? Why not just make everyone give blood at birth? If all suspects should have their DNA cataloged, why not have all ballistic fingerprints of guns registered?
As has already happened, what is to prevent the government from trolling large populations of people (DNA Dragnets)? Then all you have to do is show up at a “suspects” door, have them submit DNA, and voilà! Now you done made yourself a DNA library of all of the black men, or tall men, or Hispanic men, or all men in the neighborhood.
Call me a crazy lefty liberal, but I think that you shouldn’t have to implicate yourself in a crime. Perhaps one that has yet to be committed.
I voted against it. It would be yet another mismanaged bureaucratic nightmare. 1. It smacks too much of a “You may do bad things some day”, which I personally find offensive.
2. It opens the door to abuse by employers and insurance companies.
2a. They might use it to “punish” someone who ahd been arrested and then acquitted of a crime, or simply questioned and later crossed off the Suspects List.
2b. They could use it to deny jobs or insurance - Sorry “Jack”, but your DNA shows a tendency to gain weight, which MIGHT lead to medical stuff such as heart trouble which we don’t want to cover in our health plan etc. Just think about how hard it is already, just to fix a credit rating that someone misfiled or screwed up.3. It could be considered an invasion of privacy with no “just cause” or “probable cause”.
4. Just like any other “data point”, it could be misfiled or misinterpreted.
5. “Nothing to hide” has nothing to do with it. Just by implying there might be something to hide implies “presumed guilty until proven innocent”.
No thanks, I haven’t been innoculated against rabies yet.
Why, none whatsoever.
Waiter, here’s ten bucks. Bring me that guy’s water glass when he leaves.
why I am not opposed to fingerprinting upon arrest:
It is used as a means of identifying some one when compared to prints on record - as in You’re booked for shoplifting, give the name “arthur jones”, fingerprinting you will identify you as the escaped prisoner CHarles Manson.
IOW - fingerprints are used as a method of identification at the time of arrest (at least presently), vs. some method of linking you to crimes past, present and future (although it can also do that). Fingerprinting will give NO other information than that. DNA can and will. Fingerprinting is a simple procedure, no elaborate, expensive testing required. Not so w/DNA.
Bricker - I’ve seen enough criminal cases that I no longer would contend that since I’m not aware of any particular criminal act I may have committed, I couldn’t possibly be certain that I was never with some one who’d just committed a crime, or that I’d not received the proceeds of some crime. I will agree that in even the cases I’m aware of, one could have known that something was shady - but hell, some one offers you a ride from the shopping center, hey, wait here w/the bags and I’ll get the car - would you insist that the person not leave their packages w/you? if there was stolen merchandise w/the packages, you’re in possession of same.
Once when I was in my 20’s, I met a friend on the street, we were talking, she was going into a store, I entered w/her to keep the conversation going, when we left, she confessed that she’d nerely boosted something but refrained 'cause she had been w/me. I’d never suspected that she was a theif. Another time, met up w/ a friend of my husband at the time (a recovering alc - both husband and friend of his) - we were in a store and I happened to catch the ass when he put some batteries in my purse.
another man I know was under federal indictment as a money launderer. his crime? he’d visited his nephew (at a home owned by the rest of the family), was asked “would you drive my friend to the airport?” THey were under surveilence at the time, and the “friend” was the bag man for the dope dealing sonufabitch nephew.
bottom line - if you are related to or know some one who has committed a crime, it’s not too difficult to be in a situation where you could be found guilty of some criminal behavior
Could you enlighten me as to the legal justification allowing fingerprinting of all those arrested? Or point me in the right direction to find it? (my seaching skills suck)
how do you know that???
I grew up near there. Coincidence? no. And I spent 45 minutes in Climax once. another hour in Hell some years later.
While this is all technically true, it’s not something the police force is all that equipped to accomplish at this time.
The DNA profiles used for comparison purposes in forensic settings do not contain any information that could be used to identify you particularly. They do not look at, say, the genes for eye colour or hair colour or height or any other physical attribute.
There are generally 10 areas of the genome targeted by DNA profiles. One area is the male/female indicator, which is determined by measuring the length of the gene that codes a protein called amelogenin; the male amelogenin is 6 base pairs longer than the female amelogenin. This is determined only by comparing the lengths; the actual DNA sequence here is not compared.
The other 9 loci that are tested are “short tandem repeats”. These are sections of DNA that do not have any function that we know of. They are not genes and do not give any information about your physical identity. STRs are areas where your genetic code consists of 4-6 bases (eg. CCGG - a “repeat unit”) repeated several times. What is compared is the amount of times that repeat unit is repeated. The frequency that your particular pattern occurs in the population is known, and the product of the frequencies for your pattern at each of the 9 STR loci is multiplied together to give a probability match.
So there’s not much to worry about as far as “They could tell I’m diabetic from my DNA profile” or anything like that.
What is concerning is that most police agencies keep not only a database, which includes only these 10 points of comparison, but also a databank - all the DNA samples are retained once they are given to the police. They are meant to be destroyed, I think, once the casework involving that person is completed, but so long as the case is open, those DNA samples can be accessed. The databank is something to be concerned about, as they could retain your DNA and continually test it against crime scene samples if they so desired.
Considering that most Biological Criminalistics labs have case backlogs in the 1000s, it’s highly unlikely that they’re going to go around looking for more work to do. I doubt they continually go back to those cached DNA samples unless there is a serious problem with their profile that requires a retest. However, it is a worry to some, and with good reason I think. I certainly wouldn’t support a national DNA database with all people catalogued in it, and I’m a forensic scientist - it would make my job easier!
Because it is really easy for someone to fuck up.
It’s not my job to help prosecutors eliminate OR implicate me in an investigation. I don’t care if the perp is my doppelganger and my own mother can’t tell the two of us apart, the Constitution says I am presumed innocent until the state can prove otherwise. Unless they have probable cause to get my DNA, I am certainly not going to give it to them on the weak basis that they think a fat redheaded Irish girl was the one that committed the crime. And I’m sure as hell not going to give it to them before anything actually happens. This is a field where, if someone makes an “oopsie,” people’s lives can be ruined. There is too much potential for human error (not to mention flat out lying) for me to trust Uncle Sam, the most inept, incompetent institution in the US, with something that could potentially land me in prison for something I didn’t do.
You guys KNOW I am the last person on this board that could be called a liberal. If California is a liberal state (liberals presumably being all about privacy), what were they thinking in coming up with such an un-American idea such as this? Fourth Amendment? Due process? Do they have that in CA these days?