Yale Law Student Wants Government To Have Everybody's DNA


Recommended Posts

What about if someone plants YOUR DNA at the scene of a crime in order to frame you? I think the current system is setup correctly. There is no need to have your DNA unless you are a suspect for a crime.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The problem is that right now if you wanted to frame someone like that it wouldn't work because not everyone's dna is on file! They would need to have a suspect then collect that suspects dna. Even that isn't constitutional unless convicted, but that's not really relevant. The point is that they would have to have some other reason to suspect someone before they compare dna, while what this student is proposing would get rid of that safeguard.

We are concentrating too much on framing, while the point is that this goes against the right to privacy.

It depends, if the criminal (the person doing the framing) was smart enough they could easily work towards getting fingerprints and DNA from the boyfriend or husband of the woman he is going to kill or whatever. Then plant both at the crime scene and wait until they have an argument or something to do it. That would give the police probable cause to get his DNA, in which case it would match what was found at the crime scene. From there you are in the same boat as if we had a big DNA database, the only difference is the criminal would have to time his actions to get them to look at the person being framed, whereas with the DNA database they could do it whenever, but they would still have to go through other evidence to prove it was the person being framed. Contrary to what you say, they could also use DNA on file to automatically rule someone out. If they knew two people had an argument shortly before one showed up dead and DNA proved that the other person involved was not the killer, they could rule them out and start looking at other evidence to find the actual killer.

What about if someone plants YOUR DNA at the scene of a crime in order to frame you? I think the current system is setup correctly. There is no need to have your DNA unless you are a suspect for a crime.

That would be mostly irrelevant. DNA alone is not enough to convict someone of a crime.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm all for this.

Then again, I'm also for posting cameras all over the damn place. (Minus inside your home)

The way I see it, the second you leave your home you are dismissing any "Right" to privacy

as to your whereabouts. You don't sue your neighbor for being outside when you left your

home simply because he saw you do it. You don't sue every other customer at the strip

club for knowing you were there. You don't sue the other drivers on the road for knowing

what direction you're heading. And we're not hunting down tourists for catching us in

their photos.

What I would ultimately like to see is an ID Card which contains your biometeric data.

The encrytion key for it would be generated based on your specific DNA- therefore,

not only would it be unique but damn near impossible to crack since it would be based

on a billion or so digit code. The card, itself, would be trackable as a signal device which

would also allow access to certain locations by proximity; since it's trackable, your location

could be immediately placed at or away from a crime scene.

Is this stuff powerful? You bet your ass it is. Could it be exploited? Yep. But someone

would seriously have to work to accomplish it, and I would imagine the number of

innocent people imprisoned would greatly decrease. Not to mention a considerable

drop in identity theft: First, the card has your picture and retnal/fingerprint data imbedded.

For internet identity theft, it would require a card-reader to use so if your card was stolen

the police would immediately see (due to the tracker) where the card was used and, with

cameras installed through-out the city, could place you elsewhere.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That would be mostly irrelevant. DNA alone is not enough to convict someone of a crime.

But it's a good start for most investigations and if the police are convinced you've done it, everything you say might just be deemed as lies.

This a big NO for me. Crazy ****, this whole world is starting to become a nanny state. Thousands of guidelines that you have to abide to, if you appose against the government your deemed an idiot (global warming, no sorry, climate change it's called now since they can't prove that the earth is warming anymore), we've got people suing each other over petiless things and a bunch of other things which are basically common sense but this seems to be missing in many people.

I don't think we should really give Governments and police to much power, especially having each individuals DNA. What's next, a tracking chip?

Someone should create a poll for this thread to see who agrees with this whole DNA thing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can people just fuggin read before they post?! The guys supporting this are providing plenty of logical reasons for why you can't simply be "framed" with this type of DNA and yet every third post asks the same ignorant question that was answered ages ago.

Note I am undecided on this but I see that many questions have been answered only for people to ask it three posts later and claim how stupid this student is.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm all for this.

Then again, I'm also for posting cameras all over the damn place. (Minus inside your home)

The way I see it, the second you leave your home you are dismissing any "Right" to privacy

as to your whereabouts. You don't sue your neighbor for being outside when you left your

home simply because he saw you do it. You don't sue every other customer at the strip

club for knowing you were there. You don't sue the other drivers on the road for knowing

what direction you're heading. And we're not hunting down tourists for catching us in

their photos.

What I would ultimately like to see is an ID Card which contains your biometeric data.

The encrytion key for it would be generated based on your specific DNA- therefore,

not only would it be unique but damn near impossible to crack since it would be based

on a billion or so digit code. The card, itself, would be trackable as a signal device which

would also allow access to certain locations by proximity; since it's trackable, your location

could be immediately placed at or away from a crime scene.

Is this stuff powerful? You bet your ass it is. Could it be exploited? Yep. But someone

would seriously have to work to accomplish it, and I would imagine the number of

innocent people imprisoned would greatly decrease. Not to mention a considerable

drop in identity theft: First, the card has your picture and retnal/fingerprint data imbedded.

For internet identity theft, it would require a card-reader to use so if your card was stolen

the police would immediately see (due to the tracker) where the card was used and, with

cameras installed through-out the city, could place you elsewhere.

You really think that the more information the government collects about individuals, the safer people will be and the less people will be in prison? If anything, the more information the government collects, the more likely that the information will be misused, lost and stolen or even sold off. It will certainly not accomplish any decrease in crime in any shape or form. All it takes is a government to change the system in order to start attacking groups of people. Very little work would need to be done. Look at the Patriot Act which has just been extended with little or no challenge and people are being victimised and imprisoned for the pettiest of reasons. An extreme government could even take things further and begin persecuting groups of people. Sounds a bit like what happens in Communist states and it appears that the Communist fear has arisen again in the USA.

And how exactly do you think having cameras all over the place would work? You really think a government would have every single camera manned 24 hours a day? In Britain, the number of CCTV cameras is unknown, very few are manned and even fewer are manned 24 hours and many are dummies. There is no evidence whatsoever that CCTV cameras have had any effect on crime reduction nor have they helped the police. Images from CCTVs are neither reliable sources of evidence and their use in court is dubious due to the quality and the inability to be able to positively identify people. Its simply a waste. The money for cameras would be better spent on policing. Then there would be the risk of not knowing which cameras are legitimate or not.

Even with current security implementations for on-line transactions, it is still difficult for the police and banks to track criminals who clone cards or use stolen details. The likelyhood of catching these criminals is low and your suggestion does nothing to solve this either.

Some people are really clueless about the world. And its these sorts of people western governments are preying on yet the same government criticise places like China for censorship and withhold information from their people.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This a big NO for me. Crazy ****, this whole world is starting to become a nanny state.

Nannies are for children. For us adults they are not needed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Should I just repost what I posted four pages ago? Yeah. I will.

Again, his proposal is regarding using junk DNA to create an identifier. There would be no need to keep anything else. It's like keeping the MD5 hash of a file, you don't need the file to know the hash.

He is not proposing keeping the information of the entire DNA sequence. Hell, he's not even proposing keeping any sample.

  • Putting solely junk DNA on a crime scene would be rather suspicious.
  • The malicious party would have to create DNA that exactly matches the party to be framed using technology that doesn't currently exist.
  • The malicious party would need access to the DNA database (that for some reason stores either samples or the full sequence, even though that's not proposed), and obtain some without anyone noticing.
  • All the evidence at the scene would have to point to that person, without exception.

That's a hell of a lot of hurdles for this to be a problem. As it is we already have fingerprinting, which is essentially a unique identifier.

You'd also have to pick somebody who could have done the crime and not just same random person. It's hard to frame somebody when they livr 2,000 miles away and work in front of a security camera.

Seriously, can people stop shouting "privacy", "liberty", and stuff about tracking and crap. It doesn't make sense.

Explain how it's an invasion of privacy. Explain how it's taking about your liberties. Explain how it could be used to frame or track people. Then you'll have a good argument.

As it stands, "tin foil hat" is an appropriate metaphor.

Finally, s1k3sT, we're not all from the US. In fact, the basis of the discussion really has little to do with specific countries - it's the concept under question. You may very well be passionate about what the US means to you, but many of us frankly don't care. Continually saying "liberty", and saying people can leave the country if they don't like "it" (whatever it may be) doesn't help.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

http://www.texastribune.org/stories/2010/feb/22/dna-deception/

After the government was caught taking infant dna samples without parental consent why would anyone trust them?! This time they will only store "junk dna", right?!

In a "free society" the right to privacy is one of the most important rights. This destroys the right to privacy. The problem isn't something they would do with the dna after they collect it, the problem is them collecting it in the first place. I can't believe people on here want an explanation of how this invades our privacy. :blink: It's an invasion of privacy because they would be storing everyone's dna! If they were just talking about convicted criminals I could possibly support it, but no way in hell could I support it for the whole population. Here in the US there needs to be probable cause to warrant invasions of privacy, there is no possible probable reason to collect the whole population's dna! What's next? Cameras in everyone's homes?! After all, it could help stop the "terrorists"...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

http://www.texastribune.org/stories/2010/feb/22/dna-deception/

After the government was caught taking infant dna samples without parental consent why would anyone trust them?! This time they will only store "junk dna", right?!

In a "free society" the right to privacy is one of the most important rights. This destroys the right to privacy. The problem isn't something they would do with the dna after they collect it, the problem is them collecting it in the first place. I can't believe people on here want an explanation of how this invades our privacy. :blink: It's an invasion of privacy because they would be storing everyone's dna! If they were just talking about convicted criminals I could possibly support it, but no way in hell could I support it for the whole population. Here in the US there needs to be probable cause to warrant invasions of privacy, there is no possible probable reason to collect the whole population's dna! What's next? Cameras in everyone's homes?! After all, it could help stop the "terrorists"...

Woah, there's goes my strawman and slippery slope alarms, ringing like crazy.

"The government" (naturally you're talking about the US gov, despite what I just said) already knows your name, address, income and all sorts of other personal details. Do those also destroy your right to privacy?

The government can already do a lot of things with the stuff they know about you. They don't. Why? Because they're not evil, or idiots. Yes, there can be selfish interests at work, but if I were to trust anyone with that stuff, it would be a government, not a private enterprise - because the former is actually accountable to the people. (For the record I live with a UK Civil Servant).

You assume that the DNA would be stored, even though that is specifically not the point. What they would keep is a hash of the info in the junk DNA. All it would be is personally identifiable (like your social security ID). It wouldn't tell them any details about you, nor would anyone be able to link it to you without the database.

Basically, you still haven't explained what exactly the government could do with the junk DNA hash that would really constitute an invasion of your privacy. It's certainly nothing like having cameras in people's homes. I worry that you don't really know what DNA is.

Finally, I don't particularly care about a specific case of some misguided officials in Texas. We're talking about the concept, not a badly implemented and run case of something vaguely similar. This suggestion is not the same as that case.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

http://www.texastribune.org/stories/2010/feb/22/dna-deception/

After the government was caught taking infant dna samples without parental consent why would anyone trust them?! This time they will only store "junk dna", right?!

In a "free society" the right to privacy is one of the most important rights. This destroys the right to privacy. The problem isn't something they would do with the dna after they collect it, the problem is them collecting it in the first place. I can't believe people on here want an explanation of how this invades our privacy. :blink: It's an invasion of privacy because they would be storing everyone's dna! If they were just talking about convicted criminals I could possibly support it, but no way in hell could I support it for the whole population. Here in the US there needs to be probable cause to warrant invasions of privacy, there is no possible probable reason to collect the whole population's dna! What's next? Cameras in everyone's homes?! After all, it could help stop the "terrorists"...

I'm still waiting for a real explanation on how it's an invasion of privacy.. saying it just for the sake of saying it, doesn't mean it's true. Just like saying the bible is proof of god.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Woah, there's goes my strawman and slippery slope alarms, ringing like crazy.

"The government" (naturally you're talking about the US gov, despite what I just said) already knows your name, address, income and all sorts of other personal details. Do those also destroy your right to privacy?

The government can already do a lot of things with the stuff they know about you. They don't. Why? Because they're not evil, or idiots. Yes, there can be selfish interests at work, but if I were to trust anyone with that stuff, it would be a government, not a private enterprise - because the former is actually accountable to the people. (For the record I live with a UK Civil Servant).

You assume that the DNA would be stored, even though that is specifically not the point. What they would keep is a hash of the info in the junk DNA. All it would be is personally identifiable (like your social security ID). It wouldn't tell them any details about you, nor would anyone be able to link it to you without the database.

Basically, you still haven't explained what exactly the government could do with the junk DNA hash that would really constitute an invasion of your privacy. It's certainly nothing like having cameras in people's homes. I worry that you don't really know what DNA is.

Finally, I don't particularly care about a specific case of some misguided officials in Texas. We're talking about the concept, not a badly implemented and run case of something vaguely similar. This suggestion is not the same as that case.

So your point is that since the government already invades our privacy it is okay to do the the extreme?! Like me story pointed out the truth isn't always told to the public. You can keep trusting your government, but that will get you cameras in your house and microchips in your right hand or forehead. Concept might sound fine on paper, but when criminals run our governments I'm not ready to hand my life over to them. Liberty or death! I'm done here, you are nothing but an anti-conspiracy kook. Keep begging for loss of rights and that's exactly what you'll get...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd support this if the government uses it as a "repository". That way, corrupt authorities won't be able to plant your DNA at a crime scene. Instead, they'd compare whatever DNA sample they collect with what's on file. Much like how they collect fingerprints and compare it to a number of databases.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm still waiting for a real explanation on how it's an invasion of privacy.. saying it just for the sake of saying it, doesn't mean it's true. Just like saying the bible is proof of god.

Yeah, it is an invasion of privacy. Just the act of storing the everyone's dna in a massive database is the invasion of privacy, not something they do afterwords. How can I make it any more clear? You have a right to privacy (that includes your dna), this moron is talking about requiring everyone to give up this right. How is this NOT an invasion of privacy?!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

this thing about getting framed... couldnt a criminal simply have some sort of physical contact in order to get genetic information from some random innocent bystander, and make it look like that bystander was involved in the crime as well? if this DNA data was the only thing they went by...?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd support this if the government uses it as a "repository". That way, corrupt authorities won't be able to plant your DNA at a crime scene. Instead, they'd compare whatever DNA sample they collect with what's on file. Much like how they collect fingerprints and compare it to a number of databases.

Wouldn't you be worried about the database leaking in some way? I've read countless stories of idiots leaving confidential data on used hard drives and such. This would be a data goldmine, and would be priceless to a criminal.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wouldn't you be worried about the database leaking in some way? I've read countless stories of idiots leaving confidential data on used hard drives and such. This would be a data goldmine, and would be priceless to a criminal.

How? What could a criminal do with DNA data?

And i'm still wondering how DNA is any more of an invasion of privacy as say.. oh I dunno, fingerprinting or going to the doctor and giving blood.. I mean, they have your dna, better stop going to the hospital altogether.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

this thing about getting framed... couldnt a criminal simply have some sort of physical contact in order to get genetic information from some random innocent bystander, and make it look like that bystander was involved in the crime as well? if this DNA data was the only thing they went by...

Sure, but that's why we should need more evidence than just dna. Too bad they don't even need a shred of evidence anyway. I've been convicted of things I didn't do so there couldn't be any evidence. My brother was convicted of menacing even though he had 3 witnesses saying he didn't do it and there wasn't a single piece of evidence to prove he did. So I guarantee people can be convicted on dna alone. Hell tbh they don't even need the dna...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How? What could a criminal do with DNA data?

And i'm still wondering how DNA is any more of an invasion of privacy as say.. oh I dunno, fingerprinting or going to the doctor and giving blood.. I mean, they have your dna, better stop going to the hospital altogether.

Just because our rights are being violated by fingerprinting doesn't mean it's okay to take it to the next level of dna databases. I don't go to the hospital, because they aren't interested in making us healthy, they want to make us sick because it's all about profits. I take care of my own health, and out of all the people I know I'm easily one of the healthiest. I didn't even think about taking the swine flu vaccine (that was recalled because at the least it doesn't work) I eat at least a 50% raw food diet, usually closer to 75%. Eating raw foods has given me the energy I needed to start fighting the new world order. I also drink fluoride free water, which has given me the mental clarity I needed to break free from the matrix.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just because our rights are being violated by fingerprinting doesn't mean it's okay to take it to the next level of dna databases. I don't go to the hospital, because they aren't interested in making us healthy, they want to make us sick because it's all about profits. I take care of my own health, and out of all the people I know I'm easily one of the healthiest. I eat at least a 50% raw food diet, usually closer to 75%. Eating raw foods has given me the energy I needed to start fighting the new world order. I also drink fluoride free water, which has given me the mental clarity I needed to break free from the matrix.

Soo... you're basically a troll then. Either that, or a raving loony.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just because our rights are being violated by fingerprinting doesn't mean it's okay to take it to the next level of dna databases. I don't go to the hospital, because they aren't interested in making us healthy, they want to make us sick because it's all about profits. I take care of my own health, and out of all the people I know I'm easily one of the healthiest. I eat at least a 50% raw food diet, usually closer to 75%. Eating raw foods has given me the energy I needed to start fighting the new world order. I also drink fluoride free water, which has given me the mental clarity I needed to break free from the matrix.

You keep spending your extra money on food that's the same healthiness as the rest of the foods, thats cool... I drink my tap water. Works wonders for my thirst.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Soo... you're basically a troll then. Either that, or a raving loony.

I'm a troll because I have a different opinion than you? You are the loony one IMO. Anyone that willingly gives up their right for protection is crazy imo.

You keep spending your extra money on food that's the same healthiness as the rest of the foods, thats cool... I drink my tap water. Works wonders for my thirst.

What? When did I say I spend more money on food? I spend less by not eating meat and crap. I eat cheaper than most people I know. And water? I have my own well. I don't like forcefully being medicated.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.