Local Police Departments Are Building Their Own DNA Databases (ap.org) 50
Slashdot reader schwit1 quotes the Associated Press: Dozens of police departments around the U.S. are amassing their own DNA databases to track criminals, a move critics say is a way around regulations governing state and national databases that restrict who can provide genetic samples and how long that information is held. The local agencies create the rules for their databases, in some cases allowing samples to be taken from children or from people never arrested for a crime. Police chiefs say having their own collections helps them solve cases faster because they can avoid the backlogs that plague state and federal repositories...
Frederick Harran, the public safety director in Bensalem Township, Pennsylvania...said he knows of about 60 departments using local databases... "The local databases have very, very little regulations and very few limits, and the law just hasn't caught up to them," said Jason Kreig, a law professor at the University of Arizona who has studied the issue.
One ACLU attorney cites a case where local police officers in California took DNA samples from children without even obtaining a court order first.
Frederick Harran, the public safety director in Bensalem Township, Pennsylvania...said he knows of about 60 departments using local databases... "The local databases have very, very little regulations and very few limits, and the law just hasn't caught up to them," said Jason Kreig, a law professor at the University of Arizona who has studied the issue.
One ACLU attorney cites a case where local police officers in California took DNA samples from children without even obtaining a court order first.
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Local Police Departments Are Building Their Own DNA Databases...ok, good luck.
If you don't see the danger here, please see your local eye doctor.
I just signed up as an ACLU member.
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If the local police are incompetent at maintaining a database, and/or analysing DNA, then this is more dangerous. Innocent people will be charged and convicted based on bogus data, faulty evidence, or unwarranted "scientific certainty" that they did it.
Forget it? Unlikely (Score:5, Interesting)
>"state and national databases that restrict who can provide genetic samples and how long that information is held."
If you really believe that the government actually completely lets go (forgets/purges) DNA information it collects, I have some nice swamp land for sale in Florida...
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Pretty sure he means... (Score:1)
He has a nice swamp in D.C. to sell you as the officially bonded agent of Trump Real Estate Holdings LLC. :)
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Can we replace D.C. with a swamp? It was a swamp before so restoration should be relatively easy.
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You have no idea what the express means, don't you...
Irony owns you.
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>"state and national databases that restrict who can provide genetic samples and how long that information is held."
If you really believe that the government actually completely lets go (forgets/purges) DNA information it collects, I have some nice swamp land for sale in Florida...
Now that the storage of such data is trivial, it simultaneously unleashes the potential for great advancements and great abuses.
The best weapon we still wield against the most egregious abuses is the freedom to disseminate sketchy practices such as this, and to demand some accountability. Law enforcement is a necessary, often thankless job. My hat's off to those who keep the peace, but, if left to the police, the Police State is inevitable.
Re:Forget it? Unlikely (Score:5, Funny)
It [google.com] is only swamp land on the weekends. During the week it drains to another location [google.com].
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Its too expensive to go into past databases and remove people who had contact with police but did not get convicted.
"MPs 'alarmed' by millions of mugshots on Brit cops' databases" (10 Mar 2015)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... [theregister.co.uk]
Other methods are public private partnerships. A bank, private building security keeps CCTV for 6 months or more in partnership with local law enforcement.
As its
First Glance (Score:5, Funny)
At first glance I read this as "Lego police departments..."
Like wow, talk about a left-wing Lego set! Shades of the Playmobil TSA playset, eh?
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Dozens of police departments around the U.S. are amassing their own DNA databases to track *everyone*
Actually, it should be "Dozens of police departments around the U.S. are amassing their own DNA databases to track everyone stupid enough not to say "get a warrant."
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everyone stupid enough not to say "get a warrant."
1. They are collecting DNA from children, without parental consent. How many children know enough to say "get a warrant"?
2. They don't have to have YOUR data to arrest you. They can get a sibling/parent/child match and use that to identify you as a suspect.
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1. DNA collected without the parent's presence will be tossed out as evidence, so what's the big deal?
2. Only if they have cause to collect their DNA (in other words, they are a suspect) or they give it voluntarily. Even then, it won't be a match.
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1. DNA collected without the parent's presence will be tossed out as evidence, so what's the big deal?
You could use this same argument to justify any invasion of privacy by the police. They install a secret camera in your living room? Since it isn't admissible as evidence, "what's the big deal?"
Even then, it won't be a match.
You are missing the point. DNA results don't come back as "match" or "no match". They also come back as "related". If 50% of comparison points match, there is a good likelihood that they have found a parent, child, or sibling of the perp. They can then correlate that with other evidence (maybe the victim was th
Bureaucrats with Guns (Score:4, Interesting)
There are people in the United States who hate the government but love the police. Never really understood that.
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Actually, neither position is peculiar, if you understand how republics actually work, as opposed to how they purport to work.
Going all the way back to Rome, powerful organs of the state (like the army or praetorian guard) tend to become autonomous and ungovernable. Over the years countless minor acts of expedience become traditions, and their constitutional role in the republic is either undermined or revised.
Today you can see this most clearly in Middle Eastern "republics", where it is never safe to talk
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That was an insightful, informative, and well-written post - thanks for taking the time to write it.
Blurring the line between external and internal security is a radical, pseduo-conservative move that underlines a long and successful American tradition.
Should that have been "undermines"?
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Nice try, but calling out federal troops has been going on for a lot longer than since 1961. The earliest examples predate the adoption of the Constitution, the 1783 Pennsylvania Mutiny, after which the Continental Army was disbanded.
In 1792 Congress passed the Militia Act which provided for federalization of state militias in response to insurrection, and the act was used by President Washington that same year in response to the Whiskey Rebellion. In 1811 a combined force of local militia and federal troo
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Well, Indians were foreign nations, but you are shifting the discussion away here. I never said that using the military to quell insurrections was radical. I said blurring the distinction between internal and external security forces was radical.
If you can't see the distinction, try this analogy. Sometimes necessity forces you to put a drill bit in a power drill to drill out a hopelessly damaged screw. That doesn't make a drill bit a screwdriver.
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If you want an example of local police shenanigans, look no further than here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
If you wrote this as a movie script they'd reject for being too far-fetched.
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I tend to side with the police because at least they're out their putting their lives at risk to protect the public
Except that the police are not "putting their lives at risk". Policing is not a particularly dangerous profession. Farmers, truck drivers, and even garbagemen, are more likely to die on the job. The most common reason that police die is suicide. The second most common reason is traffic accidents.
Real life policing is very different from what is depicted in the movies. For instance, over a 30 year career, this is the median number of times that a police officer fires his weapon in the line of duty: 0.
Am I Paranoid? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Been in jail? Prison? DNA time. That gets your kin too.
Mil? Worked for the mil and had some medical work done? The DNA is online
New DNA test in the private sector that some gov/private medial system pays for in full?
Getting one part of the DNA can then be linked to crimes with parts of the DNA over decades, generations. Not just the person who had the DNA test but anyone who sha
Thanks AHuxley for today's paranoia. (Score:1)
No more cold cases! (Score:2)
I'm thinking back in the days (Score:2)