Tuesday, May 02, 2006

BIG Brother alert

Federal and state governments are seeking to add millions of DNA profiles to anti-crime databases by including genetic information about people who are charged — but not yet convicted — of crimes.

The arrestee-testing laws generally permit a person's DNA to be taken after he or she is charged with a felony. If a defendant is acquitted or the charges are dropped, the profile is expunged from the database and the biological sample is destroyed. As long as the profile is in the database, it can be matched to other crimes.

Such databases initially contained only DNA profiles taken from convicted felons. However, New Mexico and Kansas this year enacted laws that require DNA testing for all people arrested for alleged felonies, and similar plans are under consideration in New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Illinois and Tennessee.


Advocates such as Sepich say that testing DNA profiles of arrestees is no more intrusive than comparing fingerprints found at crime scenes to databases of convicts and arrestees. The DNA profiles do not code for any genetic characteristics, they say.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Just wait until there is a camera at every intersection. Oh, wait.

I fear the day that the robots are released to "monitor" us. Screw databases when these machines will be able to detain as well as perhaps use lethal force.

Mike forgetting the idea of reproduction