Fourth Amendment Supreme Court- Police Can Take DNA From Arrestees

Discussion in 'Bill of Rights' started by Yard Dart, Jun 4, 2013.


  1. Yard Dart

    Yard Dart Vigilant Monkey Moderator


    Supreme Court says police can take DNA from arrestees |
    KING5.com Seattle


    How do you feel about people being arrested and having a DNA sample taken by police, on any occasion where an arrest takes place?

    I think it is a good idea/tool to tie career criminals to unsolved crimes such as Kelly's mentioned in the article (a local story for us here in WA). It is obvious to me that nobody would do this voluntary but in the method they are doing the mandatory samples, this may solve crimes much faster and take violent offenders off the street before they repeat the crime, as they are identified much faster.

    All military members for many years have provided a sample, for DNA records to assist in identifying remains related to battle field death. Because of that, I know if I ever did something dumb, I could be easily tied to the crime thru the national data base. Of course I had no choice in the sample being taken.

    Is that tool worth the loss of privacy in your opinion? Is this going to be the slippery slope that leads to all people having DNA samples taken at birth for a national registry.....
     
  2. limpingbear

    limpingbear future cancer survivor....

    The military data base is not available to law enforcement. It was set up to be used for battlefield remains identification only.
    I think that if they are going to do the DNA upon arrest then they should only be able to use the DNA for that specific case. I don't like the idea of LE going fishing with someones DNA profile. I think there is too much room for error with it.
     
  3. VHestin

    VHestin Farm Chick

    And of course no one is EVER falsely arrested, so there is no problem, right?
     
    Mountainman and JABECmfg like this.
  4. I'm not sue if servicemen's DNA is in the national database. I looked into that once and the military website which explained the process said that the DNA is not sequenced, it is simply kept as a hard sample in a proverbial warehouse.

    They store your blood drops on a paper card (or something similar), and these physical records can only be matched "manually," not via computer. If they have your corpse, they can match the name on your dog tags to the permanent physical record stored in the warehouse, and only then when they attempt to do a match, do they sequence the DNA between the two samples (your corpse, and the blood sample on the card).

    If you research it and come up with anything different, let me know. But that's what the DoD website I went to which explained the process said. It specifically indicated that the records were not computerized, and that they would not be so even after you left the service. Even though that manual process makes the matching process (should you ever be killed in battle) much more difficult, my 'take' on it was that it was done that way as a privacy safeguard.
     
  5. stg58

    stg58 Monkey+++ Founding Member

    The reason for collection will vary widely.
    Dog violation? Pulled over on a bicycle for no light? Littering? No seat belt? Zoning violation? City ordnance violation?
    Currently in my state arrested on a felony they take it but if not convicted you can have it pulled but do they really remove it? Once in their hands does it go to CODIS and if so how do you have it removed.
    The answer IMHO is you never will...


    Easy to say it is good for "those people" but with this we are all "those people"

    ................................................................................................................................................................................................

    220px-Codis.svg.
    The CODIS database originally was primarily used to collect DNA of convicted sex offenders. Over time, this has expanded. Currently all fifty states have mandatory DNA collection from certain felony offenses such as sexual assault and homicide. Other states have gone further in collecting DNA samples from juveniles and all suspects arrested. In California, as a result of Proposition 69 in 2004, all suspects arrested for a felony, as well as some individuals convicted of misdemeanors, will have their DNA collected starting in 2009. In addition to this, all members of the US Armed Services who are convicted at a Special court martial and above are ordered to provide DNA samples, even if their crime has no civilian equivalent (for example adultery).
    Currently, the ACLU is concerned with the increased use of collecting DNA from arrested suspects rather than DNA testing for convicted felons. Along with the ACLU, civil libertarians oppose the use of a DNA database for privacy concerns as well as possible institutionalized discrimination policies in collection.

    CODIS was an outgrowth of the Technical Working Group on DNA Analysis Methods (TWGDAM, now SWGDAM) which developed guidelines for standards of practice in the United States and Canadian crime laboratories as they began DNA testing in the late 1980s.
    TWGDAM was sponsored by the FBI Laboratory which hosted several scientific meetings a year at Quantico, Virginia, to accelerate development of laboratory guidelines and peer-reviewed papers to support forensic DNA testing which was, to some, an unproven forensic tool. TWGDAM completed a white paper in October 1989 which provided conceptual and operational concepts for a Combined DNA Index System to share DNA profiles among crime laboratories similarly to automated fingerprint identification which had become commonplace in law enforcement during the 1980s.
    The FBI Laboratory began a pilot project with six state and local crime laboratories to develop software to support each laboratory's DNA testing and allow sharing of DNA profiles with other crime laboratories.
    The DNA Identification Act of 1994 formally authorized the FBI to operate CODIS and set national standards for forensic DNA testing. The TWGDAM guidelines served as interim standards until recommendations were provided by a DNA Advisory Board required under the Act. Although the Act was passed in 1994, CODIS did not become fully operational until 1998.
     
    Witch Doctor 01 likes this.
  6. Yard Dart

    Yard Dart Vigilant Monkey Moderator

    Good information above @stg58 and @BushcrafterAnthony. We all know how the system should work and what has been publicized about .mil samples taken....I hope you are right, but doubt that is the case.
    With the national intelligence apparatus consolidating it's efforts against the American people, I would not be surprised if the DNA samples of all parties arrested are nationalized within the fed database and they will expand that list of sampled parties as fast as they can. The .gov is taking overt surveillance of the people by documenting who is at rallies that do not follow the left policies; IRS targeting of counter groups to the administration such as the Tea party, repub. party and corporate donors; phone call intercepts and storing of all international calls (maybe nationally), emails, text and what ever else they can grab off the wire or satellite; attempts at gun control in 200 different ways including using states friendly to their cause to jam their plans down our throat; opening our borders to every welfare wanting illegal (which will collapse the social systems for the truly poor and in need); co-opting of state authority, in state matters, with regulatory controls that nobody has voted for; placement of czars (not voted for and only reporting to Barry) to head agencies and administrative groups driving everything from the way your child is taught, stifling of the coal industry, EPA out of control demands.........and so on. I I hear another story about some endangered worm I am going to burst.... [rnt]

    Why would they not also take the militaries DNA samples and feed that info into the database? It just makes liberal sense (the samples are there and should be used)......
    And on top of all that... there are not many on the right saying a thing either to stop any of the above..... just a bunch of sugarcoating to appease the masses..... look at the shiny ball sheep...now go and be good little children.:mad: I am going to go sharpen something......ughh.
     
    Mountainman likes this.
  7. stg58

    stg58 Monkey+++ Founding Member

    I am old enough to remember lining up at schools for the sugar cubes the polio vaccine. We way see the same thing, lining up when you are called for your "donation" to a national DNA data base.
     
    Yard Dart likes this.
  8. People lining up for Polio vaccinations? Wasn't that in the 1930's? :)
     
    kellory likes this.
  9. Yard Dart

    Yard Dart Vigilant Monkey Moderator

    [LMAO]
     
  10. stg58

    stg58 Monkey+++ Founding Member

    It was 1903, seems like yesterday.....what were talking about? Get off my Lawn!!!! I am late for the early bird special...
     
    JABECmfg, kellory and Yard Dart like this.
  11. stg58

    stg58 Monkey+++ Founding Member

    Actually early1960's, I still know a guy who is hobbled by polio to this day.
    Salk and his team in many ways are one of the best examples of post war America, they saved thousands of lives and kids in braces and iron lungs.

    poilo-affected-children.


    Iron lungs in 1952.
    800px-Iron_lungs.JPG
    Salk_headlines.

    Until 1955, when the Salk vaccine was introduced, polio was considered the most frightening public health problem of the post-war United States. Annual epidemics were increasingly devastating. The 1952 epidemic was the worst outbreak in the nation's history. Of nearly 58,000 cases reported that year, 3,145 people died and 21,269 were left with mild to disabling paralysis,[1] with most of its victims being children. The "public reaction was to a plague," said historian Bill O'Neal. "Citizens of urban areas were to be terrified every summer when this frightful visitor returned." According to a 2009 PBS documentary, "Apart from the atomic bomb, America's greatest fear was polio."[2] As a result, scientists were in a frantic race to find a way to prevent or cure the disease. U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt was the world's most recognized victim of the disease and founded the organization that would fund the development of a vaccine.
     
  12. kellory

    kellory An unemployed Jester, is nobody's fool. Banned

    My Father beat Polio.
     
  13. Pax Mentis

    Pax Mentis Philosopher King |RIP 11-4-2017

    There was a time when there was a difference between accused (or even just suspected) and convicted...

    I'm not sure I would set out for a career in criminal justice (or military, for that matter) today. Hard times and hard choices ahead.
     
  14. Yard Dart

    Yard Dart Vigilant Monkey Moderator

    I believe now days you are prosecuted by the medias, politicians, and anybody on the other bandwagon against you. You are convicted in the court of opinion and sentenced to 200 years of re-education camp to get your "mind right"....

    Innocent until proven guilty is a novelty in today's society..... which is a major travesty!!
     
  15. nmpops

    nmpops Monkey+++

    Lining up to get free polio vaccine is not in the same class. Collecting DNA from arrestees prior to conviction and without a search warrant is a travesty! In my state DNA is collected from all criminals after they are convicted of a felony. Now if you get popped for a minor violation and are later exonerated they will still have your DNA. WRONG!

    Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk 2
     
  16. tulianr

    tulianr Don Quixote de la Monkey

    Spread of DNA databases sparks ethical concerns

    EXCERPTS:
    LONDON (AP) — You can ditch your computer and leave your cellphone at home, but you can't escape your DNA.

    It belongs uniquely to you — and, increasingly, to the authorities.

    Countries around the world are collecting genetic material from millions of citizens in the name of fighting crime and terrorism — and, according to critics, heading into uncharted ethical terrain.

    Leaders include the United States — where the Supreme Court recently backed the collection of DNA swabs from suspects on arrest — and Britain, where police held samples of almost 7 million people, more than 10 percent of the population, until a court-ordered about-face saw the incineration of a chunk of the database.The expanding trove of DNA in official hands has alarmed privacy campaigners, and some scientists.
    ......

    Earlier this year Yaniv Erlich, who runs a lab at MIT's Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, published a paper in the journal Science describing how he was able to identify individuals, and their families, from anonymous DNA data in a research project. All it took was a computer algorithm, a genetic genealogy website and searches of publicly available Internet records.
    ......

    The international police agency Interpol listed 54 nations with national police DNA databases in 2009, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany and China. Brazil and India have since announced plans to join the club, and the United Arab Emirates intends to build the world's first database of an entire national population.

    The biggest database is in the United States — the FBI's Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, which holds information on more than 11 million people suspected of or convicted of crimes.

    It is set to grow following a May Supreme Court ruling that upheld the right of police forces to take DNA swabs without a warrant from people who are arrested, not just those who are convicted. (Policies on DNA collection vary by state; more than half of the states and the federal government currently take DNA swabs after arrests.)
    The court's justices were divided about implications for individuals' rights. Justice Anthony Kennedy, for the five-judge majority, called the taking of DNA a legitimate and reasonable police booking procedure akin to fingerprinting.

    But dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia argued that it marked a major change in police powers. "Because of today's decision, your DNA can be taken and entered into a national database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason," he said.

    A similar note of caution has been struck by Alec Jeffreys, the British geneticist whose 1984 discovery of DNA fingerprinting revolutionized criminal investigations. He has warned that "mission creep" could see authorities use DNA to accumulate information on people's racial origins, medical history and psychological profile.
    ......

    "At what point do you say, enough is enough? Do we want to have a society where 5 percent of the crime is unsolved, or do we want to have a society where 100 percent of the crime is solved" but privacy is compromised. "What's the trade-off?"

    And yet familial DNA searches have helped solve terrible crimes. In Kansas in 2005, police identified Dennis Rader as a serial killer known as "BTK" through his daughter's DNA obtained, without her knowledge, from a pap smear in her medical records.

    Investigators in Massachusetts say advances in DNA technology may finally establish beyond doubt the perpetrator of the 1960s Boston Strangler slayings. They plan to exhume the body of longtime suspect Albert DeSalvo — who confessed to the crimes but was never convicted — after DNA from one of the crime scenes produced a familial match with him.

    Both supporters and critics of DNA databases point to Britain, where until recently, police could take the DNA of anyone 10 or older arrested for even the most minor offense — and keep it forever, even if the suspect was later acquitted or released without charge.

    Police say the database has helped solve thousands of crimes, including murders and rapes. On the other side of the coin are hundreds of thousands of innocent people, including children, who feel shamed and tainted by inclusion on a database of criminal suspects — a status some legal experts say undermines the presumption of innocence.

    "A lot of British people were very shocked to find themselves or their children ending up on the database for minor alleged offenses such as throwing a snowball at a car," said Helen Wallace, director of the privacy group GeneWatch, which campaigns for restrictions on collection of DNA and other personal information.

    After a long legal battle — waged in part by a youth who was arrested at 11 on suspicion of attempted robbery and had his DNA retained despite being acquitted — the European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2008 that Britain's "blanket and indiscriminate" storage of DNA violated the right to a private life.

    The U.K. was forced to trim its huge database. Under a law passed last year known as the Protection of Freedoms Act, the government is destroying the DNA profiles — strings of numbers derived from DNA samples that are used to identify individuals — of a million people who were arrested for minor offenses but not convicted. People acquitted of serious crimes have their DNA profiles kept for up to five years.

    Britain also has incinerated more than 6 million physical DNA samples — mostly swabs of saliva — taken from suspects. Samples, which could previously be kept indefinitely, must now be destroyed after six months.

    Destroying the samples is seen as key to limiting DNA databases to crime-fighting rather than snooping, because it means stored DNA cannot be used to trace relatives or susceptibility to disease.
    .......

    Spread of DNA databases sparks ethical concerns - Yahoo! News
     
  17. kellory

    kellory An unemployed Jester, is nobody's fool. Banned

    If they want my DNA upon arrest, they will be forced to take it by force. Upon arrest I am still presumed innocent, and I will not comply.
    Only upon CONVICTION will I comply. Else, they will have to collect it from my spilt blood.
    My finger prints are on record due to my choice of work career. I decided that voluntarily.
    If they feel the need to rape me for my genes, it will be forcible rape.:(
     
    tulianr likes this.
  18. Pax Mentis

    Pax Mentis Philosopher King |RIP 11-4-2017

    Unfortunately, when agencies have no hesitation in doing just that, the so-called judicial branch will forget how to even spell unconstitutional...
     
  19. Alpha Dog

    Alpha Dog survival of the breed

    I think it would be a very useful tool for well let me change that I think it could be very useful if used right. I think it is fine to be used on all sex offenders. My concern is human error, who’s to say that one sample won’t contaminate three surrounding samples. Then Police send in a request get a hit that links some old fellow they got for DUI to rape and murder. I see how the courts and expert witnesses screw up every day. Then what if some officer needs a conviction on some high profile case and just goes to the lab flips a coin and picks a sample. A lot of the need for a tool like this could be done away with if the new generation of L.E.O.s would get off their ars and do police work by pounding the pavement and doing a good investigation. If this is allowed the next thing they will want is for citizens to come in and give samples or they will start doing swabs at the DMV when you renew your Driver’s license. I guess what I’m saying is it would be great for investigations but at the same time it would be a danger to our rights as lawful citizens. I don’t see what’s wrong with our system now 20 mins to fill out a search warrant get judge to sign it and off to the hospital where a third party completes the process. No way the suspect can say I tainted the sample during collection and it was done by a trained professional. I’m a Deputy not a doctor or lab tech. Plus by doing a search warrant I have to have some type of probable to support my need for the DNA or my Judge won’t sign it. With it being done by a data base I don’t have to have anything other than just the need to catch the suspect. I honestly think that this would be more of a tool for Big Brother than for the Investigator.
     
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