So now, the neocons are pushing DNA collection on us for a sweeping databank?

[seafan]

At the outset, it must be clear that we MUST NOT submit to this.

Note how "protection against sexual predators/rapists/immigrants" is showcased front and center, so people will be hornswaggled into accepting it. It is already dividing women's groups, as DNA testing is needed and should be used for rape cases, but the women's groups realize that the broader scope of this proposal is ominous. Once again, this administration is using the fear weapon as it strips even more of our privacy rights away from us, forcing yet another tool of discrimination and profiling onto the population.

But this very personal information is going to be used in ways that will not be told to us. And the fact that the FBI will be swamped with DNA samples to process for this databank, preventing more important work on samples that might exonerate innocent people in court cases, is not a concern for this administration. And they are proceeding, full speed ahead.

We must write and call our Congress members, to educate them on what additional civil rights of ours that they ignorantly signed away. There is no more excuse for this Democratic Congress to claim ignorance of this. This violation of our rights must be stopped in its tracks.




U.S. Set to Begin a Vast Expansion of DNA Sampling

By JULIA PRESTON
February 5, 2007

The Justice Department is completing rules to allow the collection of DNA from most people arrested or detained by federal authorities, a vast expansion of DNA gathering that will include hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, by far the largest group affected.
The new forensic DNA sampling was authorized by Congress in a little-noticed amendment to a January 2006 renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, which provides protections and assistance for victims of sexual crimes. The amendment permits DNA collecting from anyone under criminal arrest by federal authorities, and also from illegal immigrants detained by federal agents.

.....

The goal, justice officials said, is to make the practice of DNA sampling as routine as fingerprinting for anyone detained by federal agents, including illegal immigrants. Until now, federal authorities have taken DNA samples only from convicted felons.

.....

Peter Neufeld, a lawyer who is a co-director of the Innocence Project, which has exonerated dozens of prison inmates using DNA evidence, said the government was overreaching by seeking to apply DNA sampling as universally as fingerprinting.
“Whereas fingerprints merely identify the person who left them,” Mr. Neufeld said, “DNA profiles have the potential to reveal our physical diseases and mental disorders. It becomes intrusive when the government begins to mine our most intimate matters.”
Immigration lawyers said they did not learn of the measure when it passed last year and were dismayed by its sweeping scope.
“This has taken us by storm,” said Deborah Notkin, a lawyer who was president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association last year. “It’s so broad, it’s scary. It is a terrible thing to do because people are sometimes detained erroneously in the immigration system.”
Immigration lawyers noted that most immigration violations, including those committed when people enter the country illegally, are civil, not criminal, offenses. They warned that the new law would make it difficult for immigrants to remove their DNA profiles from the federal database, even if they were never found to have committed any serious violation or crime.

.....

While the proposed rules have not been finished, justice officials said they were certain to bring a huge new workload for the F.B.I. laboratory that logs, analyzes and stores federal DNA samples. Federal Bureau of Investigation officials said they anticipated an increase ranging from 250,000 to as many as 1 million samples a year. .....
Forensic DNA is culled either from a tiny blood sample taken from a fingertip (the F.B.I.’s preferred method) or from a swab of the inside of the mouth. Federal samples are logged into the F.B.I.’s laboratory, analyzed and transformed into profiles that can be read by computer. The profiles are loaded into a database called the National DNA Index System.
The F.B.I. also loads DNA profiles from local and state police into the federal database and runs searches. Only seven states now collect DNA from suspects when they are arrested; of those, only two states are authorized by their laws to send those samples to the federal database.

.....

“We were stunned by the extraordinary, broad sweep of this amendment,” said Lisalyn Jacobs, vice president for government relations at Legal Momentum, a law group founded by the National Organization for Women. Ms. Jacobs recalled that the amendment had been adopted by a voice vote with little debate. She said many lawmakers eager to renew the act, which enjoys solid bipartisan support, appeared unaware of the scope of the DNA amendment.
“The pervasive problems of profiling in the United States will only be exacerbated by such a system,” Ms. Jacobs said, because Latino and other immigrants will be greatly over-represented in the database. She noted that the law required a court order to remove a profile from the system.

.....

Now take a look at page 72 (of 90) from the neocons' plan for global domination:


Rebuilding America's Defenses
Project For the New American Century (PNAC)

September, 2000

.....

Although it may take several decades
for the process of transformation to unfold,
in time, the art of warfare on air, land, and
sea will be vastly different than it is today,
and “combat” likely will take place in new
dimensions: in space, “cyber-space,” and
perhaps the world of microbes. Air warfare
may no longer be fought by pilots manning
tactical fighter aircraft sweeping the skies of
opposing fighters, but a regime dominated
by long-range, stealthy unmanned craft. On
land, the clash of massive, combined-arms
armored forces may be replaced by the
dashes of much lighter, stealthier and
information-intensive forces, augmented by
fleets of robots, some small enough to fit in
soldiers’ pockets. Control of the sea could
be largely determined not by fleets of
surface combatants and aircraft carriers, but
from land- and space-based systems, forcing
navies to maneuver and fight underwater.
Space itself will become a theater of war, as
nations gain access to space capabilities and
come to rely on them; further, the distinction
between military and commercial space
systems – combatants and noncombatants –
will become blurred. Information systems
will become an important focus of attack,
particularly for U.S. enemies seeking to
short-circuit sophisticated American forces.
And advanced forms of biological warfare
that can “target” specific genotypes may
transform biological warfare from the realm
of terror to a politically useful tool.

.....

[damntexdem]

1. Quick, we need to find some RW Christians who can be convinced that ...

this represents the 'Mark of the Beast' and that it must be stopped! Well, that would be the only way to oppose it within the Bushista Administration. ;-)

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

2. Oh lord.

:crazy:

[Trillo]

3. The hypocrisy is stunning.

1) How dare anyone other than the woman herself control her own uterus. (Abortion, prochoice)

2) How dare anyone prevent the Corporatist from reaching into every and any human's cells, destroying those cells in the process. (DNA sampling and fingerprinting)

[Cerridwen]

4. I'm not quite sure I understand what you're saying...

Lynn Parrish seems to support the idea of a larger database - she is the spokesperson for the National Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) who doesn't appear to have a stand on abortion much less advocating choice or anti-choice. I don't see inconsistency between choice and government interference when there is no stance on choice with which to be inconsistent.

Lisalyn Jacobs, vice president for government relations at Legal Momentum, a law group founded by the National Organization for Women (who does support choice) is quoted as having many concerns about this type of a database all of which appear to be consistent with keep your government out of my body.

Now, if you were to conflate *all* women's organizations into one monolithic hive-mind and imply they were *all* pro-choice and therefore if one comes out in support of government interference the entire hive-mind is guilty of hypocrisy, that might work.

I'm not sure it applies in this case, however.

[Trillo]

6. No names, just a concept: Simply...

The concept of stay 'out of my body' contrasted against the compulsory 'invasion of everyone's body'.

Is that clearer? Nothing more, nothing less. Names and alleged public positions were provided by you.

Each person is free to make up their own minds on such a 'conceptual' polarity. Defining the polarity is one of the first steps of awareness.

Surely, when a human has been raped, their body has been invaded unwillingly, or not by "choice." Therefore, the concept works either with or without the abortion theme.

When this happens, whether it rises to a 'preemptive need' to invade 'all' others' bodies is apparently a matter to struggle with, to reject or accept, or perhaps something in between. It seems somewhat out of balance, to me at least, calling for the invasion and search of nearly every arrestee whether guilty or not.

How this dovetails with fundamental concepts such as "innocent until proven guilty"; and with respect toward DNA, the breaking of the cell wall or "locked door" protecting highly-personal data, "papers" or "effects" if you will, and seemingly obvious 4th Amendment guarantees in the absence of a warrant and probable cause, gives much room for struggle given current realities of siezure.

The problem appears to center around ownership of DNA, and which I seem to recall reading was predetermined by a prior congress some years ago that wished to bolster intellectual property and patents in an (at the time) emerging industry: meaning the struggle for individual privacy and DNA data ownership was decided years before it began, usurped for the expedience of greed, in spite of there being the appearance of a constitutional right, written years before such highly specific technical knowledge was discovered to restrict such omnipotent government or private intrusions when they are not wanted or desired by each or any given individual except when there is a pressing need under the supervision of the Judicial Branch.

This middle road was the original approach of search and seizure, that rights could be violated if done under the law and with Judicial Branch supervision and impartial record keeping.

When one thinks of the phrase "effects" and its meaning relating to the 4th Amendment, one may realize a fundamental underlying rationale for seizing or removing ownership of the central core of each person's every cell, from the person it was given to, by nature, for the duration of their natural lifespan.

It is perhaps also instructive to understand the word "life" in the phrase "life, liberty, and pursuit of Happiness" with the current scientific understanding of DNA's contribution to "life". According to the U.S. government's founding documents, "life" is explicitly included in "unalienable rights".

Why is it that so much is being done without warrants and judicial oversight these days? What needs to happen to reverse that course? Can the course be reversed? Or do we simply move forward through these times of Unitary Executives and Omnipotent Corporatis and allow everything we hold dear to be stripped from individual human grasps?

[Kaotac]

5. Since the Secret Service is a Federal Agency,

and they watch Bush, doesn't that mean Bush is in Federal Custody?
So, is he going to be letting them take his DNA for the database?
But, yeah.. This is highly disturbing. You should all move to Australia!