1984: DNA Databases - GovCorp Control of You by Association, Genetic Privacy a Human Right

[grarpamp]

The War Over Genetic Privacy Is Just Beginning

By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead
June 08, 2021
[3]John Whitehead

"[4]When you upload your DNA, you're potentially becoming a genetic
informant on the rest of your family."-- Law professor Elizabeth Joh

"Guilt by association" has taken on new connotations in the technological
age.

All of those fascinating, genealogical searches that allow you to trace
your family tree by way of a DNA sample can now be used against you and
those you love.

As of 2019, more than [5]26 million people had added their DNA to ancestry
databases. It's estimated those databases could top 100 million profiles
within the year, thanks to the aggressive marketing of companies such as
Ancestry and 23andMe.

It's a tempting proposition: provide some mega-corporation with a spit
sample or a cheek swab, and in return, you get to learn everything about
who you are, where you came from, and who is part of your extended your
family.

The possibilities are endless.

You could be the fourth cousin once removed of Queen Elizabeth II of
England. Or the illegitimate grandchild of an oil tycoon. Or the
[6]sibling of a serial killer.

Without even realizing it, by submitting your DNA to an ancestry database,
you're giving the police access to the [7]genetic makeup, relationships
and health profiles of every relative--past, present and future--in your
family, whether or not they ever agreed to be part of such a database.

After all, a DNA print reveals everything about "[8]who we are, where we
come from, and who we will be."

It's what police like to refer to a "[9]modern fingerprint."

Whereas fingerprint technology created a watershed moment for police in
their ability to "crack" a case, DNA technology is now being hailed by law
enforcement agencies as the [10]magic bullet in crime solving.

Indeed, police have begun [11]using ancestry databases to solve cold cases
that have remained unsolved for decades.

For instance, in 2018, former police officer Joseph DeAngelo was
[12]flagged as the notorious "Golden State Killer" through the use of
genetic genealogy, which allows police to match up an unknown suspect's
crime scene DNA with that of any family members in a genealogy database.
Police were able to identify DeAngelo using the DNA of a distant cousin
found in a public DNA database. Once police narrowed the suspect list to
DeAngelo, they tracked him--snatched up a tissue he had tossed in a trash
can--and [13]used his DNA on the tissue to connect him to a rash of rapes
and murders from the 1970s and `80s.

Although DeAngelo was the first public arrest made using forensic
genealogy, [14]police have identified more than 150 suspects since then.
Most recently, [15]police relied on genetic genealogy to nab the killer of
a 15-year-old girl who was stabbed to death nearly 50 years ago.

Who wouldn't want to get psychopaths and serial rapists off the streets
and safely behind bars, right? At least, that's the [16]argument being
used by law enforcement to support their unrestricted access to these
genealogy databases.

"In the interest of public safety, [17]don't you want to make it easy for
people to be caught? Police really want to do their job. They're not after
you. They just want to make you safe," insists Colleen Fitzpatrick, a
co-founder of the DNA Doe Project, which identifies unknown bodies and
helps find suspects in old crimes.

Except it's not just psychopaths and serial rapists who get [18]caught up
in the investigative dragnet.

Anyone who comes up as a possible DNA match--including distant family
members--suddenly becomes part of [19]a circle of suspects that must be
tracked, investigated and ruled out.

Although a number of states had forbidden police from using government
databases to track family members of suspects, the genealogy websites
provided a loophole that proved [20]irresistible to law enforcement.

Hoping to close that loophole, a few states have started introducing
legislation to [21]restrict when and how police use these genealogical
databases, with Maryland requiring that they can only be used for serious
violent crimes such as murder and rape, only after they exhaust other
investigatory methods, and only under the supervision of a judge.

Yet the debate over genetic privacy--and when one's DNA becomes a
[22]public commodity outside the protection of the Fourth Amendment's
prohibition on warrantless searches and seizures--is really only
beginning.

Certainly, it's just a matter of time before the government gets hold of
our DNA, either through mandatory programs carried out in connection with
law enforcement and corporate America, by warrantlessly accessing our
familial [23]DNA shared with genealogical services such as
[24]Ancestry and [25]23andMe, or through the collection of our "shed" or
"touch" DNA.

According to research published in the journal Science, more than 60
percent of Americans who have some European ancestry can be identified
using DNA databases, [26]even if they have not submitted their own DNA.
According to law professor Natalie Ram, [27]one genealogy profile can lead
to as many as 300 other people.

That's just on the commercial side.

All 50 states now maintain their own DNA databases, although the protocols
for collection differ from state to state. Increasingly, many of the data
from local databanks are being uploaded to CODIS (Combined DNA Index
System), the FBI's massive DNA database, which has become a de facto way
to identify and track the American people from birth to death.

Even hospitals have gotten in on the game by taking and storing newborn
babies' DNA, often without their parents' knowledge or consent. It's part
of the [28]government's mandatory genetic screening of newborns. In many
states, the DNA is stored indefinitely.

What this means for those being born today is inclusion in a government
database that contains intimate information about who they are, their
ancestry, and what awaits them in the future, including their inclinations
to be followers, leaders or troublemakers.

Get ready, folks, because the government-- helped along by Congress (which
adopted legislation allowing police to collect and test DNA immediately
following arrests), President Trump (who signed [29]the Rapid DNA Act into
law), the courts (which have [30]ruled that police can routinely take DNA
samples from people who are arrested but not yet convicted of a crime),
and local police agencies (which are chomping at the bit to acquire this
new crime-fighting gadget)--has [31]embarked on a diabolical campaign to
create a nation of suspects predicated on a massive national DNA database.

Referred to as "magic boxes," Rapid DNA machines--portable, about the size
of a desktop printer, highly unregulated, [32]far from fool-proof, and so
fast that they can produce DNA profiles in less than two hours--allow
police to go on fishing expeditions for any hint of possible misconduct
using DNA samples.

Journalist Heather Murphy explains: "As police agencies build out their
local DNA databases, they are collecting DNA not only from people who have
been charged with major crimes but also, increasingly, [33]from people who
are merely deemed suspicious, permanently linking their genetic identities
to criminal databases."

The ramifications of these DNA databases are [34]far-reaching.

At a minimum, they will do away with any semblance of [35]privacy or
anonymity. The [36]lucrative possibilities for hackers and commercial
entities looking to profit off one's biological record are endless.

Moreover, while much of the public debate, legislative efforts and legal
challenges in recent years have focused on the protocols surrounding when
police can legally collect a suspect's DNA (with or without a search
warrant and whether upon arrest or conviction), the question of how to
handle "shed" or "touch" DNA has largely slipped through without much
debate or opposition.

As scientist Leslie A. Pray [37]notes:

We all shed DNA, leaving traces of our identity practically everywhere
we go. Forensic scientists use DNA left behind on cigarette butts,
phones, handles, keyboards, cups, and numerous other objects, not to
mention the genetic content found in drops of bodily fluid, like blood
and semen. In fact, the garbage you leave for curbside pickup is a
potential gold mine of this sort of material. All of this shed or
so-called abandoned DNA is free for the taking by local police
investigators hoping to crack unsolvable cases. Or, if the future
scenario depicted at the beginning of this article is any indication,
shed DNA is also free for inclusion in a secret universal DNA databank.

What this means is that if you have the misfortune to leave your DNA
traces anywhere a crime has been committed, you've already got a file
somewhere in some state or federal database--albeit it may be a file
without a name. As Heather Murphy warns in the New York Times: "The
science-fiction future, in which police can swiftly identify robbers and
murderers from discarded soda cans and cigarette butts, has arrived...
[38]Genetic fingerprinting is set to become as routine as the
old-fashioned kind."

Even old samples taken from crime scenes and "cold" cases are being
unearthed and mined for their DNA profiles.

Today, helped along by robotics and automation, DNA processing, analysis
and reporting takes far less time and can bring forth all manner of
information, right down to a person's eye color and relatives. Incredibly,
one company [39]specializes in creating "mug shots" for police based on
DNA samples from unknown "suspects" which are then compared to individuals
with similar genetic profiles.

If you haven't yet connected the dots, let me point the way.

Having already used surveillance technology to render the entire American
populace potential suspects, DNA technology in the hands of government
will complete our transition to a suspect society in which we are all
merely waiting to be matched up with a crime.

No longer can we consider ourselves innocent until proven guilty.

Now we are all suspects in a DNA lineup until circumstances and science
say otherwise.

Suspect Society, meet the American police state.

Every dystopian sci-fi film we've ever seen is suddenly converging into
this present moment in a dangerous trifecta between science, technology
and a government that wants to be all-seeing, all-knowing and
all-powerful.

By tapping into your phone lines and cell phone communications, the
[40]government knows what you say. By uploading all of your emails,
opening your mail, and reading your Facebook posts and [41]text messages,
the [42]government knows what you write. By monitoring your movements with
the use of license plate readers, surveillance cameras and other tracking
devices, the [43]government knows where you go.

By churning through all of the detritus of your life--[44]what you read,
where you go, what you say--the [45]government can predict what you will
do. By mapping the synapses in your brain, scientists--and in turn, the
government--[46]will soon know what you remember.

And by accessing your DNA, the [47]government will soon know everything
else about you that they don't already know: your family chart, your
ancestry, what you look like, your health history, your inclination to
follow orders or chart your own course, etc.

Of course, none of these technologies are foolproof.

Nor are they immune from tampering, hacking or user bias.

Nevertheless, they have become a convenient tool in the hands of
government agents to render null and void the Constitution's requirements
of privacy and its prohibitions against unreasonable searches and
seizures.

What this amounts to is a scenario in which we have little to no defense
of against charges of wrongdoing, especially when "convicted" by
technology, and even less protection against the government sweeping up
our DNA in much the same way it sweeps up our phone calls, emails and text
messages.

With the entire governmental system shifting into a pre-crime mode aimed
at detecting and pursuing those who "might" commit a crime before they
have an inkling, let alone an opportunity, to do so, it's not so
far-fetched to imagine a scenario in which government agents (FBI, local
police, etc.) target potential criminals based on their genetic
disposition to be a "troublemaker" or their relationship to past
dissenters.

Equally disconcerting: if scientists can, using DNA, [48]track salmon
across hundreds of square miles of streams and rivers, how easy will it be
for government agents to not only know everywhere we've been and how long
we were at each place but collect our easily shed DNA and add it to the
government's already burgeoning database?

Not to be overlooked, DNA evidence is not infallible: it can be wrong,
either through human error, [49]tampering, or even outright
[50]fabrication, and it happens [51]more often than we are told. The
danger, warns scientist Dan Frumkin, is that [52]crime scenes can be
engineered with fabricated DNA.

Now if you happen to be the kind of person who trusts the government
implicitly and refuses to believe it would ever do anything illegal or
immoral, then the prospect of government officials--police,
especially--using fake DNA samples to influence the outcome of a case
might seem outlandish.

Yet as history shows, the probability of our government acting in a way
that is not only illegal but immoral becomes less a question of "if" and
more a question of "when."

With technology, the [53]courts, the corporations and Congress conspiring
to invade our privacy [54]on a cellular level, suddenly the landscape
becomes that much more dystopian.

As I make clear in my book [55]Battlefield America: The War on the
American People, this is the slippery slope toward a dystopian world in
which there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

WC: 2211

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and
president [56]The Rutherford Institute. His books [57]Battlefield
America: The War on the American People and [58]A Government of Wolves:
The Emerging American Police State are available at [59]www.amazon.com. He
can be contacted at [60]johnw at rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the
Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The
Rutherford Institute is available at [61]www.rutherford.org.

Publication Guidelines / Reprint Permission

John W. Whitehead’s weekly commentaries are available for publication to
newspapers and web publications at no charge. Please
contact [62]staff at rutherford.org to obtain reprint permission.


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