Step-by-step, and year-by-year, they are increasingly making an Orwellian
Big Brother future our reality. From VeriChip implants, to retina scans, to
RFID chips, to closed-circuit cameras by the thousands in major cities, to
wire taps and email sniffers and more, we common citizens are being treated
more and more like the guilty, rather than the innocent that we are. Of
course, if you accept God's Word as being true, then you already know where
this is all headed -- the 666, Mark of the Beast system. Here is an
interesting article from the NYT:


F.B.I. and States Vastly Expand DNA Databases

By SOLOMON MOORE - NYT

April 18, 2009


Law enforcement officials are vastly expanding their collection of DNA to
include millions more people who have been arrested or detained but not yet
convicted. The move, intended to help solve more crimes, is raising concerns
about the privacy of petty offenders and people who are presumed innocent.

Until now, the federal government genetically tracked only convicts. But
starting this month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will join 15 states
that collect DNA samples from those awaiting trial and will collect DNA from
detained immigrants - the vanguard of a growing class of genetic
registrants.

The F.B.I., with a DNA database of 6.7 million profiles, expects to
accelerate its growth rate from 80,000 new entries a year to 1.2 million by
2012 - a 17-fold increase. F.B.I. officials say they expect DNA processing
backlogs - which now stand at more than 500,000 cases - to increase.

Law enforcement officials say that expanding the DNA databanks to include
legally innocent people will help solve more violent crimes. They point out
that DNA has helped convict thousands of criminals and has exonerated more
than 200 wrongfully convicted people.

But criminal justice experts cite Fourth Amendment privacy concerns and
worry that the nation is becoming a genetic surveillance society.

"DNA databases were built initially to deal with violent sexual crimes and
homicides - a very limited number of crimes," said Harry Levine, a professor
of sociology at City University of New York who studies policing trends.
"Over time more and more crimes of decreasing severity have been added to
the database. Cops and prosecutors like it because it gives everybody more
information and creates a new suspect pool."

Courts have generally upheld laws authorizing compulsory collection of DNA
from convicts and ex-convicts under supervised release, on the grounds that
criminal acts diminish privacy rights.

DNA extraction upon arrest potentially erodes that argument, a recent
Congressional study found. "Courts have not fully considered legal
implications of recent extensions of DNA-collection to people whom the
government has arrested but not tried or convicted," the report said.

Minors are required to provide DNA samples in 35 states upon conviction, and
in some states upon arrest. Three juvenile suspects in November filed the
only current constitutional challenge against taking DNA at the time of
arrest. The judge temporarily stopped DNA collection from the three youths,
and the case is continuing.

Sixteen states now take DNA from some who have been found guilty of
misdemeanors. As more police agencies take DNA for a greater variety of
lesser and suspected crimes, civil rights advocates say the government's
power is becoming too broadly applied. "What we object to - and what the
Constitution prohibits - is the indiscriminate taking of DNA for things like
writing an insufficient funds check, shoplifting, drug convictions," said
Michael Risher, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union.

This year, California began taking DNA upon arrest and expects to nearly
double the growth rate of its database, to 390,000 profiles a year from
200,000.

One of those was Brian Roberts, 29, who was awaiting trial for
methamphetamine possession. Inside the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in
Los Angeles last month, Mr. Roberts let a sheriff's deputy swab the inside
of his cheek.

Mr. Roberts's DNA will be translated into a numerical sequence at the
F.B.I.'s DNA database, the largest in the world.

The system will search for matches between Mr. Roberts's DNA and other
profiles every Monday, from now into the indeterminate future - until one
day, perhaps decades hence, Mr. Roberts might leave a drop of blood or semen
at some crime scene.

Law enforcement officials say that DNA extraction upon arrest is no
different than fingerprinting at routine bookings and that states purge
profiles after people are cleared of suspicion. In practice, defense lawyers
say this is a laborious process that often involves a court order. (The
F.B.I. says it has never received a request to purge a profile from its
database.)

When DNA is taken in error, expunging a profile can be just as difficult. In
Pennsylvania, Ellyn Sapper, a Philadelphia public defender, has spent weeks
trying to expunge the profile taken erroneously of a 14-year-old boy guilty
of assault and bicycle theft. "I'm going to have to get a judge's order to
make sure that all references to his DNA are gone," she said.

The police say that the potential hazards of genetic surveillance are worth
it because it solves crimes and because DNA is more accurate than other
physical evidence. "I've watched women go from mug-book to mug-book looking
for the man who raped her," said Mitch Morrissey, the Denver district
attorney and an advocate for more expansive DNA sampling. "It saves women's
lives."

Mr. Morrissey pointed to Britain, which has fewer privacy protections than
the United States and has been taking DNA upon arrest for years. It has a
population of 61 million - and 4.5 million DNA profiles. "About 8 percent of
the people commit about 70 percent of your crimes, so if you can get the
majority of that community, you don't have to do more than that," he said.

In the United States, 8 percent of the population would be roughly 24
million people.

Britain may provide a window into America's genetic surveillance future: As
of March 2008, 857,000 people in the British database, or about one-fifth,
have no current criminal record. In December, the European Court of Human
Rights ruled that Britain violated international law by collecting DNA
profiles from innocent people, including children as young as 10.

Critics are also disturbed by the demographics of DNA databases. Again
Britain is instructive. According to a House of Commons report, 27 percent
of black people and 42 percent of black males are genetically registered,
compared with 6 percent of white people.

As in Britain, expanding genetic sampling in the United States could
exacerbate racial disparities in the criminal justice system, according to
Hank Greely, a Stanford University Law School professor who studies the
intersection of genetics, policing and race. Mr. Greely estimated that
African-Americans, who are about 12 percent of the national population, make
up 40 percent of the DNA profiles in the federal database, reflective of
their prison population. He also expects Latinos, who are about 13 percent
of the population and committed 40 percent of last year's federal offenses -
nearly half of them immigration crimes - to dominate DNA databases.

Enforcement officials contend that DNA is blind to race. Federal profiles
include little more information than the DNA sequence and the referring
police agency. Subjects' names are usually kept by investigators.

Rock Harmon, a former prosecutor for Alameda County, Calif., and an adviser
to crime laboratories, said DNA demographics reflected the criminal
population. Even if an innocent man's DNA was included in a genetic
database, he said, it would come to nothing without a crime scene sample to
match it. "If you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to
fear," he
said.


Jeff Snyder, SysOp - Armageddon BBS  Visit us at endtimeprophecy.org port 23
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your Download Center 4 Mac BBS Software & Christian Files.  We Use Hermes II


--- Hermes Web Tosser 1.1