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Joined: May 2003
Posts: 43,951 Likes: 6
Officially "too old for this shit" 15000+ posts
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OP
Officially "too old for this shit" 15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 43,951 Likes: 6 |
New York Times: - The practice, known among law enforcement officials as “surreptitious sampling,” is growing in popularity even as defense lawyers and civil liberties advocates argue that it violates a constitutional right to privacy.
Critics argue that by covertly collecting DNA contained in the minute amounts of saliva, sweat and skin that everyone sheds in the course of daily life, police officers are exploiting an unforeseen loophole in the requirement to show “probable cause” that a suspect has committed a crime before conducting a search.
The privacy implications of surreptitious DNA sampling may extend beyond individual investigations. The police, critics say, could collect DNA deemed “abandoned” from targeted individuals and monitor their movements even if they are not suspected of committing a serious crime. Innocent people whose DNA turns up unexpectedly may find themselves identified by a database file that they did not know existed.
“Police can take a DNA sample from anyone, anytime, for any reason without raising oversight by any court,” said Elizabeth E. Joh, a law professor at University of California, Davis, who studies the intersection of genetics and privacy law. “I don’t think a lot of people understand that.”
Law enforcement officials say they are just trying to solve crimes. Over the last few years, several hundred suspects have been implicated by the traces of DNA they unwittingly shed well after the crime was committed, according to law enforcement officials. Many more have been eliminated from suspicion without ever knowing that their coffee cups, tissues, straws, utensils and cigarette butts were subject to DNA analysis by the police.
Sometimes the police dupe suspects into relinquishing their genetic identity by offering them a Coke during a routine interview and picking up the can. In Buffalo last year, undercover police waited until Altemio Sanchez, suspected of strangling and raping several women over a quarter-century, paid the check and left after dinner with his wife at a local restaurant before confiscating his glass. He later admitted killing three women and received a life sentence.
Variations on the technique are multiplying as the adoption of DNA processing technology lets crime laboratories derive a full profile from ever smaller amounts of biological material at relatively low cost.
Some legal experts advocate curbs on surreptitious sampling. Albert E. Scherr, a professor at Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, N.H., who has a grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the practice, suggests that the police be required to meet the “reasonable suspicion” standard before secretly collecting DNA.
In the meantime, anyone with something to hide might want to keep in mind a recent decision by the Massachusetts Court of Appeals, which admitted as evidence DNA collected after a suspected rapist spit on the street.
The United States Supreme Court has yet to address whether there are constitutional limits on the covert collection of DNA. But with a few exceptions, lower court judges in over a dozen recent cases have ruled that DNA clinging to water bottles left in interrogation rooms, on restaurant glassware and on those ubiquitous cigarette butts are fair game for police inspection.
“There is no subjective expectation of privacy in discarded genetic material, just as there is no subjective expectation of privacy in fingerprints or footprints left in a public place,” Washington State’s Supreme Court wrote last year.
Several court opinions on surreptitious sampling cite the United States Supreme Court decision in California v. Greenwood, which held that the Fourth Amendment did not apply when the police searched trash bags left on the curb by a suspected narcotics dealer.
But the Greenwood analogy, critics of surreptitious sampling argue, ignores that most people have no idea that they risk surrendering their genetic identity to the police by, for instance, failing to destroy a used coffee cup. Moreover, even if they do realize it, there is no way to avoid abandoning one’s DNA in public, short of living in a bubble.
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 53,734
Educator to comprehension impaired (JLA, that is you) 50000+ posts
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Educator to comprehension impaired (JLA, that is you) 50000+ posts
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 53,734 |
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Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 34
Quack! 25+ posts
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Quack! 25+ posts
Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 34 |
Listen, I've worked hard to gain a "career". No doubt. But, god, there are times when I just want to lay on the couch, smoke weed, and watch television until 4am... -Prometheus
I would like to thank my fathers and my mothers but most specially my parents Son of Mxy
smile. have fun. its good for you! puts hair on your chest. -Rob
Smoking money makes you stupid.-MisterJLA
"wait, this doesn't make sense... when will you not be gay?"-Rob to pjp
"Dead people can be such attention whores!"-MisterJLA
I swear to gob, in the end I'm either going to throatfuck you, or leave you to die in the desert. Maybe both.-Prometheus
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