Collecting Your DNA—Not Controversial
That’s why the House of Representatives has put “Katie’s Law” (H.R. 4614, the Katie Sepich Enhanced DNA Collection Act of 2010) on the “Suspension Calendar” today. That’s the procedure for considering non-controversial bills, giving them about 20 minutes of debate.
The bill would promote collection of DNA samples from people based simply on their arrest for certain crimes. Needless to say, being arrested is nothing close to conviction of a crime, at which time it might be fair to collect a person’s DNA for use as a powerful identifier in later criminal investigations. And if DNA evidence is relevant, let it be collected and used according to existing procedures.
But getting your DNA put in a database just because an investigator got you in his or her sights? It’s the reverse of “innocent until proven guilty.”
The Government Has Your Baby’s DNA
My 2004 Cato Policy Analysis, “Understanding Privacy — and the Real Threats to It,” talks about how government programs intended to do good have unintended privacy costs. “The helping hand of government routinely strips away privacy before it goes to work,” I wrote.
There could be no better illustration of that than the recent CNN report on government collection and warehousing of American babies’ DNA. “Scientists have said the collection of DNA samples is a ‘gold mine’ for doing research,” notes a sidebar to the story.
I have no doubt that it is—and that government-mandated harvesting of this highly valuable personal data from children is an unjust enrichment of the beneficiaries.
The Future of DNA as an Identifier . . .
. . . is not in doubt. But as technology advances, it will not be as strong an identifier as it has been up to now. Scientists have demonstrated that they can fabricate it.
I wrote about the qualities of identifiers – fixity, distinctiveness, and permanence – in my book Identity Crisis. The ability to fabricate DNA renders it slightly less distinctive.
Should Judges ‘Have the Back’ of Police Officers?
Vice-president Joe Biden says we should rally behind the Supreme Court nomination of Sotomayor because she will “have the back” of the police. Biden is a lawyer, a senator, and former chairman of the Senate’s Judiciary Committee, so he should know better than to pull a political stunt like that to curry favor with law enforcement groups. The Constitution places limits on the power of the police to search, detain, wiretap, imprison, and interrogate. The separation of powers principle means that judges must maintain their impartiality and “check” the police whenever they overstep their authority. To abdicate that responsibility and to “go along with the police” is to do away with our system of checks and balances.
As it happens, The New York Times has a story today about one Jeffrey Deskovic. He got caught up in a police investigation because he was “too distraught” over the rape and murder of his classmate. When there was no DNA match, prosecutors told the jury it didn’t really matter. Does Biden really want Supreme Court justices to come to the support of the state when habeas corpus petitions arrive on their desks and the police work is sloppy, weak, or worse?
On a related note, Cato adjunct scholar Harvey Silverglate fights another miscarriage of justice in Massachusetts.
E-Verify: The Surveillance Solution
The federal government will keep data about every person submitted to the “E-Verify” background check system for 10 years.
At least that’s my read of the slightly unclear notice describing the “United States Citizenship Immigration Services 009 Compliance Tracking and Monitoring System” in today’s Federal Register. (A second notice exempts this data from many protections of the Privacy Act.)
To make sure that people aren’t abusing E-Verify, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services Verification Division, Monitoring and Compliance Branch will watch how the system is used. It will look for misuse, such as when a single Social Security Number is submitted to the system many times, which suggests that it is being used fraudulently.
How do you look for this kind of misuse (and others, more clever)? You collect all the data that goes into the system and mine it for patterns consistent with misuse.
The notice purports to limit the range of people whose data will be held in the system, listing “Individuals who are the subject of E-Verify or SAVE verifications and whose employer is subject to compliance activities.” But if the Monitoring Compliance Branch is going to find what it’s looking for, it’s going to look at data about all individuals submitted to E-Verify. “Employer subject to compliance activities” is not a limitation because all employers will be subject to “compliance activities” simply for using the system.
In my paper on electronic employment eligibility verification systems like E-Verify, I wrote how such systems “would add to the data stores throughout the federal government that continually amass information about the lives, livelihoods, activities, and interests of everyone—especially law-abiding citizens.”
It’s in the DNA of E-Verify to facilitate surveillance of every American worker. Today’s Federal Register notice is confirmation of that.
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