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DNA Databases in the U.S. and China Are Tools of Racial Oppression
Two major world powers, the United States and China, have both collected an enormous number of DNA samples from their citizens, the premise being that these samples will help solve crimes that might have otherwise gone unsolved. While DNA evidence can often be crucial when it comes to determining who committed a crime, researchers argue these DNA databases also pose a major threat to human rights.
In the U.S., the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has a DNA database called the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) that currently contains over 14 million DNA profiles. This database has a disproportionately high number of profiles of black men, because black Americans are arrested five times as much as white Americans. You don't even have to be convicted of a crime for law enforcement to take and store your DNA; you simply have to have been arrested as a suspect.
[...] As for China, a report that was published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in mid-June claims that China is operating the "world's largest police-run DNA database" as part of its powerful surveillance state. Chinese authorities have collected DNA samples from possibly as many as 70 million men since 2017, and the total database is believed to contain as many as 140 million profiles. The country hopes to collect DNA from all of its male citizens, as it argues men are most likely to commit crimes.
DNA is reportedly often collected during what are represented as free physicals, and it's also being collected from children at schools. There are reports of Chinese citizens being threatened with punishment by government officials if they refuse to give a DNA sample. Much of the DNA that's been collected has been from Uighur Muslims that have been oppressed by the Chinese government and infamously forced into concentration camps in the Xinjiang province.
Related:
EFF to Supreme Court: The Fourth Amendment Covers DNA Collection
EFF Sues Justice Dept. Over FBI's Rapid DNA Plans
Kuwait Creating Mandatory DNA Database of All Citizens, Residents--and Visitors
San Diego Police Department Accused of Unlawful DNA Collection From Minors
Massive DNA Collection Campaign in Xinjiang, China
Study Predicts Appearance From Genome Sequence Data
GEDmatch: "What If It Was Called Police Genealogy?"
Bavarian Law Broadens Police Surveillance and DNA Profiling Powers
DNA Collected from Golden State Killer Suspect's Car, Leading to Arrest
Another Alleged Murderer Shaken Out of the Family Tree
Indiana Murder Suspect Found by Using Genealogical Website
Public Ancestry Data Can be Used to Narrow Down the Identity Behind an Anonymous DNA Sample
Rapid DNA Analysis Machines Coming to Police Departments
FamilyTreeDNA Deputizes Itself, Starts Pitching DNA Matching Services To Law Enforcement
Genealogy Sites Have Helped Identify Suspects. Now They've Helped Convict One
U.S. to Collect DNA of All Undocumented Migrants
US Court Let Police Search GEDmatch's Entire DNA Database Despite Protections
China Uses DNA to Map Faces, With Help From the West
Cousin Took a DNA Test? Courts Could Use it to Argue You are More Likely to Commit Crimes
Ancestry Says Police Requested Access To Its DNA Database
(Score: 5, Informative) by Opportunist on Tuesday July 07 2020, @02:24PM (19 children)
Black people are five times more likely to be arrested, not to commit crimes. Jews were also a lot more likely to end up in a concentration camp than other Germans.
Yes, that's hyperbole. Hey, who started it?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 07 2020, @02:47PM (12 children)
They have a much higher crime rate than 5x relative to other groups. On a national level their homicide rate is about 1000% that of whites, similar with most other forms of violent crime. The Bureau of Justice statistics carried out a lengthy analysis available here [bjs.gov]. In a nutshell blacks make up around 12-13% of the population and commit about 53% of the homicides. Those figures are dated but the values haven't changed. You can get more recent numbers from the FBI Crime Reports. [fbi.gov] If you're going to compare groups remember that the white race includes hispanic ethnicity so you need to remove those numbers to determine e.g. non-white hispanic figures.
It's kind of curious they *only* have a 5x higher DNA collection rate. I suspect one factor is probably recidivism. Some guy that's been imprisoned tens of times is going to account for tens of arrests (and crimes) but only 1 entry in the DNA database. And the crime rates for nonviolent crime are much more evenly distributed and so that's also going to mitigate factors a bit.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday July 07 2020, @03:31PM (1 child)
I would extend your remarks with the usual urban/rural disparity issues.
Certainly Chicago has fifty blacks die every weekend after being shot by fifty other blacks so they have a regular assembly line of submitting DNA data from fifty murders per weekend for a long time.
On the other hand rural Montana, some good ole boy has a few too many Saturday night and ends up sleeping it off in the drunk tank at jail, do the locals have the resources and motivation to even bother submitting his DNA?
It does seem like something a "big city" would provide much more often than some random low crime burb or farm county. You expect NCIS high tech TV hollywood stuff in NYC more so than rural Maine.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 07 2020, @09:12PM
Do you know who else was living in rural Montana? Ted Kazincski! The Unabomber! Not to mention Henry Plummer, and Soapy Smith.
(Score: 5, Informative) by meustrus on Tuesday July 07 2020, @07:56PM (5 children)
Your statements assume that race is the best lens through which to view crime rates. In fact, higher crime rates are only one of many correlations with race, and it would be ludicrous to ignore all of the other correlations.
The most important correlation to crime is wealth and poverty. It's a simple fact that poor people commit more violent crime. And yet, seemingly nowhere in your sources has anyone bothered to analyze this correlation.
Instead, the FBI and the DOJ are engaged in this self-fulfilling prophecy where they expect blacks to commit more crime, so they look for more black criminals, so they find more black criminals, all the while ignoring the ways in which their own enforcement activities exacerbate poverty in black communities thereby leading to more crime.
The rational thing to do here would be to figure out how to stop crime from happening in the first place. All this obsession with race in our police system detracts from that rational response. And based on the evidence, that the USA has the highest crime rates and incarceration rates of any developed nation on Earth, this obsession is likely making crime worse. Not better.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday July 08 2020, @12:56AM
Please do keep pointing this out--but know the kind of person you're replying to it won't benefit, because they have a narrative, and that narrative is "dark-skinned people are innately criminal and inferior."
The reason to keep pointing it out in reply is for anyone who might stumble on the racists' endless torrent of brain diarrhea and be swayed by it in a moment of epistemological or moral weakness. Just seeing the counterattack is enough of a memetic vaccine for anyone who isn't already a CHUD to begin with. You're doing a service!
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday July 08 2020, @03:40AM (2 children)
It's a simple fact that poor people commit more violent crime.
Yeah, a rich guy will hire somebody. Doesn't want to mess up his suit.
Aren't most murders committed by relatives?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 08 2020, @11:14PM (1 child)
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/figures/expanded-homicide.gif [fbi.gov]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday July 09 2020, @08:22AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 08 2020, @03:15PM
The reason this isn't mentioned often is because the correlation between crime and poverty is *much* weaker than that between crime and race. In many places in the US blacks are not lowest on the socioeconomic ladder, yet they are almost invariably highest on the violent crime ladder - generally by a very wide margin. For instance NYC is rather interesting that not only hispanics but also asians are worse off than blacks. And, like everywhere, blacks top the charts for violent crime by an extremely wide margin.
The socioeconomic argument simply does not hold up to scrutiny at all.
This is not to say there is no correlation there, but the one that exists is pretty weak. For instance Asians almost invariably have slightly lower crime rates than Whites. But in NYC where Asians are the poorest, they have slightly high crime rates than whites. Poverty can move the rates a few percentage points. Race moves them by orders of magnitude.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Captival on Wednesday July 08 2020, @12:45AM (3 children)
And as usual, facts that Liberals don't like get moderated as Troll, then they come in and try to shift the goalposts from "Blacks don't commit more crimes" to "Okay they do but what about raaaaaaaacism". Are all you SJWs completely nuts? Do you not see how ridiculous you are when you rationalize and distort this way? I know that you do, because when you get your same style of argument parroted back at you, you can't stand it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 08 2020, @04:24AM
Racists are like 7 times more likely to be down-modded on SoylentNews. This is not to suggest that they are unpleasant, in error, intentionally ignorant, or otherwise stupid, but you can't argue with facts.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday July 09 2020, @08:31AM (1 child)
Don't you think there might be some alternative variable to correlate with - one that gives an even stronger correlation?
And once you've found the stronger correlation, you need to control for that when evaluating your previous statement. You might find that it evaporates into nothing, but you might even find the correlation is reversed. You won't know until you control for the appropriate other variables.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2020, @02:10PM
Do you notice when people, as yourself, go this route they never provide any figures whatsoever? The correlation between crime and poverty is real but it's generally quite weak. The most recent study I'm aware of on this is available here [sciencedirect.com]. This [sci-hub.tw] is a sci-hub link to bypass the paywall. You'd be most interested in table 2. If you're not familiar with correlation table values: 1 = there is a perfect correlation between A and B, -1 = there is a perfect inverse correlation between A and B, 0 = there is no correlation whatsoever between A and B.
So let's look at the correlates of murder:
Income: -40%
Life Expectancy: -61%
IQ: -64%
Skin Color (black): 84%
Income is, by a wide margin, one of weaker correlations with murder. By contrast race is invariably one of, if not the single strongest, correlates. So strong is the correlation that it can create spurious correlations of the type you probably think are significant. In any variable where blacks are over-represented (which includes poverty) you'll see disproportionately high violent crime rates. So e.g. if I wanted to be a bad social scientist I could research the correlation between music tastes and murder rates only to 'discover' that 'rap music has an extremely strong association with murder'. Time to ban rap music! Due to Poe's Law, let me emphasize that that suggestion is sarcastic.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 07 2020, @02:58PM (5 children)
True, they're only around 3 times more likely to commit violent crimes. [whiteprivilegeisntreal.org] IIRC the arrest rate is around 2.5 times higher overall in the US while the linked article seems to only look at a limited number of jurisdictions.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 07 2020, @03:45PM (1 child)
Two things:
1) You are making a common statistical mistake based on their data. Imagine 50% of people commit 100% of crime. How much more likely is that 50% to commit crime than the rest of society? It's obviously not (percent_of_crime_committed / percent_of_population) because that'd lead you to believe that they're only twice as likely to commit crime when compared to the other 50% of people who are committing 0 crime!
So how do you calculate the proper number? Break it down into ratios. Imagine 10% of people commit 50% of crime. The ratio there is 50% crimes per 10% population = 50/10. The rest of society would be 50% with 90% of remaining crimes = 50/90. So the first group has a relative rate of (50/10) / (50/90) = 9 meaning they are 900% more likely to commit crime. In our earlier example of 50% committing 100% you get: (100 / 50) / (0 / 50) = 2 / 0 = infinity. The point of this is that 10% of people committing 30% of crime are engaging in crime at a much higher relative rate than 3x.
2) That site made a critical mistake. They said violent crimes but they're looking at *all* crimes. Here [fbi.gov] is the table they linked to. You can confirm that it includes arrests for drug violations, DUI, vandalism, etc. The violent crime ratio is about 10x higher for blacks compared to non-hispanic whites.
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 07 2020, @05:55PM
Ha! The racist trolls just love downmodding everyone who argues with them, but dare downmod a racist post and they cry oppression.
Truly they are the most pathetic users around here.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday July 07 2020, @08:49PM (2 children)
Did you just unironically link to a site called "whiteprivilegeisntreal.org" and expect people to accept it as a reliable source?
You've been modded Flamebait, but maybe Funny would be more appropriate.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday July 09 2020, @08:33AM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday July 09 2020, @09:20PM
Ok, but whiteprivilegeisntreal.org?
How could I possibly take that seriously?