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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:
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GEDmatch: "What If It Was Called Police Genealogy?"
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 07 2020, @07:49PM (1 child)
FTFY, and your historical perspective seems, er, a bit racist?
Angles and Saxons are almost useless as slaves, though. They malinger, lie, steal, and rape the livestock. Francs or Iberians are much better.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 08 2020, @05:41PM
What he's referring to is the fact that the slave trade in Africa was already thriving long before foreigners arrived. It's the main reason that Africans ended up being the final slaves. Europe, Asia, and the Mideast saw the rise of massive, powerful, and relatively technologically sophisticated empires. And within these empires slavery was generally restricted if not banned against other 'in group' types. So in Europe the in group was religion - the church forbade Christians from enslaving other Christians.
By contrast Africa was still a completely divided continent with vast numbers of tribes using primitive equipment and a thriving domestic slave market. Their lack of development and unification left them very vulnerable. This is part of the reason I suspect the future belongs to China now a days, with India coming up the rear. Multiculturalism seems to have been a failed experiment simply because you can basically halt any and all progress in the nation by invoking claims of racism. And the only way that would not be true is if everybody was completely equal which will never true. So the only way to ever proceed cooperatively is if nobody ever decides to start race baiting but that's just never going to be the case - even in a world with 0 racism.