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posted by martyb on Tuesday July 07 2020, @12:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the could-just-ask-23-and-me dept.

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.

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  • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday July 07 2020, @08:21PM (1 child)

    by meustrus (4961) on Tuesday July 07 2020, @08:21PM (#1017852)

    Let me follow your reasoning here.

    If a murder was more often punished by death in population A than population B, then you would expect after a significant period of time that population A would have less murder.

    Population A has more murder. Therefore...the original premise holds, and it must be that murder isn't actually punished more in population A?

    What? That's not how induction works.

    Lets say, for the sake of argument, that we actually do punish black offenders more intensively than whites for the same crime.

    Usually one uses this device when the idea lacks direct evidence. There's plenty of evidence that we do this, though. Even if your inductive argument was logically consistent, it would still be weaker than the evidence.

    What your inductive thought experiment really proves is that unjust killings by the police do not improve crime rates, and may actually make them worse.

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday July 08 2020, @01:08AM

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday July 08 2020, @01:08AM (#1017958) Journal

    He's not arguing in good faith. VLM is one of the single worst sociopaths we have on the site. There is not a functioning human in there under the skin suit. Keep doing what you're doing here, but understand it's not for VLM's benefit; he's never, ever going to change, not in this lifetime at least. Rather, it's for anyone who has the misfortune of stepping in his effluent.

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