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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday October 03 2019, @11:42AM   Printer-friendly
from the gotta-watch-the-watchers dept.

U.S. to Collect DNA of All Undocumented Migrants:

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is developing a plan to take DNA samples from each of the undocumented immigrants and store it in a national database for criminal DNA profiles, they said.

Speaking to journalists on grounds of anonymity, DHS officials said the new policy would give immigration and border control agents a broader picture of the migrant and detainee situation.

And stored on the FBI's CODIS DNA database, it could also be used by others in law enforcement and beyond.

[...] Officials said they were in fact required to take the DNA samples by rules about the handling of arrested and convicted people that were issued by the Justice Department in 2006 and 2010, but which had not been implemented.

They said the program for collecting DNA was still being developed, and they did not have a date set for implementation.

Collecting and storing the DNA of people simply detained and not tried or convicted of a crime has drawn criticism from civil rights advocates.

"Forced DNA collection raises serious privacy and civil liberties concerns and lacks justification, especially when DHS is already using less intrusive identification methods like fingerprinting," Vera Eidelman, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.

"This kind of mass collection also alters the purpose of DNA collection from one of criminal investigation to population surveillance, which is contrary to our basic notions of freedom and autonomy," Eidelman said.

If it becomes okay to do this to "them", how long will it take before they want to do it to "us"?


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  • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Thursday October 03 2019, @04:13PM

    by JNCF (4317) on Thursday October 03 2019, @04:13PM (#902336) Journal

    Your precious laws are irrelevant here, the government just wants data. Any excuse that will be accepted is good enough. Remeber that time the CIA used a vaccine drive to steal the DNA of children in a country they weren't even at war with? [theguardian.com] This isn't about laws, it's about using a set of piecemeal justifications to create an ever more detailed map of every human's biometrics over time. Your citizenship didn't protect from warrantless wiretaps, and it won't protect you from having your DNA stolen when the time comes.

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