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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 07 2020, @02:57PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 07 2020, @02:57PM (#1017674)

    The thing you miss is recidivism. In the US there are quite a lot of people living lives of crime. They go into prison, get out, engage in crime, go to prison, repeat until they escalate to something that gets them locked away indefinitely. In China recidivism is far less for a variety of reasons. So I think it's more like what you said for China, whereas for the US it's simply getting ready to reel in the exact same fish over and over again.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by meustrus on Tuesday July 07 2020, @08:03PM

    by meustrus (4961) on Tuesday July 07 2020, @08:03PM (#1017847)

    Looks like somebody longs for Communist dictators to take over and enforce the One True Culture over all those awful people over there. The ones in the news.

    Yup, definitely nothing dangerous about being an average Chinese person in Communist China. At least as long as you're not one of those awful people over there. Isn't it great when the government tells us who is bad and arrests and re-educates them at scale?

    --
    If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?