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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 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.