Profiling DNA
Governments use of the powerful scientific tool of DNA profiling needs to be limited. Law enforcement agency’s are clamoring for power to test more people and fill their genetic fingerprint databanks. Law enforcement’s overeager rush to profile overlooks flaws in the system. The personal genetic information contained in DNA gives powerful temptation for opportunists to exploit the samples. Allowing law enforcement overreaching power to collect DNA samples is an invasion of privacy.
Legislative trends are giving law enforcement unprecedented authority to profile more people without just cause. All states have laws requiring the collection of DNA samples from some convicts. Some states collect only from convicted sex offenders while others collect from all felony convicts. Along with many police agencies, Attorney General Janet Reno is calling for collecting samples from everyone who is arrested. Recently, Louisiana was the first state to pass such a law.
All states have DNA fingerprint databases and more than twenty states are now linked to the FBI’s national database. While this trend toward massive testing is a powerful tool for identifying criminals, testing without reasonable cause amounts to unreasonable search and seizure promoting an attitude of guilty until proven innocent. The personal information contained in DNA could be compared to personal records in one’s home. Should the police be allowed to search someone’s home without a warrant? Heath Gibson describes a case in Australia on the web page “Voluntary” DNA Testing : A Dangerous Precedent? Over six hundred men were asked to give DNA samples to compare with evidence for a horrible murder in the small town of Wee Waa. Some who at first refused, found the town’s suspicion reason enough to submit to testing.
The local police are quoted as saying “Equally important to identifying the offender is to eliminate those people who are innocent so they don’t have a cloud hanging over their head.” This example of guilty until proven innocent is not far different than profiling someone arrested for one crime against all unsolved cases in a database.
In the rush to judgment, flaws in the system of genetic fingerprinting are overlooked. The precision and accuracy of DNA identification is not perfect. Carolyn Napier Martin from the Woodrow Wilson Biology Institute points out the possibilities for contamination and degrading of samples along with the different odds of a match depending on the ethnic makeup of the database. Law enforcement’s motivation toward conviction calls into question their attitude toward genetic evidence.
Frontline shows the reluctance to pay for expensive testing and investigate cases that could result in overturned convictions in the web page “Four Cases”. One case involves Clyde Charles who spent 18 years of a life sentence in Louisiana. He petitioned the courts for 9 years to have testing done and finally with the help of The Innocence Project and Frontline, he was exonerated and released in 1999. “Fear Loathing and DNA:” a web page by Paul DeRienzo and Joan Moossy shows the narrow focus of law enforcement. They claim that when Jan Bashiki, the Chief of California’s Bureau of Forensic Services, was asked if the evidence from O.J. Simpson’s case was removed from the database after his acquittal, as required by law, she said that Simpson’s sample was never in the database because the case was considered closed. No other suspects were ever investigated.
The privacy of genetic information is at risk as uses beyond identification become apparent. Genetic samples contain more than DNA fingerprints. According to the ACLU’s web page “DNA Testing Q & A” over 4000 diseases can be identified along with ethnicity and family history. Should relatives of an unreachable suspect be tested? The possibilities of identifying genes for aggressiveness, homosexuality, alcoholism and mental illness will pose serious questions. Prosecutors might be interested to see if a suspect has an aggressiveness gene while defense attorneys may use it as an excuse. The security of these databanks is in question. Some states allow third party access. Hacking is possible. The ACLU also warns of what it calls “function creep”, where records are used beyond their original purpose. Social Security records already go far beyond their original use for the retirement program. Supposedly private census records were used in World War II to find Japanese Americans and inter them in camps. The wealth of possible information in DNA will certainly bring temptation for expanded uses.
How much power and personal information should the government have? Law enforcement deserves to use the tools it needs to fight crime. But before they be given free use of genetic information, attitudes need to be examined. Quick to convict yet slow to exonerate the law should not be given free reign to trample on privacy. The potential power of genetic information gives reason to be cautious. The line must be drawn at requiring those arrested and presumed innocent from providing samples containing their most personal information.
Works Cited
Gibson, Heath “”Voluntary” DNA Testing: A Dangerous Precedent?” http://www.zolatimes.com/V4.17/dna_weewaa.html
Martin, Carolyn Napier “DNA Fingerprinting: You be the Judge!” http://www.accessexcellence.com/AE/AEPC/WWC/1992/DNA_printing.html
Frontline “Four Cases” http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/fronline/shows/case/cases
DeRienzo, Paul and Moossy, Joan “Fear, Loathing and DNA: Law Enforcement’s Blueprint for Changing the World” http://www.shadow.autono.net/sin001/dna.htm
American Civil Liberties Union “DNA Testing ACLU Q & A” http://www.aclu-mass.org/privacy/dnaqna.html
Green, David “DNA Testing Provokes Debate” http://www.herald.com/content/today/news/broward/digdocs/030227.htm
2000 by Ronald Fife
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