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Washington State Wants DNA Sampling of All Arrested Individuals

by Lee Bains on February 6, 2009 at 02:54 PM



This week, some Washington state lawmakers are pushing a proposal that would require police to extract DNA from every arrested individual.

At present, Washington police take DNA samples only from those who have already been convicted of a crime, as a warrant is necessary to obtain the DNA of mere suspects.

Under the provisions of the proposal, the collected DNA would be sent off to a State Patrol database, as well as the one maintained by the FBI, thereby enabling a sort of suspect-centered Google; if a certain strand of DNA showed up on a crime scene, it could be punched into the local police's DNA search engine and, presto, you've got a suspect.

Many folks, including the American Civil Liberties Untion (ACLU), believe these goings on smack of an Orwellian dystopia or apocalyptic events -- a database, accessible to unseen powers, that contains the very code of each individual's biology.

Our primary concern? Who's going to pay for these $82-a-shot DNA extractions? With the program estimated to cost $1-million dollars for two years of operation, Olympia's hoping to get some federal help. Along with everybody else, that is. Can't we just put aside our creepy 'Brave New World' ideas until after the economic crisis? [From: Seattle Times via Slashdot]

Next-Gen Crime Busting


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Tags: 1984, civil liberties, CivilLiberties, creepy, crime, crime prevention, CrimePrevention, dna, dystopia, future tech, FutureTech, law enforcement, LawEnforcement, orwellian, weird

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