stopprism:

There is little public support for the sweeping and unaccountable nature of the National Security Agency surveillance program along with concerns about how the data will be used.

Fifty-seven percent (57%) of voters nationwide believe it is likely the NSA data will be used by other government agencies to harass political opponents. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that just 30% consider it unlikely and 14% are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on June 12-13, 2013 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology. 

What bothers me is what the possibilities are when it comes to what exactly can be done with someone’s DNA, other than just using as another form of the fingerprint, which by the way, seems to be working just fine right now. I’m not scientifically educated in this department, but from what I understand, there’s a giant potential for abuse. Just think of what could be recreated with that DNA in case something happen to the original “donor”. The police having access to copies of your DNA brings in questionable doubts into the sanctity of DNA evidence. I realize that sounds like hyperbole, but is it unreasonable? I don’t think so.

Your genetic code is personal. Giving it to the government is the worst thing you can do with it. When they say “It’s just like the fingerprint”, they’re minimizing its full capabilities by playing off your ignorance.

When a group of uniformed men wearing guns sets up a road block then ask you to “volunteer” a DNA sample and blood sample, it stretches the definition of “volunteer.” But that’s what happened in Alabama yesterday as off-duty cops in two counties set up DNA collection roadblocks and stopped cars to ask if drivers wanted to “volunteer” DNA swabs and blood samples.

It was all part of a study being conducted by the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, which is probably studying what percentage of the sheeple population will allow the government to swipe their DNA and archive it in a database for a measly ten bucks.

According to a story published in the Daily Caller, “drivers were asked to voluntarily offer samples of their saliva and blood.”

Just one county in Alabama had set up five roadblocks in one day, and more are being rolled out nationwide. The explanation behind all this is that it’s for a “medical study” to see how much alcohol drivers have in their blood.

If this is a “medical” study, then why not have scientists in lab coats stopping cars to collect blood?

So here’s the real problem with all this: when police carrying guns walk up to your car at a roadblock and ask if you will “volunteer” some samples of your blood and DNA, that’s more than a bit coercive. If this is truly supposed to be a scientific study of the blood alcohol levels of anonymous drivers, then why not have scientists in lab coats on the streets collecting the blood?

Answer: Because no one would give it to them. The police are there to make sure the “volunteer requests” are backed up by the implied threat of force. A roadblock staffed by men with guns is going to get a lot more “compliance” than a roadside volunteer booth staffed by a bunch of lab geeks.

And that’s why this little police state experiment is a gross abuse of police power and a violation of the civil rights of those targeted in the study. Besides, since when did scientists have to use police to collect data for their studies, anyway?

Faulty data being gathered

If the real purpose of the roadblocks is to collect blood samples for a study documenting alcohol levels of random drivers — as it claimed by the study organizers — then they need to go back to school and learn about scientific methods. Because all you’re going to get in this study is a self-selected sample of blood and DNA from the most timid, easy-to-dominate sheeple of society… or people who live on such low incomes that $10 seems to be fair compensation for allowing the government to swipe their DNA and archive it in a database.

In other words, you’re going to end up studying the blood and DNA of society’s total morons and dumbed-down sheeple, many of whom are physiological anomalies to begin with because they all have no spine, no guts and no balls, either.

Thus, the entire stated purpose of the study is hogwash. There is no scientific validity to any data set of human DNA generated from roadblocks staffed by police. The study is invalid at the outset because, by design, it fails to test the blood of those who prefer NOT to interact with police — i.e. people who have probably been drinking.

This is why I don’t believe for a minute that this is some sort of public safety study. It’s far more likely to be a police state test run just to see how many idiots in American society will let some government goon swab their DNA when commanded to do so. And that number is shockingly high. We now live in the United States of Apathy, where the sheeple are far more interested in their late-night television, Happy Meals and on-screen celebrities than protecting their rights from an ever-expanding surveillance police state.

Don’t you find it amazing, though, to realize all the police state contradictions now in place? Consider:

• At a police DNA swab checkpoint, you’re supposed to open your mouth. But at a TSA checkpoint if you open your mouth, you’re detained as a possible terrorist.

• At the TSA checkpoint, though, you’re supposed to remove your belt and drop your pants. But at a police DNA checkpoint, if you drop your pants, you’re arrested for indecent exposure.

• In America, a “terrorist” is a citizen who forgets at which checkpoint he’s supposed to drop his pants vs. open his mouth. And if all this talk about pants dropping and mouths opening gets you excited, Janet Napolitano has a job waiting for you at DHS.

WASHINGTON — The police may take DNA samples from people arrested in connection with serious crimes, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday in a 5-to-4 decision.

The federal government and 28 states authorize the practice, and law enforcement officials say it is a valuable tool for investigating unsolved crimes. But the court said the testing was justified by a different reason: to identify the suspect in custody.

“When officers make an arrest supported by probable cause to hold for a serious offense and they bring the suspect to the station to be detained in custody,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority, “taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee’s DNA is, like fingerprinting and photographing, a legitimate police booking procedure that is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.”

Justice Antonin Scalia summarized his dissent from the bench, a rare move signaling deep disagreement. He accused the majority of an unsuccessful sleight of hand, one that “taxes the credulity of the credulous.” The point of DNA testing as it is actually practiced, he said, is to solve cold cases, not to identify the suspect in custody.

But the Fourth Amendment forbids searches without reasonable suspicion to gather evidence about an unrelated crime, he said, a point the majority did not dispute. “Make no mistake about it: because of today’s decision, your DNA can be taken and entered into a national database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason,” Justice Scalia said from the bench.

The case featured an alignment of justices that scrambled the usual ideological alliances. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas, Stephen G. Breyer and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined the majority opinion, while Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined Justice Scalia’s dissent.

Justice Scalia has been a strong voice for Fourth Amendment rights this term. In recent months, he joined his three liberal allies from Monday’s decision, along with other justices, to form majorities that limited the use of drug-sniffing dogs outside homes and the drawing of blood in drunken-driving investigations.

Justice Breyer, who generally votes with the court’s liberal wing, was on the other side from his usual allies in all three of the recent Fourth Amendment decisions.

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Last week, the Wisconsin Campaign for Liberty blasted Governor Walker and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’ proposal to expand the DNA database to include individuals arrested for but not convicted of felonies.

This measure spends $6,000,000 to expand DNA collection for a permanent database. It provides that anyone simply arrested, not convicted, for a felony would be forced to submit their DNA for a government database. It would also enable government to forcefully collect DNA for conviction of any crime whatsoever.

“This proposal allows anyone who would be arrested and subsequently acquitted to ‘ask’ to have their DNA removed from the database,” said Wisconsin C4L State Coordinator Todd Welch. “But a free person in a free country does not have to ‘ask’ to have their most intimate personal information removed from government databases, where it should not have been to begin with.

“I call on every Wisconsin citizen to contact Governor Walker, Speaker Vos, and their State Representative to remind them about the presumption of innocence, and the notion of consequences being proportionate to an offense. They need to be reminded that arrest, even for a felony, does not justify the state seizing our DNA,” Welch continued.

Wisconsin Campaign for Liberty is actively urging citizens to call and email their state legislators and remind them and Governor Walker about the Fourth Amendment and the presumption of being innocent until found guilty.