Saturday, June 03, 2006

DNA dragnet discrimination

Good article in the Washington Post about misuses of DNA profiling to find criminals. I think many of the privacy concerns people have are overstated, but discrimination against minorities and the poor have been ignored. People who have been arrested but not convicted, and are guilty of absolutely nothing, will have their DNA collected and tested in every DNA search. What social categories of people are more likely to fall in this category - the arrested but innocent?

Anyone saying that they shouldn't worry if they've got nothing to hide should then have no objection to a national database from everyone. That's my "reasonable libertarian" position - get identifying DNA information from everyone, destroy the sample afterwards to preserve all other aspects of privacy, and provide enough funding to get testing done quickly.

I recognize some libertarians would reject this as even vaguely "resonable". Too bad.

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