The U.S. Is Building Massive DNA Databases [Preview]

[boutons_deux]

Starting in the mid-1980s, a serial killer murdered at least 10 women in the Los Angeles area. Nicknamed the “Grim Sleeper” because of the long dormancy between his crimes, he eluded capture for nearly 25 years. Then, in 2010, police arrested a man in California for what appeared to be a totally unrelated felony weapons charge. State law required the man to submit a DNA sample for a national DNA database. Typically a DNA database search looks for an exact match between a profile of DNA left at a crime scene by an unknown person and the profile of a known convicted offender. It focuses on 13 places in the genome (the full complement of our DNA) where bits of genetic material vary from person to person. If the crime-scene material differs in any of those 13 places, then the samples do not match, and investigators know that they do not have their suspect.

This time, however, the search was more subtle. It aimed to find DNA profiles that were similar, but not an exact match, to that of the Grim Sleeper. Such an inquiry was possible because in 2008 California became the first state in the nation to formally authorize a new kind of database search. Known as kinship, or familial, matching, this technique looks for partial DNA matches. It is conducted after DNA found at a crime turns up no exact hit. Because related people tend to share more DNA with one another than they do with strangers, a “near miss” in the database may suggest that the search found a person related to the actual perpetrator. Police can then investigate the relatives of the person in the database with the hope of solving the crime.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=united-states-building-massive-dna-databases&WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20130227

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Justices Turn Back Challenge to Broader US Eavesdropping

The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned back a challenge to a federal law that broadened the government’s power to eavesdrop on international phone calls and e-mails.

The decision, by a 5-to-4 vote that divided along ideological lines, probably means the Supreme Court will never rule on the constitutionality of that 2008 law.

More broadly, the ruling illustrated how hard it is to mount court challenges to a wide array of antiterrorism measures, including renditions of terrorism suspects to foreign countries and targeted killings using drones, in light of the combination of government secrecy and judicial doctrines limiting access to the courts.

“Absent a radical sea change from the courts, or more likely intervention from the Congress, the coffin is slamming shut on the ability of private citizens and civil liberties groups to challenge government counterterrorism policies, with the possible exception of Guantánamo,” said Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at American University.

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said that the journalists, lawyers and human rights advocates who challenged the constitutionality of the law could not show they had been harmed by it and so lacked standing to sue. The plaintiffs’ fear that they would be subject to surveillance in the future was too speculative to establish standing, he wrote.

Justice Alito also rejected arguments based on the steps the plaintiffs had taken to escape surveillance, including traveling to meet sources and clients in person rather than talking to them over the phone or sending e-mails. “They cannot manufacture standing by incurring costs in anticipation of nonimminent harms,” he wrote of the plaintiffs.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/14833-justices-turn-back-challenge-to-broader-us-eavesdropping

the authoritarian Big Brother state trumps the Constitution and any sense of democratic "freedom and liberty". The govt own our asses and will break any law or regulation to crush us.

[TSA]

"the authoritarian Big Brother state trumps the Constitution and any sense of democratic "freedom and liberty". The govt own our asses and will break any law or regulation to crush us."

Funny after reading this from you that you are so anti 2A.

[boutons_deux]

"the authoritarian Big Brother state trumps the Constitution and any sense of democratic "freedom and liberty". The govt own our asses and will break any law or regulation to crush us."

Funny after reading this from you that you are so anti 2A.

happy to make you laugh