Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> There is a difference between "we have a specific crime that we are 
> looking for suspects for" and "we are doing random checking to see if 
> someone might have committed a crime".

  There is a difference, but I don't see the random checkings as being all
that abhorrent in all cases (as I have mentioned, here the police does
random checkings on drivers even without any reason to suspect them of
being drunk, and I think that's completely ok).

  Of course if the police abuse their rights to perform random checking
in order to harass people they don't like, that's going over the line.

> To use your rape example, suppose instead of "we're looking for a white 
> male because of this specific case we're looking into" the police started 
> by collecting DNA samples from all white males just *in case* a crime 
> were committed.

  As a side note: Why are people so afraid of DNA databanks? Why is it
such an abhorrent idea? What kind of "invasion of privacy" is having
your DNA in a databank? Exactly how does that invade one's privacy?

  Imagine that if every single citizen had to have their DNA registered,
and thanks to that the apprehension rate of rapists grows near 100%,
wouldn't that be a good thing? Not only would the rapists be all caught,
but it would also act as an effective deterrent.

  How could DNA information be misused by authorities?

> That's the difference.  What the Arizona law does is not tie the act of 
> "being an illegal immigrant" to a specific instance of a crime.

> Does that make sense?

  I suppose that that kind of law could perhaps have good intentions
behind it, but in practice it's too radical to have any chance of actually
working, even if the intentions were good. (Of course I have no way of
knowing what the actual intentions were behind that law proposal. Maybe
it *was* made by purely racist reasons.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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