Warp wrote:
> 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).

We do that here, too, in some places.

>   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.

And that's exactly what we disallow here.

And that's exactly what this whole immigration law is designed to 
circumvent, allowing (and even requiring) police to harass people they don't 
like or that are disliked by those telling the police to harass them.

Also, stopping everyone on a particular stretch of road at a particular hour 
is quite different than trying to stop everyone on a particular sidewalk or 
in a particular store or something like that.

>   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?

False positives, for one. The ability for anyone who already has your DNA to 
plant it at the scene of a crime is another. The fact that the DNA database 
can be hacked is a third.  Not necessarily "invasion of privacy" per se.

We dislike it because it can lead to exactly the same problem as every other 
  "register your ethnic differences with the government" has ever led to.

>   Imagine that if every single citizen had to have their DNA registered,
> and thanks to that the apprehension rate of rapists grows near 100%,

That's not how DNA fingerprinting works. You can't pick someone out of a big 
bunch of people.

Think of blood typing. You can't say "Well, the murderer was A+. Go round up 
everyone A+ and question them."  When you have a hundred million people in 
the DNA database, you're going to get tens of thousands of false positives.

And if you say "you can use it to eliminate people", that's true, but if you 
eliminate a hundred million people and end up with 10,000, when the actual 
suspect like might only be 20 people, how does that help compared to taking 
DNA samples from the 20 people?

> 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?

Planted on the scene of a crime. Used to round up all those pesky people of 
Arab descent.

DNA information is *already* misused by authorities. We call it "racism." 
They just didn't collect and centralize it all yet. They actually have to go 
look at you to evaluate your DNA for those purposes.

>   I suppose that that kind of law could perhaps have good intentions
> behind it,

We already have the laws with good intentions behind them.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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