Prairieville police are holding a man’s DNA hostage after obtaining it for evidence when his wife’s car was broken into Oct. 29. This ridiculous ordeal could be the first of many future attempts to broaden the government DNA database.
In Alabama, officials recently set up roadblocks and offered money to drivers who would let them take a cheek swab DNA sample. The samples were taken for a study conducted by the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, but officials have yet to release what DNA sampling has to do with the study.
At this rate, collecting DNA at checkpoints on Burbank will be the new norm. We could all use the extra $10 for a cheek swab, but at what cost to our constitutional rights?
There’s a thin line separating personal rights and government intrusion, and authorities have crossed it.
The Fourth Amendment was meant to protect the people from the threatening control of the government. It helps limit their power so we don’t end up in a totalitarian regime.
Our country is already offering up our basic rights without much persistence. Gun control limits our right to bear arms and now this. What’s next, eliminating the law against cruel and unusual punishment?
Police and government officials don’t need your DNA if you haven’t committed a crime. Usually their needs to be probable cause or a warrant issued, but a DNA database would eliminate this step all together.
It would give those in power the unquestioned ability to take DNA from whomever they want, regardless of reasoning.
I don’t theorize that every government official is out to get me, but there are too many crooked people I wouldn’t trust with my DNA.
If you have no problem giving your swab of individuality over to complete strangers then go right ahead, but citizens should still get a choice whether or not to comply.
In the case of the Prairieville man, the police deviously took his DNA sample and now refuse to erase it from their records. Authorities have responded to the incident by saying that obtaining a victim’s DNA is protocol needed to eliminate their DNA from the crime scene. They also added that it is a completely voluntary process. It sounds like police are covering their own butts after implying to the Prairieville man that it was necessary to take his cheek swab and are now storing his DNA without his permission.
Authorities also added that no law-abiding citizen should worry about this DNA database, a classic intimidation technique. It is the principle of the matter that is worrying these citizens.
If the police were law-abiding citizens themselves then they would have told the man his DNA collection was voluntary and thrown it out of their system once they caught the criminal who broke into his wife’s car.
If shady acts like these are already happening with common car break-ins, I can only imagine what political giants will do in more serious situations. DNA can easily be tampered with or purposely placed in convenient spots.
I can already see front-page headlines reading, “Obama uses DNA to frame Edward Snowden/Chelsea Manning/Republicans.”
The problem with DNA is that it doesn’t say when people were at a certain place; it just says they were once there. We might as well put GPS trackers into everyone at birth, which doesn’t seem too far-fetched considering how technology and our government are progressing.
Supporters of the database say this would help catch criminals faster, but if the government needs a database of every human’s genetic code to do their job, then we should re-evaluate more than just their motives and look into their general capabilities.
The bottom line is that compiling a DNA database would violate our freedom. If you support giving the government everything that physically makes up your existence, then you are knowingly surrendering your freedom.
You might be better moving to North Korea where at least their DNA is still safely inside their bodies.