Crossing the privacy lines?

[nadalia]

In my line of work I often consider a person's right to privacy. There are tons of pieces of information about you (and me, and your 3rd cousin twice removed) that my employer collects and then sells to companies and organizations for many different purposes. We abide by many laws at both the federal and state levels and I personally believe that

Comments

Re: Collection of DNA on Arrest Saves Lives!

[nadalia]

You bring up some decent thoughts. I didn't think about the other crimes a person may have committed but had never been arrested for. When it comes to the comments about DNA being blind to race, sex, etc. That is true, however people who read the results, and computers too, can still make mistakes. What if someone doesn't look at the right markers or misreads a result? What if there's a bug in a computer system that processes the DNA and marks it as a match to John Doe when really it is not? I also feel that the 252 wrongfully accused individuals part is mostly irrevelent as, to my understanding, most of those individuals were convicted of a crime and then exhonerated when they finally got the $ to collect their own DNA and compare it against DNA collected from the crime. I do belive that process is wrong too. In my opinion, when a case goes to trial, the prosecution should request the DNA of the accused (if they have DNA to compare it to) as part of their due diligence. The accused would then have the option to decline, which could be overruled by a judge.

And honestly that's not even my concern or why I brought up this topic. My concern was back to the security of my personal information and how I worry that DNA, bieing the kind of Uber SPII that I believe it is, is being collected and stored by the government. How will they collect it? How will they maintain it? What else might it be used for? When the government issued SSN's did they think about how those numbers might now be used for everything as a primary means of identification for a US citizen?