The Feds created a DNA database for violent criminals and sex offenders. If you're convicted of one of those crimes, you have to give them a blood sample. I have no major problem with that overall, it is quite common for violent criminals to repeat and people who violate children have a very high recidivism rate.
("sex offender" is waaay too broad of a label, but that's a different rant)Well, the Feds broadened the law to include ANYONE convicted of a Federal crime. So theoretically they have the DNA of Ollie North, Jack Abramoff, Jeff Skelling, and many others. Oh, sorry, Skelling hasn't been convicted yet. My bad.
This hacker was ordered by his parole officer to surrender a blood sample. The guy provided hair, fingernails, said he'd provide anything except blood as it violates his (unstated) religious beliefs. A DNA fingerprint can be lifted from just about anything, but in this case the Feds literally want blood.
So much for being a model parolee.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70869-0.htmlI have a basic problem with the law being expanded. Non-violent offenders do not often cross-over and become violent offenders. If you're a hacker or a confidence trickster, you're not likely to start bludgeoning your victims. I see expanding this law as mission creep. The Feds have stated in the past that what they want is that anyyone who is ARRESTED, regardless of whether or not they are convicted, to get samples from and put in the database.
This is worse than having your fingerprints on file. I have my fingerprints on file, twice-over. Once for working for the police department, then actually twice when I had a concealed weapons permit and had it renewed, fingerprinted both times. The Automatic Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) doesn't work like it does on CSI. You take the best print(s) that you recover from a crime scene, you upload it to the AFIS search queue, and you wait. And you wait. I believe the fastest that you'd normally get matches back is at least 48 hours. Now, if you have a hot case that you need faster results back, you can give your prints a higher priority, but you're not going to get results back in a matter of seconds. When you do get results back, you get MULTIPLE results. I believe you'll get eight result sets back, the closest perfect match and then other very close matches. A trained and certified fingerprint examiner then makes manual comparisons to identify the proper print match, so the precise match is not done by machine.
With a DNA match, how can you contest it? A fingerprint match can be re-performed in a court room in real time, a DNA sample requires hours of machine processing in a lab, not something that can be done in front of a court. So if there were a compromised DNA examiner and you can't afford independent DNA testing, how can you challenge the results presented to the court? Unless you can find procedural problems with the evidence collecting or with evidence chain of custody, you're pretty much forced into accepting the lab's results. At least with challenging a fingerprint match, like I said, it can be done in the court room without huge amounts of costly equipment.
Hacking is a remote crime, particularly the type that this guy was convicted on. He remotely penetrated networks with shoddy (or non-existant) security, then frequently turned around and helped the owner of the network secure it against his penetration. Remote penetration. Thus zero DNA evidence of the criminal at the scene of the crime. And once they arrest the perpetrator and seize all of his computer equipment, they have more than enough of his DNA, but they don't have anything to match it against.
SO WHY REQUIRE A FRIGGIN' DNA SAMPLE?!
One last thought. I am definitely not a genetic scientist or a genetic forensic examiner. But let's assume that I have a copy of your DNA signature. Now, with all the work that's been put into genetic sequencing, gene splicing, cloning, and attacking disease with genetics (but not in the USA, thank ghod!), it seems to me that it would not be outside of the realm of possibility that I could use this genetic manufacturing capability to produce "evidence" that matches the genetic sample of you in my database.
Or am I just being a little bit paranoid?
