DNA Profiling antithetical to right to privacy.
INTRODUCTION
The ambit of privacy can get to the extent of your saliva, spit or anything from which your DNA can be traced down. These mentioned things are unintentionally thrown by us and definitely abandoned by us without having any idea of its further use. This unintentional act of ours might take us behind the bars or might make us the part of the criminal investigation.
The research project deals with what actually constitute privacy and what is its relation with the DNA Profiling. The DNA Profiling has been emerged as the means of fair trial and means to foster justice. The establishment of DNA Database had helped the government of various countries to solve
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The problem emerged as to when someone’s privacy had been invaded, what is its content or its area. Whether that area can be defined in a concrete terms and what is falling outside that area.
John Stuart Mill in his most famous work in his essay On Liberty, published in 1859 discussed the principle that has come to be known as the principle of liberty (harm principle)
That principle is that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection.
Adherence to this principle makes possible a form of social life which maximizes liberty; conversely if individuals or the collective(the government), continually interfere with others, a liberal form of social life is impossible. An individual is to be given a private social space in which the individual can do as he/she pleases.
But the social space which John Stuart Mill talked about was not subject to disturbance as long as it is not harming others.The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient
It can refute a claim of self-defense and put a weapon in the suspect's hand. It can change a story from an alibi to one of consent. The more officers know how to use DNA, the more powerful a tool it becomes.” This proves that DNA evidence is very reliable and is hard evidence that cannot be argued upon. DNA is either found at the scene of the crime or isn’t.
We know that DNA testing is giving hope to the hopeless in prison. Margret Berger (2006) comments, “Even though the number of inmates released as a consequence of DNA testing is minuscule in contrast to the two million persons incarcerated in the United States, the DNA exonerations have had an enormous impact on the fundamental assumptions about the American criminal justice system and how it operates.” Changes like the desirability of the death penalty, the growing concerns on how forensic laboratories operate alongside the increasing interest in forensic science overall. For instance, as the number of exonerations continues to rise, the number of people being placed on death row is decreasing thanks to Supreme Court rulings that juveniles under the age of 18 and the mentally ill cannot be sentenced to death. The death penalty is overall losing its appeal to society, not just because of the DNA testing, but people become aware of the wrongful convictions of other crimes as well.
Today, the FBI has DNA records of more than 5 million convicted offenders in the database CODIS, or Combined DNA Index System. However, DNA fingerprinting has limitations: it is limited to directly connecting crimes to felons already in CODIS, has high risk of contamination, does not look at familial records, and only analyzes short pieces of DNA. With the advent of more affordable and high resolution genetic technologies after The Human Genome Project, over 35 million people have submitted their DNA to the largest direct-to-consumer genetic companies. Two companies, FamilyTreeDNA and GEDmatch, also allow law enforcement access to their databases. Thus, beginning investigative genetic genealogy, a new method of forensic investigation not only with higher resolution DNA information than DNA fingerprinting but also the capability of finding a suspect from distant relatives.
Edward Snowden perfectly sums up the thought process behind the rejection of the mass surveillance: “Privacy isn’t about something to hide. Privacy is about something to protect… freedom of speech doesn’t mean much if you can’t have a quiet space… arguing that you don’t have privacy because you have nothing to hide is like arguing that you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” (Document 2). The point of view is from an ardent Libertarian that has contributed to Ron Paul’s campaign numerous times. Edward Snowden firmly believes in the right to self.
DNA Fingerprinting Using Agarose Gel S. Aaron Sowards Bio 122 Lab 04 Brianna Adanitsch Jakob Lester Minhenga Ngijoi 2/21/18 Dr. Chad R. Sethman Abstract DNA fingerprinting is the process of analyzing an individual’s DNA base-pair patterns. The DNA fingerprinting lab involved identifying the suspect using Agarose Gel and Polymerase Chain Reaction. It was found that suspect two s DNA matched the crime scene DNA.
To further support this, information that is collected is used to protect the Nation from "threats.” (2.1)Since this information is used to protect the Nation from “threats,” not to intrude on everyday citizen’s privacy, it is not an invasion of their right to privacy. Correspondingly, part of protecting citizen’s privacy is requiring a probable cause for
Nowadays, “privacy” is becoming a popular conversation topic. Many people believe that if they do not do anything wrong in the face of technology and security, then they have nothing to hide. Professor Daniel J. Solove of George Washington University Law School, an internationally known expert in privacy law, wrote the article Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have ‘Nothing to Hide’, published in The Chronicle of Higher Education in May of 2011. Solove explains what privacy is and the value of privacy, and he insists that the ‘nothing to hide’ argument is wrong in this article. In the article, “Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have ‘Nothing to Hide’”, Daniel J. Solove uses ethos, pathos, and logos effectively by using strong sources, using
In many cases, post-conviction DNA testing has revealed that the DNA found at the crime scene did not match the DNA of the individual who was convicted. We use DNA to link crimes, DNA evidence can link crimes that were previously thought to be unrelated by identifying the same perpetrator through matching DNA profiles found at multiple crime scenes. Like we identify suspects we can also Identify victims, DNA evidence can be used to identify victims of crimes, such as in cases where the victim's body has been severely damaged or decomposed. Providing evidence in court DNA evidence is admissible as evidence in court and can be presented to a jury to help establish the guilt or innocence of a defendant. DNA evidence has become an important tool in the criminal justice system and has helped to solve many crimes, as well as prevent the conviction of innocent individuals and try so hard to find out who the offenders
(Argument: Body scanners at airports violate privacy. (n.d.). Retrieved October 21, 2015. )
In the Harm Principle Mill suggests that the actions of individuals should be limited to prevent the harm of others . An individual may do whatever he or she wants, as long as these actions do not harm others. Mill believes in an individual’s autonomy; being self governed. We can live as we wish, and therefor also die as and when we wish. As Mill says: “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.
The “Nothing-to-Hide Argument” Analyzed: In this rhetorical analysis, I will be taking a look at Daniel J. Solove’s essay “The Nothing-to-Hide Argument,” which is about privacy in the context of personal information and government data collection (Solove 734). Solove’s main argument in his essay is that the general public has a narrow perception of what privacy really is. The purpose behind his main argument is to expose the problems with the nothing-to-hide argument while presenting a way to challenge it for his target audience, government officials. Solove’s argument to his target audience is effective through his exemplary use of substance, organization, and style in his essay.
DNA can be used as evidence to charge and imprison people. There are many pros to forensic dna like solving crimes and finding criminals. But Forensic dna also has many cons too like how dna can be tampered with and can falsely incriminate innocent people. Dna being used to throw the track off of criminals and nowadays be used to forge another person’s fingerprint on to a weapon of a sort and left behind to falsely accuse an innocent person so now Dna is not reliable all the time.
This is not aimed to devalue the importance of privacy; in fact, it is privacy that promotes individuality and autonomy. Privacy is crucial for helping to develop a personality that is not influenced by the government, the values, or the judgment of others. In short, this helps you self-develop. Also, contrary to the public's belief, increasing surveillance doesn’t just impact an individual's privacy; in fact, it impacts much more than that. With an increased amount of surveillance, a range of rights that we obtain from the U.S Constitution and the Bill of Rights are affected, some of which include freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of association and assembly.
Throughout J.S. Mill’s On Liberty, he claims that one must think critically about the policies and norms of one’s society, and consider the “harm principle” in its regards to one’s individual liberties. He goes forth to justify that his principle is not bounded to a strict interpretation because the norms in one society during a specific time would greatly differ from a separate society in another time. His claim is especially imperative and relevant to the present day because of the current issues of liberty regarding international adoption. Though the ideas Mill discusses in On Liberty are applicable to present day, they should serve as guidelines rather than restrictions because of the situational controversies in adoption.
There is always fear of crime and fear who will commit those said crimes. The world or the government, I should say, lives and strives off of fear. Without fear they can not make laws to ‘protect’ their people or take ‘necessary’ measures in order to keep everyone safe. One of the measures I speak of is, profiling. Profiling is the monitoring of habits or even, sadly, certain demographics.