re: #207 Cato the Elder

I know you get it, Walter, but for those who don’t:

Because it’s a million times easier to plant your real DNA at a crime scene and frame you than to do it with fake fingerprints.

And if you’re framed and manage to escape anyway, they’ll soon be able to clone your ass and put your Doppelgnger in the clink. Now, just imagine how much that would suck.

Do they remove your fingerprints from the database if you are acquitted? I don’t think so. So as it stands now, if you are arrested (not just given a ticket) you get fingerprinted, and those prints stay on file pretty much forever. And there have been how many cases of this process being abused? Versus how many cases where having prints on file has helped solve a crime? So that’s the status quo, and I think it is one that works well, as far as it goes.

I assume that the same kinds of procedural and access safeguards can work around DNA. Does that create the risk that a criminal genius could use your DNA to frame you? I guess. I would note that there are damn few criminal geniuses in the world. My experience with that field (I did some criminal defense work and some prosecuting) is that criminals become criminals not because they are too smart for civilized society, but because they are too stupid or lazy. So while the “criminal genius” is a great construct for a CSI or Law and Order episode, they seem to be pretty damn rare in real life.

We make lots of trades between individual rights and group rights. Traffic lights. Zoning laws. The Clean Water Act. And fingerprinting. And while I like my privacy as much as the next guy, I would trade the right to keep my DNA secret for the hundreds or thousands of serious crimes that would be solved (and the additional hundreds or thousands of additional crimes that would therefore be prevented) by having DNA captured of anyone who would have previously just been fingerprinted. That is a good trade.