Editorial: California shouldn’t keep DNA from hundreds of thousands of innocent people
By Chronicle Editorial Board,
San Francisco Chronicle [cites CGS' Marcy Darnovsky]
| 12. 14. 2018
California is being sued over its DNA collection practices, and the only thing that’s surprising is how long it took. In 2004, state voters passed Proposition 69, which requires authorities to collect DNA from anyone arrested for a felony. The person’s DNA profile is then uploaded to the national Combined DNA Index System.
Police and other law enforcement agencies around the country love the database, because it allows them to share information, generate leads, and connect the dots between crimes.
These are important functions, and DNA databases have been a breakthrough tool for law enforcement. In California, police agencies have used DNA databases to find the perpetrators of horrific crimes like the Gypsy Hill Killings.
But as we pointed out in 2004, there’s always been one huge flaw with Prop. 69: the size of the net it casts.
Prop. 69 requires DNA collection for anyone who’s been arrested for a felony, not convicted of a felony.
What that effectively means is that law enforcement agencies are allowed to keep the genetic profiles of thousands of people who have...
Related Articles
By Alondra Nelson, Science | 09.11.2025
In the United States, the summer of 2025 will be remembered as artificial intelligence’s (AI’s) cruel summer—a season when the unheeded risks and dangers of AI became undeniably clear. Recent months have made visible the stakes of the unchecked use...
By Emma McDonald Kennedy
| 09.25.2025
In the leadup to the 2024 election, Donald Trump repeatedly promised to make IVF more accessible. He made the commitment central to his campaign, even referring to himself as the “father of IVF.” In his first month in office, Trump issued an executive order promising to expand IVF access. The order set a 90-day deadline for policy recommendations for “lowering costs and reducing barriers to IVF,” although it didn’t make any substantive reproductive healthcare policy changes.
The response to the...
Sir Francis Galton, 1890s, by Eveleen Myers (née Tennant)
npg.org
Public Domain via Wikipedia
As has been discussed in recent issues of Biopolitical Times (1, 2), there are, increasingly, companies that claim to be selling parents better babies by selecting the “best” embryos. These services don’t come cheap – think $50,000, or even more, for embryo testing, plus perhaps as much again for IVF and concomitant services. To most of us, that is extremely expensive...
By Johana Bhuiyan, The Guardian | 09.23.2025
In March 2021, a 25-year-old US citizen was traveling through Chicago’s Midway airport when they were stopped by US border patrol agents. Though charged with no crime, the 25-year-old was subjected to a cheek swab to collect their DNA, which...