Legal Commentary

FBI Prefers Building DNA Database to Solving Crimes

By Professor University of Miami School of Law

Here's a real-life example of how a government database can hurt you, via my brother the muckraker:

FBI Lab's Forensic Testing Backlog Traced To Controversial DNA Database

The pressure to feed results into a controversial, expansive DNA database has bogged down the FBI's DNA lab so badly that there is now a two-year-and-growing backlog for forensic DNA testing needed to solve violent crimes and missing persons cases.

Civil libertarians call the database — which increasingly includes everyone convicted of every federal law, legally innocent people awaiting trial and non-citizens detained in the U.S. for any reason — unnecessary and unconstitutional.

And yet a review by the Department of Justice's Inspector General released on Monday concludes that the need to analyze and upload some 96,973 or more DNA samples a year into that database is contributing to a backlog of forensic DNA cases that stood at 3,211 in March.

That translates into a delay of about 150 days to over 600 days for law enforcement agencies who need answers right away.

Read the whole thing.

Full post as published by Discourse.net on August 09, 2010 (boomark / email).