The supreme law of the United States has just voted 5-4 in favor of a National DNA database. In Maryland v. King, the court upheld the right of police to arrest and forcibly take DNA samples from individuals, without even issuing a search warrant.
Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy stated, "Taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee's DNA is, like fingerprinting and photographing, a legitimate police booking procedure that is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment."
Speaking on the behalf of the four dissenting judges, Justice Scalia objected, "Make no mistake about it: As an entirely predictable consequence of today's decision, your DNA can be taken and entered into a national DNA database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason."
Scalia continued, "The Fourth Amendment forbids searching a person for evidence of a crime when there is no basis for believing the person is guilty of the crime or is in possession of incriminating evidence," Scalia wrote. "That prohibition is categorical and without exception; it lies at the very heart of the Fourth Amendment.
In his floor speech responding to the ruling, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) expressed strong opposition, and was loud and clear, voicing his continued support for individual liberties and upholding the Fourth Amendment.
Senator Ted Cruz denounced the Supreme Court ruling and stated, "Today's unfortunate U.S. Supreme Court ruling expands government power, invades our liberty, and undermines our constitutional rights."
The case, Maryland v. King, No. 12-207, originated in 2009 when police collected DNA from Alonzo Jay King Jr. after he was arrested on assault charges in Maryland. After swabbing his cheek, police used the evidence to match DNA of an unsolved rape case.
As the Supreme Court majority goes on to believe that their judgment will help law enforcement solve more crimes like this in the future, it is important to be skeptical, questioning the future implications that will come, as Fourth Amendment rights are forfeited.
• Will airports begin employing this "security routine?" The TSA would love to use this new ruling to their advantage. Body scans, pat downs, and ...routine DNA swabs!
• In order to get a driver's license, will everyone need to be DNA swabbed, as their biometric footprint is recorded and stored?
• Will school children need their irises scanned and their DNA collected to ensure future "safety?" This is already happening in places in the country.
• Will a National ID card be mandated for all US workers, requiring a mass DNA collection from all? A proposed law just like this has been discussed in Congress this year.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
These Justices need held accountable for turning their back on the Fourth Amendment: Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr, Anthony M. Kennedy, Justices Clarence Thomas, Stephen G. Breyer and Samuel A. Alito Jr.
Sources for this article include:
http://www.cato.org/blog/maryland-v-king-surveillance-state
http://www.campaignforliberty.org
http://www.nytimes.com
PELL CITY, Alabama -- St. Clair and Bibb county authorities are confirming there were roadblocks at several locations in their counties Friday and Saturday asking for blood and DNA samples. However, the samples were voluntary and motorists were paid for them as part of a study, they said.
According to Lt. Freddie Turrentine of the St. Clair County Sheriff's Department, it isn't the first time such roadblocks have occurred in the area.
"They were here in 2007," said Turrentine, the supervisor in charge of the roadblocks, which took place in several locations in St. Clair County Friday night, early Saturday morning and Saturday night and early Sunday morning. "It's just with social media and Facebook now, word of it has just exploded."
Turrentine said the roadblocks were part of a study conducted by the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, working with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. St. Clair County was asked to participate by the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs because it had worked with the group six years ago.
Sheriff Keith Hannah in Bibb County said they too had previously participated in the study.
Here's how the road blocks worked, Turrentine said:
Off-duty St. Clair County deputies stopped cars at random at road block areas. The road blocks were marked with signs stating it was a paid survey. Cars stopped were asked for voluntary cooperation. Drivers were offered $10 for a mouth swab, and $50 for a blood test. If they refused, they were free to drive away. An official with the NHTSA said later that DNA was not collected as part of the survey, but only saliva and breath samples.
[ POLL: Would you voluntarily submit DNA, blood sample for government study at roadblock? ]
Road blocks took place Friday at the New London Fire Department, Alabama 34 in Pell City near the old Dan's Car Wash, U.S. 231 at Alabama 144, at White's Chapel Parkway and Moody Crossroads in Moody. In Bibb County, the road blocks took place in five areas in the county on Friday night through early Sunday morning.
If drivers participated, they were directed to an area where someone from the group carrying out the study took the samples, he said.
[ MORE: Pell City woman talks about giving samples: "I wasn't too comfortable with it" ]
"It was completely voluntary," Turrentine said, saying reports that people were detained if they did not cooperate were untrue. "If they didn't want to take part, they could drive off."
The samples were anonymous, he said.
"They were taking the samples in other parts of the country," he said. "They want to find out of all the people surveyed, how many people were driving with alcohol in their system, or prescription drugs, things like that."
This will be the only time this year the survey takes place in St. Clair County, he said.
Turrentine, who was at one of the roadblocks, said the group carrying out the study would ask for a certain number of volunteers. Deputies would stop drivers until that number of drivers needed agreed to the survey. Then they let cars pass while the samples were taken.
"We would have a lot who didn't want to take part, especially at night," he said. "But then we'd have a few that when we'd tell they could make $60 bucks, they said, 'What do I need to do?'"
blog.al.com/east-alabama/2013/06/why_were_roadblocks_in_st_clai.html
Activist Post
It is a scene out of a futuristic political thriller—the Secretary of State issues secret orders for embassy officials to collect the DNA of foreign heads of state while the President, speaking at a $1000 a plate dinner, is surrounded by a contingent of Secret Service agents wiping clean his drinking glasses and picking up stray hair follicles. They are not just protecting the President—they are protecting the President's DNA.
If this sounds like a scr1pt treatment for a Hollywood version of a Philip K. Dick novel, consider this: The Secretary of State's name is Hillary Clinton and her directives to embassies were uncovered in a 2010 WikiLeaks cable release. The President in this scenario is Barack Obama and the Secret Service unit pledged to protect his DNA is a group of Navy stewards, as revealed in the 2009 book by Ronald Kessler, entitled In the President's Secret Service.
Our government's DNA obsession was again in the news this week as the Supreme Court handed down a decision, worthy of penning by George Orwell, that law enforcement collection of arrestees' DNA is not an invasion of privacy. The decision likened DNA to fingerprints, neatly sidestepping the fact that a person's complete genetic makeup is contained in those drops of blood that the police can now collect with impunity and without fear of a civil rights lawsuit.
Beyond the obvious surface concerns that this decision violates both the Fourth Amendment and the subsequent exclusionary rule, there are further, deeper concerns as to why our government is so keen on collecting our DNA.
The stated aim of furthering crime solution becomes tinny when one realizes that the government is also collecting the DNA of newborns. President Bush signed The Newborn Screening Saves Lives Act of 2007, which formally codified the process that the federal government has been engaged in for years, screening the DNA of all newborn babies in the U.S.
Since we are not yet threatened with the spectre of toddlers robbing banks or committing rape, one must look further to discern what is the big deal about our DNA.
Back in 1997, Dr. Wayne Nathanson warned a meeting of the Science and Ethics Department of the Medical Society of the United Kingdom that “gene therapy” might be turned to insidious uses and result in “gene weapons,” which could be used to target specific people containing a specific genetic structure. These weapons, Nathanson warned, “could be delivered not only in the forms already seen in warfare such as gas and aerosol, but could also be added to water supplies, causing not only death but sterility and birth defects in targeted groups.” (Source)
Decades before Dr. Nathanson's highly publicized warning, the U.S. Government was already hard at work in scientific endeavors to find gene and ethnic specific weapons. In an article entitled "Ethnic Weapons," published in the Military Review in 1970, the author, Dr. Carl A. Larson, was found rhapsodizing about the state of technology facilitating the targeting of ethnic groups with covert weapons. Wrote Larson: “Surrounded with clouds of secrecy, a systematic search for new incapacitating agents is going on in many laboratories. The general idea, as discussed in open literature, was originally that of minimum destruction.”
However, his tone soon changes and he writes, somewhat chillingly, that “It is quite possible to use incapacitating agents over the entire range of offensive operations, from covert activities to mass destruction.”
Larson concludes with the following stark declaration: “The enzymatic process for RNA production has been known for some years but now the factors have been revealed which regulate the initiation and specificity of enzyme production. Not only have the factors been found, but their inhibitors. Thus, the functions of life lie bare to attack.” (emphasis added)
Dr. Wouter Basson’s research for Project Coast, the biological and chemical warfare unit under the apartheid government in South Africa, was known to be focused on developing a "blacks only" bioweapon. Basson, who was tied to intelligence facilities and labs in both Great Britain and the U.S., has been reported to have been successful in his endeavors, which were taking place back in the seventies. According to sources close to Basson, his research entailed locating substances which would attach onto melanin. Melanin is present in high degrees in darker colored skin.
Since Basson's work on the melanin project, the rates of hypertension and diabetes have skyrocketed in people of color—specifically those of African descent and also indigenous, brown skinned populations. In some communities, the incidence of these diseases is now reported as up to 50%. Consonant with the reports that this disease-producing melanin-related substance has been leaked into processed food, one finds the spiking rates of the "silent killers," hypertension and diabetes, to be present in the developed world, where people eat more processed food. In rural Africa, for example, where the population eats food from natural sources, the rates of diabetes and hypertension have remained constant over the years.
The mapping of the human genome satisfied all the requisites for creating gene specific weapons. Geneticists have maintained that developing an ethnic weapon is actually far more difficult than creating a gene weapon to target a specific person. The differences between groups are apparently much smaller than the differences between individuals and therefore the creation of a genetic weapon to target, for example, a head of state or a President is far less challenging than creating such a weapon to target an entire race.
The FBI admits to a database of around 13 million offenders, many only arrested and never charged with a crime. According to Twila Brase, President of Citizens Council for Health Freedom, around 4 million samples (filed with the babies' names) are collected each year by State Health Departments. Some states, such as Minnesota, have been collecting newborn DNA samples since the mid-eighties. Minnesota alone is reported to have a newborn database of over 1.5 million samples.
The delivery systems for a DNA weapon would be easy: Everything.
Because the weaponized genetic material would only affect the target, the weapon could be leaked into the food supply, the water supply or sprayed in an airborne delivery system, such as the inexplicable chemtrails that are now blanketing our skies. And should a low profile target suddenly die, who would ever know that he died of a gene based weapon? Should the target be high profile, like perhaps a Hugo Chavez or Canada's Jack Layton, who would be able to trace a deadly disease back to a weapon targeting his DNA?
The insistence of the U.S. Government that it is only trying to protect its citizens from a terrorist threat is the perfect cover of plausible deniability. Under the mantle of "protection," our rights have been systematically stripped away while wars abroad have been launched against the Semitic peoples of the Middle East. Genetic based weapons are another tool in the plausible deniability eugenics tool box. They may, in fact, be one of the most salient tools.
www.activistpost.com/2013/06/genetic-weapons-can-your-dna-kill-you.html