Creating a Suspect Society: The Scary Side of the Technological Police State
By John W. Whitehead
October 02, 2018
“If, as it seems, we are in the process of becoming a totalitarian society in which the state apparatus is all-powerful,
the ethics most important for the survival of the true, free, human individual would be: cheat, lie, evade, fake it, be
elsewhere, forge documents, build improved electronic gadgets in your garage that’ll outwit the gadgets used by the
authorities.”—Philip K. Dick
It’s a given that Big Brother is always watching us.
Unfortunately, thanks to the government’s ongoing efforts to build massive databases using emerging surveillance, DNA
and biometrics technologies, Big Brother (and his corporate partners in crime) is getting even creepier and more
invasive, intrusive and stalker-like.
Indeed, every dystopian sci-fi film (and horror film, for that matter) we’ve ever seen is suddenly converging into this
present moment in a dangerous trifecta between science and technology, Big Business, and a government that wants to be
all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful—but not without help from the citizenry.
On a daily basis, Americans are relinquishing (in many cases, voluntarily) the most intimate details of who we are—our
biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris
scans, etc.)—in order to navigate an increasingly technologically-enabled world.
As journalist Anna Myers notes, “Fingerprint readers, eye scans, and voice recognition are no longer just the security
methods of high-tech spy movies. Millions of mobile phone, bank, and investment customers now have these technologies at
their fingertips. Schwab uses voice recognition, Apple uses fingerprints, Wells Fargo scans eyes, and other companies
are developing heartbeat or grip technology to verify user identity. Whether biometric technology will thrive or meet
its demise depends not only on the security of the technology, but also whether the U.S. legal system will adapt to
provide the privacy protections necessary for consumers to use it and for companies to invest in its development.
Currently there is no federal law and only one state with a law protecting biometric information.”
Translation: thus far, the courts have done little to preserve our rights in the face of technologies and government
programs that have little respect for privacy or freedom.
Consider all the ways we continue to be tracked, hunted, hounded, and stalked by the government and its dubious agents:
By tapping into your phone lines and cell phone communications, the government knows what you say.
By uploading all of your emails, opening your mail, and reading your Facebook posts and text messages, the government
knows what you write.
By monitoring your movements with the use of license plate readers, surveillance cameras and other tracking devices, the
government knows where you go.
By churning through all of the detritus of your life—what you read, where you go, what you say—the government can
predict what you will do.
By mapping the synapses in your brain, scientists—and in turn, the government—will soon know what you remember.
By mapping your biometrics—your “face-print”—and storing the information in a massive, shared government database
available to bureaucratic agencies, police and the military, the government’s goal is to use facial recognition software
to identify you (and every other person in the country) and track your movements, wherever you go.
And by accessing your DNA, the government will soon know everything else about you that they don’t already know: your
family chart, your ancestry, what you look like, your health history, your inclination to follow orders or chart your
own course, etc.
Of course, none of these technologies are foolproof.
Nor are they immune from tampering, hacking or user bias.
Nevertheless, they have become a convenient tool in the hands of government agents to render null and void the
Constitution’s requirements of privacy and its prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Consequently, no longer are we “innocent until proven guilty” in the face of DNA evidence that places us at the scene of
a crime, behavior sensing technology that interprets our body temperature and facial tics as suspicious, and government
surveillance devices that cross-check our biometrics, license plates and DNA against a growing database of unsolved
crimes and potential criminals.
Increasingly, we are all guilty until proven innocent as the government’s questionable acquisition and use of biometrics
and DNA to identify individuals and “solve” crimes makes clear.
Indeed, for years now, the FBI and Justice Department have conspired to acquire near-limitless power and control over
biometric information collected on law-abiding individuals, millions of whom have never been accused of a crime.
Going far beyond the scope of those with criminal backgrounds, the FBI’s Next Generation Identification database (NGID),
a billion dollar boondoggle that is aimed at dramatically expanding the government’s ID database from a fingerprint
system to a vast data storehouse of iris scans, photos searchable with face recognition technology, palm prints, and
measures of gait and voice recordings alongside records of fingerprints, scars, and tattoos.
Launched in 2008, the NGID is a massive biometric database that contains more than 100 million fingerprints and 45
million facial photos gathered from a variety of sources ranging from criminal suspects and convicts to daycare workers
and visa applicants, including millions of people who have never committed or even been accused of a crime.
In other words, innocent American citizens are now automatically placed in a suspect database.
For a long time, the government was required to at least observe some basic restrictions on when, where and how it could
access someone’s biometrics and DNA and use it against them.
That is no longer the case.
The information is being amassed through a variety of routine procedures, with the police leading the way as prime
collectors of biometrics for something as non-threatening as a simple moving violation. The nation’s courts are also
doing their part to “build” the database, requiring biometric information as a precursor to more lenient sentences. And
of course Corporate America has made it so easy to use one’s biometrics to access everything from bank accounts to cell
phones.
We’ve made it so easy for the government to target, identify and track us—dead or alive.
It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
For instance, in March 2018, Florida police showed up at a funeral home, asked to see the corpse of 30-year-old Linus F.
Phillip, and attempted to use the dead man’s finger to unlock his cell phone using his biometric fingerprint. (It turns
out, cops unlocking cell phones with dead people’s fingerprints is now relatively common.)
In 2016, the Department of Justice secured a warrant allowing police to enter a California residence and “force anyone
inside to use their biometric information to open their mobile devices.”
Two years earlier, in 2014, a Virginia court “declared it legal to use criminal suspects’ fingerprints to open up
smartphones.”
This doesn’t even touch on the many ways in which the government is using our DNA against us, the Constitution be
damned.
In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand the Maryland Court of Appeals’ ruling in Raynor v. Maryland, which essentially
determined that individuals do not have a right to privacy when it comes to their DNA.
Although Glenn Raynor, a suspected rapist, willingly agreed to be questioned by police, he refused to provide them with
a DNA sample.
No problem: Police simply swabbed the chair in which Raynor had been sitting and took what he refused to voluntarily
provide. Raynor’s DNA was a match, and the suspect became a convict. In refusing to hear the case, the U.S. Supreme
Court gave its tacit approval for government agents to collect shed DNA, likening it to a person’s fingerprints or the
color of their hair, eyes or skin.
Whereas fingerprint technology created a watershed moment for police in their ability to “crack” a case, DNA technology
is now being hailed by law enforcement agencies as the magic bullet in crime solving.
It’s what police like to refer to as a “modern fingerprint.”
However, unlike a fingerprint, a DNA print reveals everything about “who we are, where we come from, and who we will
be.”
With such a powerful tool at their disposal, it was inevitable that the government’s collection of DNA would become a
slippery slope toward government intrusion.
Certainly, it was difficult enough trying to protect our privacy in the wake of a 2013 Supreme Court ruling in Maryland
v. King that likened DNA collection to photographing and fingerprinting suspects when they are booked, thereby allowing
the government to take DNA samples from people merely “arrested” in connection with “serious” crimes.
At that time, Justice Antonin Scalia warned that as a result of the Court’s ruling, “your DNA can be taken and entered
into a national database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason.”
Now, Americans are vulnerable to the government accessing, analyzing and storing their DNA without their knowledge or
permission.
As the dissenting opinion in Raynor for the Maryland Court of Appeals rightly warned, “a person desiring to keep her DNA
profile private, must conduct her public affairs in a hermetically sealed hazmat suit.... The Majority’s holding means
that a person can no longer vote, participate in a jury, or obtain a driver's license, without opening up his genetic
material for state collection and codification.”
All 50 states now maintain their own DNA databases, although the protocols for collection differ from state to state.
That DNA is also being collected in the FBI’s massive national DNA database, code-named CODIS (Combined DNA Index
System), which was established as a way to identify and track convicted felons and has since become a de facto way to
identify and track the American people from birth to death.
Indeed, hospitals have gotten in on the game by taking and storing newborn babies’ DNA, often without their parents’
knowledge or consent. It’s part of the government’s mandatory genetic screening of newborns. However, in many states,
the DNA is stored indefinitely.
What this means for those being born today is inclusion in a government database that contains intimate information
about who they are, their ancestry, and what awaits them in the future, including their inclinations to be followers,
leaders or troublemakers.
For the rest of us, it’s just a matter of time before the government gets hold of our DNA, either through mandatory
programs carried out in connection with law enforcement and corporate America, or through the collection of our “shed”
or “touch” DNA.
While much of the public debate, legislative efforts and legal challenges in recent years have focused on the protocols
surrounding when police can legally collect a suspect’s DNA (with or without a search warrant and whether upon arrest or
conviction), the question of how to handle “shed” or “touch” DNA has largely slipped through without much debate or
opposition.
Yet as scientist Leslie A. Pray notes:
We all shed DNA, leaving traces of our identity practically everywhere we go. Forensic scientists use DNA left behind on
cigarette butts, phones, handles, keyboards, cups, and numerous other objects, not to mention the genetic content found
in drops of bodily fluid, like blood and semen. In fact, the garbage you leave for curbside pickup is a potential gold
mine of this sort of material. All of this shed or so-called abandoned DNA is free for the taking by local police
investigators hoping to crack unsolvable cases. Or, if the future scenario depicted at the beginning of this article is
any indication, shed DNA is also free for inclusion in a secret universal DNA databank.
What this means is that if you have the misfortune to leave your DNA traces anywhere a crime has been committed, you’ve
already got a file somewhere in some state or federal database, albeit it may be a file without a name.
In other words, you’re a suspect to be watched.
As Forensic magazine reports, “As officers have become more aware of touch DNA’s potential, they are using it more and
more. Unfortunately, some [police] have not been selective enough when they process crime scenes. Instead, they have
processed anything and everything at the scene, submitting 150 or more samples for analysis.”
Even old samples taken from crime scenes and “cold” cases are being unearthed and mined for their DNA profiles.
Today, helped along by robotics and automation, DNA processing, analysis and reporting takes far less time and can bring
forth all manner of information, right down to a person’s eye color and relatives. Incredibly, one company specializes
in creating “mug shots” for police based on DNA samples from unknown “suspects” which are then compared to individuals
with similar genetic profiles.
If you haven’t yet connected the dots, let me point the way.
Having already used surveillance technology to render the entire American populace potential suspects, DNA technology in
the hands of government will complete our transition to a suspect society in which we are all merely waiting to be
matched up with a crime.
No longer can we consider ourselves innocent until proven guilty. Now we are all suspects in a DNA lineup until
circumstances and science say otherwise.
Of course, there will be those who point to DNA’s positive uses in criminal justice, such as in those instances where it
is used to absolve someone on death row of a crime he didn’t commit, and there is no denying its beneficial purposes at
times.
However, as is the case with body camera footage and every other so-called technology that is hailed as a “check” on
government abuses, in order for the average person—especially one convicted of a crime—to request and get access to DNA
testing, they first have to embark on a costly, uphill legal battle through red tape and, even then, they are opposed at
every turn by a government bureaucracy run by prosecutors, legislatures and law enforcement.
What this amounts to is a scenario in which we have little to no defense of against charges of wrongdoing, especially
when “convicted” by technology, and even less protection against the government sweeping up our DNA in much the same way
it sweeps up our phone calls, emails and text messages.
Yet if there are no limits to government officials being able to access your DNA and all that it says about you, then
where do you draw the line?
As technology makes it ever easier for the government to tap into our thoughts, our memories, our dreams, suddenly the
landscape becomes that much more dystopian.
With the entire governmental system shifting into a pre-crime mode aimed at detecting and pursuing those who “might”
commit a crime before they have an inkling, let alone an opportunity, to do so, it’s not so far-fetched to imagine a
scenario in which government agents (FBI, local police, etc.) target potential criminals based on their genetic
disposition to be a “troublemaker” or their relationship to past dissenters.
Equally disconcerting: if scientists can, using DNA, track salmon across hundreds of square miles of streams and rivers,
how easy will it be for government agents to not only know everywhere we’ve been and how long we were at each place but
collect our easily shed DNA and add it to the government’s already burgeoning database?
It’s not just yourself you have to worry about, either.
It’s also anyone related to you who can be connected by DNA.
These genetic fingerprints, as they’re called, do more than just single out a person. They also show who you’re related
to and how. As the Associated Press reports, “DNA samples that can help solve robberies and murders could also, in
theory, be used to track down our relatives, scan us for susceptibility to disease, or monitor our movements.”
Capitalizing on this, police in California, Colorado, Virginia and Texas use DNA found at crime scenes to identify and
target family members for possible clues to a suspect’s whereabouts.
Who will protect your family from being singled out for “special treatment” simply because they’re related to you? As
biomedical researcher Yaniv Erlich warns, “If it’s not regulated and the police can do whatever they want ... they can
use your DNA to infer things about your health, your ancestry, whether your kids are your kids.”
For that matter, how do you protect yourself against having your DNA extracted, your biometrics scanned and the most
intimate details of who you are—your biological footprint—uploaded into a government database?
What recourse do you have when that information, taken against your will, is shared, stolen, sold or compromised, as it
inevitably will be in this age of hackers? We know that databases can be compromised. We’ve seen it happen to databases
kept by health care companies, motor vehicle agencies, financial institutions, retailers and intelligence agencies such
as the NSA.
And what about those cases in which the technology proved to be wrong, either through human error or tampering?
It happens more often than we are told.
For example, David Butler spent eight months in prison for a murder he didn’t commit after his DNA was allegedly found
on the murder victim and surveillance camera footage placed him in the general area the murder took place. Conveniently,
Butler’s DNA was on file after he had voluntarily submitted it during an investigation years earlier into a robbery at
his mother’s home.
The case seemed cut and dried to everyone but Butler who proclaimed his innocence.
Except that the DNA evidence and surveillance footage was wrong: Butler was innocent.
That Butler’s DNA was supposedly found on the victim’s nails was attributed to three things: one, Butler was a taxi
driver “and so it was possible for his DNA to be transferred from his taxi via money or another person, onto the murder
victim”; two, Butler had a rare skin condition causing him to shed flakes of skin—i.e., more DNA to spread around, much
more so than the average person; and three, police wanted him to be the killer, despite the fact that “the DNA sample
was only a partial match, of poor quality, and experts at the time said they could neither say that he was guilty nor
rule him out.”
Unfortunately, we now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed, convicted and controlled by
our technology, which answers not to us but to our government and corporate rulers.
This is the fact-is-stranger-than-fiction lesson that is being pounded into us on a daily basis.
While the Fourth Amendment was created to prevent government officials from searching an individual’s person or property
without a warrant and probable cause—evidence that some kind of criminal activity was afoot—the founders could scarcely
have imagined a world in which we needed protection against widespread government breaches of our privacy on a cellular
level.
Yet that’s exactly what we are lacking.
Once again, technology has outdistanced both our understanding of it and our ability to adequately manage the
consequences of unleashing it on an unsuspecting populace.
In the end, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, what all of this amounts to
is a carefully crafted campaign designed to give the government access to and control over what it really wants: you.
ends