As it now stands, Americans are vulnerable to the government accessing, analyzing and storing their DNA without their knowledge or permission. All 50 states now maintain their own DNA databases, in addition to the FBI's massive national DNA database, code-named CODIS (Combined DNA Index System).
Even hospitals have gotten in on the game by taking and storing newborn babies' DNA, often without their parents' knowledge or consent. What this means for those 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, which we leave behind everywhere we go, "on cigarette butts, phones, handles, keyboards, cups" and in our trash. All of this shed DNA is "free for the taking" by police.
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.
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. As I make clear in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, now we are all suspects in a DNA lineup until circumstances and science say otherwise.
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.
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