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I affirm the resolution, Resolved: Compulsory inclusion of non-felons' DNA in any government database is unjust.
The National Forensic League ballot states that quote “Each debater has the burden to prove his or her side of the resolution true as a general principle.” Endquote. Therefore, even though the phrase “any government database” in the resolution seems to imply that the negative can defend one and the affirmative must defend every, this fails to meet the general principle guidelines of the ballot.
2010
Therefore, the affirmative will defend a felon-only database as specified in the resolution, and the negative must defend all non-felon database. This is the best interpretation since it also upholds the portion of the ballot that insures clash which says that quote—“Neither debater should be rewarded for presenting a speech completely unrelated to the arguments of his or her opponent: there must be clash.”
The value is justice since justice is the evaluative term of the resolution. Justice is defined as “giving each their due” by Aristotle. While Justice is often misinterpreted as an unbreakable appeal to abstract fairness, the inclusion of a governmental actor in the resolution clarifies this abstract principle to its more governmental nature. Giving each their due is a question of obligations. In this case, there exist reciprocal obligations between the government and its’ citizens. These obligations are confined and formed by the existence of rights.
Hence, the value-criterion is protection of rights. Rights determine what is just because they are the summation of things that are owed to an individual.
Any violation of rights is unjust. The negative will likely present a criterion with arguments in favor of a utilitarian or greatest good for greatest number thesis. This thesis is intuitively appealing, but my criterion, which protects each and every right as valuable, is preferable because/ for two reasons:
1 st My criterion protects all rights as valuable. Utilitarianism fails to realize that when people fail to protect rights, life itself becomes invaluable: Daniel Callahan of the Institute of Society and Ethics in The Tyranny of
Survival writes:
/Daniel Callahan, institute of Society and Ethics, 1973, The Tyranny of Survival, pp. 91-93)/
The value of survival could not be so readily abused were it not for its evocative power. But abused it has been. In the name of survival, all manner of social and political evils have been committed against the rights of individuals, including the right to life. But my point goes deeper than that. It is directed even at a legitimate concern for survival, when that concern is allowed to reach an intensity which would ignore, suppress or destroy other fundamental human rights and values
. The potential tyranny of survival as value is that it is capable
, if not treated sanely
, of wiping out all other values. Survival can become an obsession and a disease, provoking a destructive single-mindedness that will stop at nothing.
We come here to the fundamental moral dilemma. If, both biologically and psychologically, the need for survival is basic to man, and if survival is the precondition for any and all human achievements, and if no other rights make much sense without the premise of a right to life—then how will it be possible to honor and act upon the need for survival without, in the process, destroying everything in human beings which makes them worthy of survival.
To put it more strongly, if the price of survival is human degradation, then there is no moral reason why an effort should be made to ensure that survival
.
It would be the
Pyrrhic victory to end all Pyrrhic victories.
2 nd [It] prevents an increase in rights violations in the long run. Utilitarianism ignores the fact that once we’re comfortable with the sacrifice of some rights, other rights start going down the drain too. Dr.
Sylvester Petro, in the Toledo Law Review writes that :
/Sylvester Petro , professor of law at Wake Forest, Spring 1974 , Toledo Law Review, pg 480/
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However, one may still insist on echoing Ernest Hemingway
– “
I believe in only one thing: liberty
.”
And it is always well to bear in mind David
Hume’s observation: “It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” Thus
, it is unacceptable to say that the invasion of one aspect of freedom is of no import because there have been invasions of so many other aspects. That road leads to chaos, tyranny, [and] despotism, and the end of all human aspiration . Ask Solzhenstyn, Ask Milovan Djilas. In sum , if one believes in freedom as a supreme value and proper ordering principle for any society aiming to maximize spiritual and material welfare, then every invasion of freedom must be emphatically identified and resisted with undying spirit .
Therefore, my criterion looks to the protection of rights as inviolable aspects of human nature.
My first contention is on the right to privacy and the right against discrimination.
A. DNA testing reveals a significant amount of private information:
Andrea De Gorgey in The Advent of DNA Databanks explains that DNA puts-
De Gorgey, Andrea “The Advent of DNA Databanks: Implications for Information Privacy” 16 Am J. L. and Med. 381 1990.
“It is one thing to have fingerprints and criminal histories easily accessible to tens of thousands of peace officers.
It is quite another to have information on-line that can mark you as a carrier of AIDS or prove that you are not genetically
related to either of your parents. Which of us would like to know that we are genetically predisposed to
Alzheimer's disease or other illnesses
? And which of us would be willing to have such information easily available
to others? The Congressional Office of Technology Assessment similarly recognizes that continuing
trends in information technology, in the form of data aggregation, storage and processing systems, create
"records that are persistent and widely shared, and difficult for the subject to know about, to access,
to verify, or to correct." Without clearly defined standards governing the collection of physical samples and the subsequent storage of DNA patterns, the potential for misuse of these genetic libraries demonstrates the
frightening reality that technology has far outpaced the legal protection of privacy in the United
States.”
This violation of privacy is exacerbated by the fact that officers can and do use the DNA databank to racially profile. For example, despite attempted safeguards Louisiana law enforcement were able to deploy this technology to determine that a defendant was 85% Sub-Saharan African and 15% Native American.
Further, my quote illustrates that the US governments congressional committee has determined that the technology is far outpacing its legal regulations there’s no guarantee that the gravity of the abuse won’t frow exponentially larger over time.
Tania Simoncelli in A New Era of DNA Collections writes:
Simoncelli, Tania and Sheldon Krimsky. "A New Era of DNA Collections: At What Cost to Civil
Liberties?" American
Constitution Society for Law and Policy (Sep. 2007), 12
In an even more disturbing trend, some law enforcement agents have tried to construct phenotypic profiles of the suspected perpetrator based on analyses of the DNA found at a crime scene.48 In a murder investigation in Louisiana, for example , a relatively new method of DNA analysis was employed to predict the “ancestry” of the alleged offender as 85% Sub-Saharan African and 15% Native
American. The company that performed the analysis, DNAPrint Genomics, has been aggressively marketing the service to police departments, investigators and agencies.49 The company has also recently started offering to law enforcement agencies a genetic test to infer eye color.
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In fact, DNA databanks are already holding on to biologically confidential information. Tania Simoncelli
New Era of DNA Collections explains-- ,
Simoncelli, Tania and Sheldon Krimsky. "A New Era of DNA Collections: At What Cost to Civil
Liberties?" American in A
Constitution Society for Law and Policy (Sep. 2007), 7
Furthermore, there is no reason to assume that biological samples and DNA data in the hands of the government would be safe from misuse
, or that all purposes for which it may be used will be either appropriately law-enforcement related or benign
. The privacy concerns associated with potential misuse of DNA information are driven by current laboratory practice, where the individual’s biological sample is retained along with the generated profile. Since all of our genetic information is encoded in each and every one of our cells, the risk of abuse remains real as long as the biological samples remain on file . Only one state –
Wisconsin
– mandates the destruction of the individual offender’s biological sample after a
DNA profile is generated, although to date, none has been destroyed. Twentynine states specifically require retention of the offender samples . 7
Given this track record of starting small and becoming more intrusive over time, it will be no surprise when health coverage and employment is contingent on you meeting certain genetic requirements according to your DNA.
B. The Importance of privacy – Privacy and the right against discrimination have strong links to the criterion of protection against rights since privacy is the ability to choose to reveal only certain aspects of your lives with others. Just as it would be inappropriate if the NFL judging paradigm required not only your preferences on speed and value/criterion structure, but also your political affiliation, income level, religious orientation etc. it is inappropriate for the government to require an identification measure that includes confidential information about health and race- Dr. Andrew Taslitz writes in the Journal of Law and
Contemporary Social Problems that:
Andrew Taslitz, prof of Law at Univ of Howard and fmr prof at Duke Univ 2002. “The Fourth Amendment in the Twenty-
First Century: Technology, Privacy, and Human Emotions.” Law and Contemporary Social Problems. 65: 2 (125-187).
I suggest a different approach: broadening protection by redefining privacy from the primarily cognitive to the primarily affective
. Privacy
in the information age is best conceived as the maintenance of metaphorical boundaries
that define the contours of personal identity. Identity is complex; different circum- stances reveal different aspects of our nature
. Each of us wears many masks wherein each mask reflects a different aspect of who we really are .
We do not want our entire natures to be judged by any one mask, nor do we want partial revelations of our activities to define us in a particular situation as other than who we want to b e. In short, we want to choose the masks that we show to others; any such loss of choice is painful, amounting almost to a physical violation of the self . When we are secretly watched, or when information that we choose to reveal to one audience is instead exposed to another, we lose that sense of choice.
Under this conception of privacy, actions done in public can still be "private" in that we maintain our desire to retain control over who observes us, how they do so, and for what purposes. Similarly, the revelation of information to one person does not mean that we
therefore "assume the risk" of revelation to all. (Taslitz, 131)
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Further, Jay Stanley in the Surveillance-Industrial Complex explains that:
:
Stanley, Jay, “The Surveillance- Industrial Complex: How the American Government Is
Conscripting Businesses and
Individuals in the Construction of a Surveillance Society” ACLU August 2004
The drive to detect wrongdoing through the mass scrutiny of individual records from the private sector, on the other hand, would violate a principle that is core to our legal system: The government cannot invade your privacy unless it has
individualized reason to believe that you are involved in wrongdoing. The principle of individualized
suspicion not only protects individuals against unfair treatment, but also imposes a necessary discipline on
police investigators, who can be tempted at times to engage in wasteful and inefficient fishing expeditions.”
My second contention is due process. Citizens have rights not to be falsely incriminated or invaded unduely and hence, due process is central to our form of government because it is the only mechanism that stands between a democratic state of checks and balances and a tyrannical police state one.
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My second contention is the right to a legitimate government. Universal databanks undermine public trust in government. Rebecca Peterson, In the American Criminal Law Review writes that:
Rebecca Sasser Peterson, “DNA Databases: When Fear Goes Too Far”, American Criminal Law Review, Volume 37, 2000.
This Note argues that allowing the government to effectively search and seize the DNA of every
citizen without a warrant, probable cause, or individualized suspicion that they committed a specific crime would damage how we perceive ourselves as a free and democratic society. As a democracy, our government gains its power and legitimacy from its relationship with its
citizens. This delicate balance is best described as a relationship of trust between the government and its citizens: the government trusts its citizens to act within the law, and the citizens trust the government to allow them to go about their lives protected by an appropriate zone o f privacy into which the government does not interfere . Scott Sundby argues that this trust relationship is hindered when "the government is allowed to intrude into the citizenry's lives without a finding that the citizenry has forfeited society's trust to exercise its freedoms responsibly ."
This negative perception results in a lack of governmental legitimacy, impeding all governmental action and preventing successful implementation Michael Useem, in Governmental Legitimacy and Political Stability
(1973). Social Forces Vol. 57, No. 3 pg. 840-852 profs at Brandeis and Boston University
State legitimacy, the widespread public belief that the society's governing institutions and political authorities are worthy of support, is commonly held to be a precondition for political stability
in advanced capitalist democracies. In fact, Lipset (a) has argued that a regime's legitimacy may even be a more important determinant of political stability than how well the regime actually performs. The legitimacy-stability relationship has be- come a central tenet of most contemporary analyses of American society ,
including both structural-functionalist and neo-Marxist formulations.
Talcott Parsons, for instance, contends that without citizen faith in the political system, the government is incapable of attaining the society's collectively held goals. A loss of public confidence in the government seriously impairs its functioning and increases the potential for disorder
.
Thus, Parsons con- cludes, legitimacy is the "highest normative defense against the breakdown of a system of social order"
(57). James O'Connor, a neo-Marxist analyst, reaches a similar conclusion, holding that the survival of American capi- talism is contingent on maintaining public confidence in the political system and social orde r. Indeed, according to O'Connor, legitimacy is so critical a problem that its perpetuation has become a major preoccupation of the government. State expenditures on welfare and other social services have been undertaken
, in O'Connor's view, primarily in order to engender trust in the political and economic systems to help "maintain social harmon y" (7).
Therefore, because compulsory inclusion of non-felons DNA in a governmental database destroys vital rights to justice through its privacy violating, discriminatory, and trust impeding measures, I affirm.
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