BY DALE MILLS
SYDNEY — "If you're under 30 and born in an Australian hospital, there is a permanent record of your blood which can be used for DNA profiling" a forum was told on July 17.
The meeting, titled "A Critical Forum on Surveillance and Social Control", was held at the University of Technology, Sydney, and was sponsored by the university's community legal centre. One-hundred and fifty people attended the discussion on societal surveillance and control — and how it has increased since September 11.
DNA expert Michael Strutt explained to the forum that during the last 30 years, Australian hospitals have been taking blood from the heels of new-born babies to check for genetic disorders. Blood samples are kept permanently on "Guthrie cards" stored by the hospital. Such samples can later be used for DNA profiling. In one case, police attempts to obtain Guthrie cards led to a West Australian hospital destroying their records to protect patient confidentiality.
According to Strutt, the weaknesses of DNA testing are not widely understood. Police testing involves comparing a DNA sample from a crime scene to a suspect's DNA sample. The police argue that the odds are 10 million to one against a random sample matching. However, such ratios are misleading because the odds are much closer when two people are related. Identical twins, for example, have precisely the same DNA match.
Police can also determine someone's DNA without a direct sample: called derived DNA. A child's DNA profile will match that of his or her father's, once his or her mother's DNA is known and discounted (or vice versa).
Aboriginal activist Ray Jackson pointed out from the floor of the meeting that given the large number of Indigenous people in prison, where DNA testing is compulsory, the impact of DNA profiling would fall disproportionately on Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.
Strutt pointed out that juries and the general public could be easily misled by the apparent scientific certainty of DNA profiling, making it easier to frame people for crimes they did not commit. DNA can be planted by leaving a strand of hair or fingernail clipping at a crime scene.
Private DNA labs, which carried out 4000 DNA tests last year (mostly to ascertain paternity), face no government controls.Private DNA tests cost a few hundred dollars.
Professor David Lyons, a Canadian sociologist and author of the work Surveillance Society: Monitoring Everyday Life, suggested to the meeting that surveillance was not a matter of Big Brother spying on society on special occasions. Rather, surveillance "had become everyday, routine and generalised".
Dr David Sutton, an expert in technology applications, discussed the collection of personal information by private credit companies. This information, along with information on private and government databases, could only be efficiently centralised, Sutton argued, into a complete file when all individuals have a "unique identifier". "This, he said, "was the purpose of the Australia Card".
Sutton argued that while public opposition scuttled the Australia Card proposal in the late 1980s, the introduction of tax file numbers allowed centralised data bases to coordinate information on a single person from many divergent sources.
Paula Abood, community workers and activist, spoke about the use of "racial profiling". The application of this in the United States has justified a policing practice of pulling over black drivers, and now, interrogating Arabic people wishing to fly. Racial profiling is also applied by NSW police.
Abood emphasised that surveillance technology and racial profiling were not just a matter for ethnic minority communities, but concerned all Australians, concluding with: "If a house down the block is on fire, you don't wait till it reaches your home before taking action."
More information about surveillance technology can be found at <http://www.citystate.org>.
From Green Left Weekly, July 24, 2002.
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