the fourth amendment

[regexcellent]

Fingerprints can change rapidly, especially for people who work with their hands. If you're a mason or a carpenter they'll be pretty damn difficult to identify you with.

[KrazyHorse]

Can you give me statistics on this, or at least examples of cases where a proper set of fingerprints was collected with modern techniques and then at some later point a similar set of prints was collected from the same individual and could not identify him to a reasonable degree of certainty?

[KrazyHorse]

Per a number of references I just googled, it is relatively easy to temporarily wipe away the surface fingerprints through abrasion, but within days the same prints will reemerge. Only substantial widespread damage to deep tissue will permanently alter prints, and there are very few cases of this occurring.

My point 1 appears to stand. This is of substantially less non-investigatory use than fingerprinting (at the margin) and is substantially more intrusive. Definitely more alike with search of a person's homethan with fingerprinting

[KrazyHorse]

Broadening the discussion, would you rather live in a society where a simple arrest empowers the State to seize all the personal information it can gain through blood analysis, and can thereby catch a few additional criminals, or in one where the State is limited in these search powers to those for whom it can demonstrate it has a specific suspicion of a criminal act which it requires this analysis to prove? My preference is for the latter, and further, I'm convinced that this is the plain meaning and the intent of the 4th amendment.

[SlowwHand]

I agree totally, because you're absolutely correct.

Now I'm going to tell you something that may irritate you. I think that you want state government that's non-intrusive. You could very possibly make a good transplanted Texan. Sorry, dude.

[KrazyHorse]

Slowwy, my problem with Texas (insofar as I have one, and based on relatively mild actual differences in behavior) has to do with jingoism and chauvinism, not a dislike of big government by its people. Just like my problem with the northeast has to do with tolerance of a bloated, corrupt and invasive government.

[KrazyHorse]

If you could take the governance of Texas, mix it with the economic and cultural life of New York and put it in the Caribbean I"d move in a heartbeat...

[Tupac Shakur]

If you could take the governance of Texas, mix it with the economic and cultural life of New York and put it in the Caribbean I'd move in a heartbeat...

[KrazyHorse]

Unfortunately the governance is the most delicate part. Insiders would capture it and turn it into a more corrupt, more Leviathan New York within 50 years.

Still, it would be a hell of a place while it lasted.

[Tupac Shakur]

If only Singapore had culture and wasn't located on such a sad island.

[SlowwHand]

That sounds nothing at all like where you are now.

[Wiglaf]

Broadening the discussion, would you rather live in a society where a simple arrest empowers the State to seize all the personal information it can gain through blood analysis, and can thereby catch a few additional criminals, or in one where the State is limited in these search powers to those for whom it can demonstrate it has a specific suspicion of a criminal act which it requires this analysis to prove? My preference is for the latter, and further, I'm convinced that this is the plain meaning and the intent of the 4th amendment.

Collecting DNA is not the same as conducting blood analysis on it, you pompous idiot.

[KrazyHorse]

If only Singapore had culture and wasn't located on such a sad island.

Yeah, that or Hong Kong pre 97

[KrazyHorse]

That sounds nothing at all like where you are now.

Yeah, where i am now has the culture of Texas, the climate of New York and the governance of Haiti.

[Jon Miller]

I think I would like the climate of British Columbia, the governance of ??Sweden?? (still thinking about that one), and the culture of British Columbia.

JM
(I admit that this is based on my thoughts that BC > Washington > Oregon > Northern California, which could be wrong)