Media Release January 24, 00 DNA DATABASE OF CITIZENS Laws of centuries standing, preventing governments from interfering with the bodies of citizens, are to be set aside in the most recent attack on our freedoms by the Big Brother Carr NSW government. In justifying the new laws, Police Minister Paul Whelan said that testing could clear up the majority of old crimes, people could prove their innocence unless they were concealing something, wouldn't object to being required by policemen to put things in their mouths; and if police suspected them, then they lost their right to privacy anyway. Minister Whelan has lost his public touch. We remember the widespread corruption exposed by the Wood Royal Commission, and the public outrage in 1985 at the Australia Card proposal. Australians justifiably don't trust police or politicians. No public debate has happened and yet the proposition is momentous. At present the law only requires a person suspected of an offence under investigation to submit to testing to help that investigation, but with very restricted application and rights of appeal. To create a database of whoever might offend in the future involves a power over everyone, much more powerful than the Australia Card dehumanising everyone to a computer readable form. Irresistable to government and big business. This is an abrogation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states dignity as the foundation of freedom, right of recognition as a person (rather than an algorithm reduced from DNA), privacy and rejection of retrospective punishment. Brett Collins Breakout Design & Print (coordinator) Justice Action (a spokesperson) 19 Buckland St, Chippendale, NSW 2008, Australia P.O. Box 386, Broadway, NSW 2007, Australia email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: 61-2-9281-5100 fax: 9281-5303 Please log into the Justice Action Web site, designed and sponsored by Breakout Design & Print, exercising good corporate citizenship: http://www.justiceaction.org.au -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
