Brave New World of Infant DNA Data-Basing

From The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
By Bob Barr

One of the most exciting moments in life is to witness the birth of a new child. All hell could be breaking loose outside the delivery room, yet all your attention in those moments is focused on the miracle of a new baby being born. Yet in those exhilarating moments, a small event takes place in hospitals across the country that escapes the attention of most every parent, yet is becoming a matter of increasing concern for parents.

Laws in all 50 states require hospitals to collect a sample of every newborn baby’s blood (from a small pin prick to the baby’s foot). The primary purpose is to test for PKU (phenylketonuria, an inherited disease that can result in brain and nerve damage) and other diseases (California, for example, tests for some 76 different conditions).

Were the test itself the end of the matter, few questions would be raised. However, parents and others in a number of states are beginning to question what happens to those millions of infant dried-blood samples — each of which contains the entire genetic history of the infant, as well as DNA information on his or her parents and ancestors — that are collected each year. Who owns those samples? For what purpose(s) can the information be used; and by who? What agencies and commercial entities can access the information? Is parental consent required? Why should the information be retained at all?

In fact, lawsuits in at least two states — Minnesota and Texas — have been filed to test the limits of such newborn DNA data basing. The conditions under which such DNA samples are collected, retained and used likely will lead to more such lawsuits as parents learn of these factors.

Some states (California and North Carolina, among others) retain the DNA samples collected from newborns indefinitely, and other states keep them for up to 23 years. And while many states technically allow parents to refuse to have their newborn’s blood sample genetically tested, such “opt out” procedures rarely are made known to parents.

The stakes in this data war are high, as researchers and government agencies are realizing the value of such a databank of DNA and other genetic information. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has at least since 2002 been advocating for a national databank, calling such “leftover dried blood spot specimens” a “valuable . . . source for public health surveillance and . . . population-based data on prevalence of genetic variations.” The National Institutes of Health is using $13.5 million in taxpayer dollars to create a national blood sample repository.

These efforts are being aided by federal legislation signed into law by President George W. Bush last year that allows the federal government to screen the DNA of all newborns in the country. The purported justification for this far-reaching, privacy invasive law was the need to have a “national contingency plan” to meet “public health emergencies.”

State governments are moving quickly also to develop regimens for retaining and accessing what Sharon Terry of the Genetic Alliance calls a “national treasure” of data. Michigan, for example, reportedly has set up state-run freezer facilities at a “neonatal biobank” in Detroit.

Researchers and other advocates of DNA data basing are aggressively protecting their turf. The American College of Medical Genetics, for example, recently issued a “position statement” extolling the benefits of dried-blood specimen databases, and dismissing opponents’ concerns as “unsubstantiated and highly exaggerated.” Even the March of Dimes has joined the bandwagon — vigorously opposing requirements for parental consent (now required only in two states plus the District of Columbia).

With federal law, taxpayer dollars, and otherwise respected agencies like the March of Dimes lined up against them, parents and privacy-advocates trying to stem the tide of infant DNA data basing have their work cut out for them. Let’s hope they are up to the challenge.

FBI Spied on TEA Party Americans

From Northeast Intelligence Network
By Douglas J. Hagmann, Director & Judi McLeod, Founding Editor, Canada Free Press

Even as average Americans were planning to get out in towns and cities to demonstrate against Big Government and Big Taxes, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) surveillance was being unleashed upon them. In fact, unsuspecting Tax Day TEA Party participants were being closely watched during the demonstration planning stages in a covert operation that began on or about March 23, 2009.

If you were one of the estimated 750,000 Americans who attended one of about 600 TEA parties last week, you might have seen media cameras covering the event. Media cameras, however, were not the only cameras taking video at these events, something that has at least one current FBI agent concerned over the future of America. According to this agent - the same agent who provided the Northeast Intelligence Network (NEIN) exclusively the unreleased photographs of the 11 missing Egyptian students who were the subject of a FBI BOLO in August 2006–placed his concerns for true patriots of the U.S. over his own career when he confided that covert surveillance was “planned and performed” at each of the TEA parties that took place last Tuesday.

“Listen to what I am saying,” stated the source during an interview with Doug Hagmann, founder (NEIN). “The Department of Homeland Security Intelligence Assessment that is receiving so much attention is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, and the true patriotic citizens of this country are on the Titanic. This is what bothers me. But it goes far beyond that assessment. There have been very significant changes made over the last few years that redirect the focus and assets of the intelligence community internally. These changes have greatly accelerated under this administration, and the threats have been redefined to include those who used to be patriots. It’s not only chilling but absolutely insulting to God-fearing Americans.”

According to this unimpeachable source, a single-page confidential directive issued by the FBI headquarters in Washington, DC (FBIHQ) was sent to each of the 56 field offices located across the United States on or about March 23, 2009, instructing the Special Agents in Charge (SACs) of those offices to verify the date, time and location of each TEA Party within their region and supply that information to FBI headquarters in Washington. The source stated this correspondence termed the TEA parties “political demonstrations,” and added that the dissemination of the directive was very tightly controlled. “Not all agents were privy to this correspondence,” stated the source, who compared the dissemination to an older “Do Not File” classification.

In addition to obtaining or confirming the location and time of each “demonstration,” each field office was instructed to obtain or confirm the identity of the individual(s) involved in the actual planning and coordination of the event in each specific region, and include the local or regional Internet web site address

, if any. The information collected by region was then reportedly sent to FBI Headquarters.

The source alleges that a second directive was issued on or about April 6, 2009 that reportedly instructed each SAC to coordinate and conduct, either at the field office level and/or with the appropriate resident agency, covert video surveillance and data collection of the participants of the TEA parties. Surveillance was to be performed from “discreet fixed or mobile positions” and was to be performed “independently and outside of the purview of local law enforcement.”

Although the level of detail collected from each operation is unclear, the information was reportedly submitted to Washington, where, “at the level of the National Security Branch (NSB), this information was to “include the office of the Directorate of Intelligence (DI), and integrated with a restricted access database, one that reportedly is accessible to only two agencies” [of the 14 agencies that comprise the U.S. intelligence community, according to the source.

“The implications to the citizens of the U.S. are ominous. It seems that there is a hostile political agenda coming from Washington that characterizes the supporters of our constitutional freedoms as threats to our domestic security, which is totally absurd. The redirection, the refocusing of domestic threats from al Qaeda cells to ‘flag waving right-wingers’ is something that has gone from a murmur a few years ago to a roar today.”

Training government-issued cameras on ordinary citizens, many of whom brought their children to an estimated 600 Tax Day TEA Parties is a page torn out of George Orwell’s 1984 and makes the term “God Bless America” more meaningful than ever.