“Becoming transparent”: what is the danger of mass collection of DNA from Russians

Even I, a person who grew up on the best examples of Soviet and foreign science fiction, is amazed at how quickly we ended up in a world of seemingly distant dystopia and how all the gloomy forecasts for a fairly distant future suddenly turned out to be our reality.

And at the same time, the situation with positive forecasts, alas, so far turns out to be just the opposite. Let me give you an example – we all thought in our youth that in the future machines would save a person from the most difficult physical labor, and we imagined huge excavator robots, robots – street cleaners, construction robots and various other smart machines. In fact, exactly the opposite happened. It turned out that in the third decade of the third millennium, it turned out to be much more profitable to use people with shovels for the most primitive and hard physical labor than smart and complex mechanisms. Just like Robert Sheckley in the story “Mind Exchange”: “What you can do, the machine will do much better, faster and more willingly, but by no means cheaper! In terms of cheapness, a person will give the car a hundred points ahead!

On the other hand, where progress has taken an incredible step forward is in the area of ​​controlling people. Modern means of communication and surveillance, banking and other technologies make it possible to control a person in a way that regimes could not do in the darkest dystopias of the past type of Orwell’s novel “1984”, where the writer, contrary to the imposed delusion, described the future of a totalitarian Great Britain, and not some then another state.

Modern technologies allow you to literally control every step of a person – that is, completely, with an accuracy of several tens of centimeters, monitor his movements, what he eats, how he dresses, where he receives and where he spends money. You can collect information about all his inclinations and habits, and most importantly – systematize this information and analyze it.

In fact, a person’s life becomes absolutely transparent, and the place for any privacy is rapidly disappearing in it. Remember such a program “Behind the Glass”, where viewers were asked to spy on the personal lives of the program’s heroes? Then they also said that sooner or later everyone will begin to live in such an environment and get used to it. Unfortunately, I can quite agree with the first one – observation of a person becomes total. But I absolutely disagree with the second – a person will never get used to the fact that his whole, including his most personal life, will become an object of scrutiny. It will lead to nothing but mass psychoses and depressions.

Of course, control over all aspects of human life is introduced under the most plausible pretext – primarily to combat crime. But how not to throw out the baby with the water. The criminal world also does not stand still, and a person who is well versed in technical means of control can commit crimes even more easily in our incredibly complicated world than in the simple world of the past. A favorite in the cinema, although by now already outdated, but a clear example is when attackers connect to surveillance cameras and put a fake recording of an empty corridor on them, while at that time they themselves pass along this corridor completely unhindered, unnoticed by anyone. In reality, of course, everything is much more complicated, but the principle is the same. That is why various kinds of cyber fraud have proliferated, in which the level of disclosure remains very low. Yes, and many other areas of crime, for example, the same drug trade, alas, actively use the most advanced achievements of science and technology.

Therefore, even if we proceed from the complete conscientiousness of the authorities and their sincere desire to fight crime, then, on the one hand, the use of the most advanced technologies to fight crime is understandable, and on the other hand, the line is completely erased, beyond which the fight against crime becomes completely unacceptable, unconstitutional intrusion into the privacy of citizens. Theoretically, in a society with a developed system of checks and balances, the law enforcement agencies and special services themselves are under the control of parliament, civil activists, independent media and other structures that were invented in order not to turn our life into, as it is now fashionable to say, under a plausible pretext, ” digital concentration camp. Alas, in practice, the state, as an organized structure, always turns out to be stronger than civil society, and we see, in my opinion, in almost all countries without exception, a clear bias towards an ever-increasing narrowing of personal life and private space. Moreover, using the example of the most recent coronavirus restrictions, many of which, including in our country, are still in effect, the collapse of personal space and the rights of citizens can become simply catastrophic!

And with the development of technologies, which are taking leaps and bounds in this area, the problem will only get worse. And on the agenda, in my opinion, the problem of not only the fight against crime and the necessary control over citizens is extremely acute, but also the most urgent need to create institutions of public control over this control – excuse me for such a complex verbal construction.

The last example of a seemingly necessary law, which at the same time causes great concern, is the law signed by the President of Russia entitled “On Amendments to the Federal Law “On State Genomic Registration in the Russian Federation” and Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation.” This law, in particular, expands the list of persons from whom DNA samples will be taken without fail and entered into a special database.

To date, DNA samples are taken only from those convicted of serious and especially serious crimes, as well as for any crimes against sexual integrity. According to the new law, the list of these persons will be significantly expanded and will include in general all those convicted and serving sentences of imprisonment, as well as, which has become the subject of heated debate, persons only suspected and accused of committing any crimes, and even persons subjected to administrative arrest. The powers to conduct mandatory state genomic registration are vested in the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, and it will be carried out by expert divisions of the RF IC.

In particular, the question arises of how the mandatory genomic registration of suspects and defendants is consistent with the provisions of Article 49, Part 1 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, according to which “every person accused of committing a crime is considered innocent until his guilt is proven in the manner prescribed by federal law and established by a person who has entered into legal the force of a court verdict.” That is, before the entry into force of a guilty verdict of a court, a citizen cannot in any way be deprived of his rights, with the exception of those rights, the restriction of which is necessary directly for the administration of justice, for example, choosing a measure of restraint.

The situation with the selection of DNA samples from persons subjected to administrative arrest, which in our country (and, in fairness, not only in our country), is often subjected to various kinds of civil activists, also causes concern. Is their public danger really so great, even if the fact of committing an administrative offense by them has been reliably established, in order to include them for life in the database with serial killers and persons who encroach on sexual integrity? And it’s just scary to think what can happen if such a base becomes an object of abuse or falls into someone’s unclean hands!

A separate problem is the restoration of the rights of those who were illegally brought to criminal, and now to administrative responsibility. We are assured that in the case of rehabilitation, that is, to put it simply, justification, the samples of the rehabilitated person will be deleted from the respective databases. However, in practice, this can take years, because, as experience shows, getting into the field of view of state bodies is quite easy, but getting out of it is much more difficult, and an example here can be, say, getting into the database of debtors who are prohibited from traveling abroad . But these are just civil legal relations, an order of magnitude less stringent than bringing a citizen to administrative and criminal liability.

Another question is why these amendments are being adopted right now? Has the crime situation really deteriorated so much that such a rather emergency response is required? The statistics just say the opposite.

One can only hope that the practical application of this law will find a balance between ensuring the safety of citizens (which is the only goal of fighting crime) and the inviolability of other equally important constitutional rights.