Attention

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent our advertisers

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

State police now fingerprinting every Texan

HOUSTON – The Texas Department of Public Safety has quietly embarked on a project to take the fingerprints of every Texan old enough to drive over the next 12 years, and add them to a statewide criminal history database.

Not only has the department made that momentous decision on its own, it doesn’t even have clear legal authority to do so.

The credit for breaking the news on those two items goes to consumer affairs columnist Dave Lieber of the Dallas Morning News, whose long-running “Watchdog” column often shows up in my Google Alerts, for obvious reasons.

More

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

and once again, the police showing how totally out of control they are. Come on someone, write a post that says"Just don't do anything wrong and you won't have to worry". Lovely.

Anonymous said...

OK, just don't do anything wrong and you won't have to worry. Happy now? If it was up to me, dna samples would be taken at birth.

Anonymous said...

The problem is that we have this technology that we can and should use. But the people that are enacting these policies DO NOT give our rights a second thought. They only see what they want and how they can use it and they make a grab for it. Again without a thought to our rights. There are ways to make silicone copies of your prints that can then be placed on whatever crime scene you want. Is it a stretch that someone would do that. No asa matter of fact its not. The federal government is out of control along with many state governments. I do not trust them to have any more information about me than they already have.

Anonymous said...

1:41-And familial dna would be a national law.

Anonymous said...

Don't break the law, and you have nothing to worry about. It's that simple.

Anonymous said...


Governor Perry: This is on your watch. Put an end to it. Stomp it out and seriously reprimand whoever launched this. No reason for any government to have this info for innocent citizens.

Related matter: Strongly support verifying paternity at child's birth. Put verification or lack of on the birth certificate so non-father has informed consent before undertaking to raise the child. Current situation has quite a few women giving birth to babies with different father. Make it an honest system when support becomes needed down the road.

Anonymous said...

4:18 are you REALLY that stupid? How many people have been imprisoned who were innocent. How many people have been put to death who were innocent.
People like you are infuriating.

Anonymous said...

5:38 I disagree, that would simply give them the ability to harvest DNA. It should never be mandatory. Challenge it and get tested, that is a choice.
Down the road? DNA doesn't change and can be sampled anytime.
Weird that you would protest fingerprints and support DNA harvesting.