The U.S. House passed wih no debate today HR 4614, a bill which seeks to mandate the collection of DNA samples from people who have been convicted of no crime.

From the United States' Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs:

Hearings

Terrorists and Guns: The Nature of the Threat and Proposed Reforms

Wednesday, May 5, 2010
10:00 AM
Dirksen Senate Office Building, room 342

April 14, 2010

U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

Re: Oppose Schumer/Graham Biometric National ID Proposal within Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Dear Representative:

The Department of Homeland Security has acknowledged the existence of three more intelligence analysis systems that appear to include information about the American people, according to documents obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting.

The Institute for Health Freedom has a great primer on a proposed rule from the bureacrats at the Department of Health and Human Services in DC.  HHS wants to force doctors to create and share electronic medical records of their patients without patient consent.  HHS is taking public comments on the rule until Monday.  IHF has all the details including how to send in your comments to HHS:

Papers, please:

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.

Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.

The Assistant Attorney General has sent a letter to concerned members of Congress   insisting that personal data collected on Americans by the U.S. Census Bureau will not be disclosed to "law enforcement or national security officials."  This is a commendable position.  It would be nice if the NSA Director released a similar letter.

This concern would not be so pronounced if the Census stuck to their Constitutional mandate in the first place and only inquired as to the number of persons in the household. 

The latest in police/revenuer surveillance technology?  Read all about it in The USA Today:

The cameras read license plates of parked and moving cars — hundreds per minute — and check them against vehicle databases, said Lance Clem, a spokesman for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, which purchased several systems for its police vehicles last fall.[...]