The De-Dollarization Axis: China Completes SWIFT Alternative, May Launch As Soon As September

One of the recurring threats used by the western nations in their cold (and increasingly more hot) war with Russia, is that Putin's regime may be locked out of all international monetary transactions when Moscow is disconnected from the EU-based global currency messaging and interchange service known as SWIFT (a move, incidentally, which SWIFT lamented as was revealed in October when we reported that it announces it "regrets the pressure" to disconnect Russia).

Of course, in the aftermath of revelations that back in 2013, none other than the NSA was exposed for secretly 'monitoring' the SWIFT payments flows, one could wonder if being kicked out of SWIFT is a curse or a blessing, however Russia did not need any further warnings and as we reported less than a month ago, Russia launched its own 'SWIFT'-alternative, linking 91 credit institutions initially. This in turn suggested that de-dollarization is considerably further along than many had expected, which coupled with Russia's record dumping of TSYs, demonstrated just how seriously Putin is taking the threat to be isolated from the western payment system. It was only logical that he would come up with his own.

There were two clear implications from this use of money as a means of waging covert war: i) unless someone else followed Russia out of SWIFT, its action, while notable and valiant, would be pointless - after all, if everyone else is still using SWIFT by default, then anything Russia implements for processing foreign payments is irrelevant and ii) if indeed the Russian example of exiting a western-mediated payment system was successful and copied, it would accelerate the demise of the Dollar's status as reserve currency, which is thus by default since there are no alternatives. Provide alternatives, and the entire reserve system begins to crack.

Today, we got proof that it is the second outcome that is about to prevail following a Reuters report that China's international payment system, known simply enough as China International Payment System (CIPS), which serves to process cross-border yuan transactions is ready, and may be launched as early as September or October.

According to Reuters, the launch of the will remove one of the biggest hurdles to internationalizing the yuan and should greatly increase global usage of the Chinese currency by cutting transaction costs and processing times.

It will also put the yuan on a more even footing with other major global currencies like the U.S. dollar, as CIPS is expected to use the same messaging format as other international payment systems, making transactions smoother.

CIPS, which would be a worldwide payments superhighway for the yuan, will replace a patchwork of existing networks that make processing renminbi payments a more cumbersome process.

In other words, while the west was using every provocation involving the Ukraine civil war as an opportunity to pressure Russia into developing its own cross-border payment system, it achieved not only just that but it also pushed China to accelerate the roll out of its own international payment system, in the process telegraphing to the world that the USD is replacable as a reserve currency and giving any other nations (such as the BRICs) the green light to think of SWIFT as an alternative to either the Russian or Chinese payment system (which with enough political and financial stimulus, they would be delighted to do).

But what is most disturbing is just how quickly the Chinese regime change is coming:

"If it's all smooth, (the launch) will be in September or October. If there is a need for a bit more time, we are still confident about (rolling it out) before the year-end," said the source, who declined to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

The system was expected to be launched in 2014 but was delayed by technical problems, with most market participants anticipating it would not come on stream before 2016.

Needless to say, China will be delighted to have its own unified payment system, one that will further internationalize the Renminbi which at least check had become one of the top five payment currencies in November 2014, overtaking both the Canadian and the Australian dollar based on SWIFT data.

Until now, cross-border yuan clearing has to be done either through one of the offshore yuan clearing banks in the likes of Hong Kong, Singapore and London, or else with the help of a correspondent bank in mainland China.

"Misunderstandings under the current clearing system happen from time-to-time due to different languages and codings. The CIPS is a breakthrough since it will offer a united platform and enhance efficiency," said Raymond Yeung, an analyst at ANZ in Hong Kong.

The launch of CIPS will enable companies outside China to clear yuan transactions with their Chinese counterparts directly, reducing the number of stages a payment has to go through.

It will also make it far more difficult for the NSA to track payments to and from the mainland when such compromised intermediaries as SWIFT are used.

This is how the Mercator Institute for China Studies previewed this major development:

The Chinese government is striving towards a controlled internationalization of China's currency through a step-by-step expansion of the use of the RMB in Chinese foreign trade and investment. Towards this end, a worldwide network of agreements dealing with central bank currency swaps, the direct exchange of the RMB with other currencies, and RMB clearing hubs has been built. The establishment of an independent payment system (CIPS) for RMB transactions and an alternative to the existing SWIFT would further increase China’s autonomy vis-à-vis U.S. centred financial market structures.

Finally, as it becomes easier to transact in non-USD terms, it will merely accelerate the adoption of the Chinese Yuan as the primary currency of global trade, or what little is left of it, as opposed to the currency of financial engineering.

Global yuan payments increased by 20.3 percent in value in December compared to a year earlier, while the growth for payments across all currencies was 14.9 percent for the same period, SWIFT said.

China has accelerated the pace of yuan internationalization in recent years. The central bank assigned 10 official yuan clearing banks last year, bringing the total number to 14 globally that can clear yuan transactions with China.

The final observation to make here is that if indeed it was the Obama administration's brilliant ploy to kick out Russia - and by geopolitical affiliation, China - out of a monetary transaction mechanism that is controlled and supervised by the US and force the two biggest challengers to US global dominance into their own (or joint) payment system, then well, congratulations: it succeeded.

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A week's worth of training can improve vision in older adults

© Corbis

Just a weeks' worth of training can improve vision in older adults, according to new research in , a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The findings show that training boosted older adults' sensitivity to contrast and also their ability to see things clearly at close distances.

"Our research indicates that the visual system of older adults maintains a high degree of plasticity and demonstrates that training methods can be used to improve visual function," explains psychological scientist G. John Andersen of the University of California, Riverside who co-authored the study with graduate student Denton DeLoss and colleague Takeo Watanabe of Brown University.

Age-related declines in vision and visual processing are common and they can have serious negative consequences for the health and well-being of older adults. Older adults are particularly likely to show declines in their ability to process low-contrast visual stimuli -- for example, images that are grainy or not clearly defined. This decline hampers their ability to see visual detail, and can hinder their ability to process information that is important for both balance and driving.

While some age-related declines in vision can be traced to the eye itself, research suggests that decline in other aspects of vision are the result of changes in brain function, and DeLoss and colleagues wondered whether a training program that involved repeated exposure to specific stimuli might counteract these changes in brain function.

The researchers recruited 16 young adults (on average, about 22 years old) and 16 older adults (on average, about 71 years old) to participate in the study, all of whom were screened to ensure that they didn't show signs of cognitive decline or eye disease.

The participants came to the lab for 1.5-hour sessions over the course of 7 days. In general, each trial of the experiment involved looking at a striped visual stimulus and determining whether it was rotated clockwise or counterclockwise from its original orientation. The researchers varied the contrast of the stimulus across trials, altering how grainy or clear the image was.

Each day, the contrast threshold of the trials was calibrated to the participants' previous performance so that they were training near the limit of what they could reliably detect. Participants were exposed to 750 trials on each training day, for a total of 3,750 training trials over the course of the study.

The data showed that visual training effectively eliminated the age deficit in contrast sensitivity. At the beginning of the experiment, younger adults outperformed older adults on the task; but the older adults improved with training, showing performance similar to that of their younger peers by the end of the 7 days.

Further analyses confirmed that these improvements stemmed from changes in visual processing in the brain and not changes in the eye.

"We found that the training effect was not due to factors such as dilating the pupils to let in more light to the retina," explains Andersen.

Even more remarkable, both younger and older adults showed improvements in visual acuity when they were tested using an eye chart similar to the one at your doctor's office. At the end of training, older adults showed improvement in near acuity, or the ability to see things clearly when they are near; younger adults, on the other hand, showed improved ability to see things clearly when they are far.

"Given the short training period, the degree of improvement is quite impressive, particularly in the cases of near and far acuity, in which subjects were able to read an average of two to three additional letters on acuity charts after training," the researchers write.

It's important to note that these findings don't shed light on visual function among adults suffering from age-related eye diseases, such as glaucoma or macular degeneration. Nonetheless, the findings could have broad relevance for the many millions of adults who experience age-related decline in visual processing.

The researchers hope to further explore the mechanisms involved in perceptual learning and whether the effects of visual training carry over to real-world tasks, such as driving.

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Cooperative social networks significantly enhanced when reputations of those in the network are known

© Daniel Tenerife/Wikipedia

Social network diagram

People in a society are bound together by a set of connections - a social network. Cooperation between people in the network is essential for societies to prosper, and the question of what drives the emergence and sustainability of cooperation is a fundamental one.

What we know about other people in a network informs how much we are willing to cooperate with them. By conducting a series of online experiments, researchers explored how two key areas of network knowledge effect cooperation in decision-making: what we know about the reputation and social connections of those around us.

In most social contexts, knowledge about others' reputation - what we know about their previous actions - is limited to those we have immediate connections with: friends, neighbours and so on.

But the new study shows that if the reputation of everyone in a network is completely transparent - made common knowledge and visible to all - rather than limited to the individuals who are directly connected, the level of cooperation across the overall network almost doubles. The network also becomes denser and more clustered (so your connections tend to be connected with each other).

The researchers also tested how transparency of social connections in the group influences cooperation. On its own, common knowledge of social connections had little impact on overall levels of cooperation.

However, when the researchers combined transparency of social connections with transparency of everyone's reputation, a community of the most cooperative formed. Members of the community actively removed links from less cooperative individuals and refused their proposals to reconnect.

Researchers found that belonging to the community of cooperators is profitable. Each interaction in the cooperative community is 23% more beneficial than the equivalent interaction in the less cooperative community.

The study is published today in the journal , and was conducted by Cambridge and Oxford researchers.

"We show that knowing others' past actions is the key driver of a high contribution level. Additionally, knowing who is connected to whom matters for the distribution of contributions: it allows contributors to form their own community," said study author Dr Edoardo Gallo, from the Faculty of Economics and Queens' College at the University of Cambridge.

"This finding suggests that in a world where social information is more available, people may increasingly insulate themselves in communities with other like-minded individuals. In the case we examined, belonging to the community of contributors is highly beneficial," he said.

The research sheds light on the problem of 'public good' provision: what motivates people to make costly actions towards a good that benefits everyone, even those who do not contribute to it. Perhaps the most defining example of 'public good' in the modern era is the preservation of our environment.

Gallo, along with Oxford colleague Chang Yan, devised an online experiment involving people forming connections and playing a 'game' of public good provision, also popularly known as the Prisoner's Dilemma.

First, the participants in a group can freely form connections with each other which determine the network. After the network is formed, each individual decides whether to cooperate by contributing to a public good that only benefits their neighbours in the network.

Contributing benefits all the neighbours, but it is costly to the contributor. Not cooperating by not contributing, however, is costless.

The best possible outcome for the group is for everyone to contribute. However, each individual has an incentive not to contribute: they can gain the benefits from others' contributions without paying any cost themselves.

The researchers recruited 364 people from crowdsourcing platform Amazon Mechanical Turk to play several rounds of a network formation game followed by a public good game. They investigated four treatments that varied the amount of knowledge subjects have about the network and previous actions of others.

When the reputation (previous actions) of everyone in the network was rendered transparent, the overall levels of cooperation were almost twice as high as when only the previous actions of immediate connections were known.

When the social connections for the entire network were also revealed to all, the cooperators formed their own community, leaving those with a history of being uncooperative out in the cold.

Gallo points out that whether the community formation - the insulating and ostracizing - that occurred in the transparent network is a desirable outcome depends on the nature of the behaviour that leads to the separation.

"In the experiment, the 'good' cooperators ostracize the 'bad' defectors, but one can argue the defectors brought it on themselves with their actions. If the same pattern occurred because of another more neutral behaviour, like an accent when speaking a language, then the ostracization might be undesirable for society," Gallo said.

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Police intelligence officer among four arrested in connection with Paris terror attacks

© Reuters / Yves Herman

Four people, including an officer who worked at a police intelligence center, are being held over alleged links to Amedy Coulibaly, the kosher deli hostage-taker who killed five people during terror attacks in Paris earlier this year.

The suspects are being questioned as part of the ongoing investigation into the January attacks - including the massacre at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo - which claimed 17 lives in three days.

A policewoman identified only as Emmanuelle is among the suspects, French media reported. The woman - who converted to Islam two years ago, unbeknownst to her superiors - was stationed at a high-security police intelligence headquarters in the eastern suburbs of Paris at the time of the attacks.

Emmanuelle allegedly switched her police cap for an Islamic headscarf when leaving work. Sources close to the investigation say there is no evidence directly linking her to the Jewish deli attack.

In the aftermath of the massacre, Emmanuelle allegedly consulted computer files on her boyfriend, Amar R., who is also one of the four currently being questioned. The woman was reportedly trying to find out how much authorities knew about her boyfriend, who is believed to be a relative of Coulibaly. Emmanuelle was suspended from her duties at the end of last month, according to Le Figaro.

© AFP

Amedy Coulibaly.

Amar R. was seen near the kosher supermarket and in the company of Coulibaly in the lead-up to the January 9 attack. He was arrested on January 23 under a European arrest warrant issued by Spain for drug trafficking and arms smuggling. However, he had not been questioned about the Paris attacks until now.

Details of the other two suspects have not yet been released.

Coulibaly fatally shot an unarmed policewoman on January 8 before taking hostages at the Porte Vincennes supermarket in the east of Paris the following day. After Coulibaly shot and killed four other people, police stormed the building and fatally shot him.

During the siege, Coulibaly told authorities that he had coordinated the attack with the Charlie Hebdo killers, but did not provide any additional details.

His widow, Hayat Boumeddiene, crossed into Syria on January 8 after traveling to Turkey a week earlier.

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Heartless: VA manager's email mocks veteran suicides

© Shutterstock

A manager at the Roudebush Veteran Affairs Medical Center in Indianapolis appears to mock the mental health problems of returning combat veterans in an email to her employees.

The email obtained by contains photographs of a toy Christmas elf posing as a patient in what appears to be the hospital's transitional clinic for returning veterans. In one photograph, the elf pleads for Xanax. In another, he hangs himself with an electrical cord.

The woman who sent the email is Robin Paul, a licensed social worker who manages the hospital's Seamless Transition Integrated Care Clinic. The clinic provides returning veterans with transition assistance, including mental health and readjustment services.

When initially asked about the email, Paul responded, "Oh my goodness." She then referred a reporter to the hospital's public affairs department, which emailed a statement on her behalf.

"I would like to sincerely apologize for the email message and I take full responsibility for this poor judgment," Paul said. "I have put my heart and soul into my work with Veterans for many years. I hold all Veterans and military personnel in the highest regard and am deeply remorseful for any hurt this may have caused."

Julie Webb, a Roudebush spokeswoman, said administrators were made aware of the email "a couple of months ago."

"The email is totally inappropriate and does not convey our commitment to veterans," she said. "We apologize to our veterans and take suicide and mental health treatment seriously, striving to provide the highest quality."

Webb said the issue was "administratively addressed." She declined to provide specifics, citing employee confidentiality.

Paul remains employed at the hospital and continues to manage the clinic, earning an annual salary of $79,916. She received a $2,000 performance bonus in 2013, records show. More recent bonus information was not immediately available.

The Dec. 18 email was sent to the "IND STICC Team" with the subject, "Naught Elf in the STICC clinic."

"So, photos have appeared that indicate that the STICC clinic may have been invaded," the email says. "Looks like this magical character made his way through a few areas."

One photo depicts the elf peering between the legs of a female doll. "Trying his skills as a primary care provider (doing a pap)," the email says.

Another shows the elf next to a sticky note with the words, "Out of XANAX — please help!" A caption says, "Self-medicating for mental health issues when a CNS would not give him his requested script."

A third photograph shows the elf hanging from a strand of Christmas lights. "Caught in the act of suicidal behavior (trying to hang himself from an electrical cord)," the email says.

It is unclear from the email whether other VA employees were involved in the joke, but a note visible in one photo appears to include directions about passing the elf to others.

Webb said she didn't know how many employees were involved.

The email surfaces as the nation grapples with an epidemic of veteran suicides. An estimated 22 veterans commit suicide in the United States every day, according to the VA.

The email immediately drew outrage from veterans groups.

"It is a slap in the face to our recent and past veterans suffering from mental health issues every single day," said Ken Hylton, commander of the Indiana Department of the American Legion. "These men and women went to war and do not deserve this type of ridicule. This is a disgusting display of mockery. This is supposedly someone who is caring for our veterans, and we in the Indiana American Legion are disgusted."

He called for an investigation and the "immediate dismissal of this government employee and all of those who received this correspondence and said nothing."

Paul Rieckhoff, founder and CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, has lobbied for federal legislation intended to help stem veteran suicides.

"We hope it's an isolated incident," he said. "We hope this person has been dealt with aggressively because we're in the middle of a suicide problem."

The suicide crisis has prompted action from Congress and President Barack Obama.

Just last month, the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act was signed into law. The measure will help the VA study new strategies for suicide prevention and give student loan incentives to recruit psychiatrists to work with veterans. Two Indiana lawmakers, U.S. Rep. Jackie Walorski and U.S. Sen. Joe Donnelly, attended the White House signing ceremony.

In December, the Sexton Act was signed into law as part of a national defense bill. It requires annual mental health assessments for all service members, maintains privacy protections and requires the Pentagon to evaluate existing military mental health practices. Authored by Donnelly, it is named after Jacob Sexton, a 21-year-old Indiana National Guardsmen from Farmland who shot himself in the head at a Muncie movie theater while home on a 15-day leave from Afghanistan.

The issue of veteran suicide is a personal one for Gregg Keesling of Indianapolis. His 25-year-old son, Chancellor, shot himself in Baghdad in 2009, two weeks into his second tour.

He called the email "wrong," but stopped short of calling for terminations.

"It's very inappropriate, but I can understand it — making light of something awful because it's so awful," he said. "I think it's a way of coping with things."

Still, he said, "They are trying to be funny. It's not... Somebody should get in trouble. Maybe not fired, but taken out to the woodshed, as they say."

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Archeologists begin excavation of 16th - 17th century burial ground under path of London's Crossrail transit line

© AP Photo/Matt Dunham

Archaeologists excavate the 16th and 17th century Bedlam burial ground uncovered by work on the new Crossrail train line next to Liverpool Street station in London, Friday, March 6, 2015. The excavation team estimate there to be 3,000 human skeletons at the site, which was a burial ground to the then adjacent Bedlam Hospital, the world's first psychiatric asylum. The 118-kilometer (73-mile) Crossrail project to put a new rail line from west to east London is Britain's biggest construction project and the largest archeological dig in London for decades.

They came from every parish of London, and from all walks of life, and ended up in a burial ground called Bedlam. Now scientists hope their centuries-old skeletons can reveal new information about how long-ago Londoners lived—and about the bubonic plague that often killed them.

Archaeologists announced Monday that they have begun excavating the bones of some 3,000 people interred in the 16th and 17th centuries, who now lie in the path of the Crossrail transit line. They will be pored over by scientists before being reburied elsewhere.

One recent workday, just meters (yards) from teeming Liverpool Street railway station, researchers in orange overalls scraped, sifted and gently removed skeletons embedded in the dark earth. In one corner of the site, the skeleton of an adult lay beside the fragile remains of a baby, the wooden outline of its coffin still visible. Most were less intact, a jumble of bones and skulls.

"Part of the skill of it is actually working out which bones go with which," said Alison Telfer, a project officer with Museum of London Archaeology, which is overseeing the dig.

Due to open in 2018, the 118-kilometer (73-mile) trans-London Crossrail line is Britain's biggest construction project, and its largest archaeological dig for decades. The central 21-kilometer (13-mile) section runs underground, which has meant tunneling beneath some of the oldest and most densely populated parts of the city.

For Londoners, that has brought years of noise and disruption, but for archaeologists it's like Christmas. Almost every shovelful of earth has uncovered a piece of history, or prehistory: bison and mammoth bones; Roman horseshoes; medieval ice skates; the remains of a moated Tudor manor house.

© AP Photo/Matt Dunham

Skeletons of an adult and baby lie next to each other on the archeological excavation site at the 16th and 17th century Bedlam burial ground, uncovered by work on the new Crossrail train line next to Liverpool Street station in London, Friday, March 6, 2015. The excavation team estimate there to be 3,000 human skeletons at the site, which was a burial ground to the then adjacent Bedlam Hospital, the world's first psychiatric asylum. The 118-kilometer (73-mile) Crossrail project to put a new rail line from west to east London is Britain's biggest construction project and the largest archeological dig in London for decades.

Chief archaeologist Jay Carver says the Bedlam dig could be the most revealing yet.

"It's going to be archaeologically the most important sample we have of the population of London from the 16th and 17th centuries," Carver said.

Bedlam cemetery opened in 1569 to take the overspill as the city's churchyard burial grounds filled up. It is the final resting place of prosperous citizens and paupers, religious dissenters including the 17th-century revolutionary Robert Lockyer and patients from Bedlam Hospital, the world's first asylum for the mentally ill. The hospital's name, a corruption of Bethlehem, became a synonym for chaos.

Tests on the bones by osteologists may reveal where these Londoners came from, what they ate and what ailed them—which in many cases was the plague. There were four outbreaks of the deadly disease over the two centuries the cemetery was in use, including the "Great Plague" that killed 100,000 people in 1665.

Carver says researchers will analyze DNA taken from pulp in the skeletons' teeth to help fill in the "evolutionary tree of the plague bacteria."

The technique was used to discover the plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis, in 14th-century skeletons excavated at another Crossrail site, identifying them as victims of the Black Death that wiped out half the city's population in 1348.

Scientists should be able to compare the bacterium found in Bedlam's plague victims with the 14th-century samples, helping to understand whether the disease—which still infects several thousand people a year—has evolved over the centuries.

© AP Photo/Matt Dunham

Two adult skulls lie next to each other on the archeological excavation site at the 16th and 17th century Bedlam burial ground, uncovered by work on the new Crossrail train line next to Liverpool Street station in London, Friday, March 6, 2015. The excavation team estimate there to be 3,000 human skeletons at the site, which was a burial ground to the then adjacent Bedlam Hospital, the world's first psychiatric asylum. The 118-kilometer (73-mile) Crossrail project to put a new rail line from west to east London is Britain's biggest construction project and the largest archeological dig in London for decades.

Sixty archaeologists working in shifts—16 hours a day, six days a week—will spend about a month removing the remains. After scientific study, they will be reburied on Canvey Island in the Thames Estuary—the latest in a long line of Londoners to move east out of the congested city.

The old burial ground will be the site of a new train station, whose users will probably give little thought to the history beneath their feet.

© AP Photo/Matt Dunham

Two adult skulls lie next to each other on the archeological excavation site at the 16th and 17th century Bedlam burial ground, uncovered by work on the new Crossrail train line next to Liverpool Street station in London, Friday, March 6, 2015. The excavation team estimate there to be 3,000 human skeletons at the site, which was a burial ground to the then adjacent Bedlam Hospital, the world's first psychiatric asylum. The 118-kilometer (73-mile) Crossrail project to put a new rail line from west to east London is Britain's biggest construction project and the largest archeological dig in London for decades.

But Telfer says she never forgets that these fragile bones were once living, breathing individuals.

"When you are doing something like this, you do feel a connection with them," she said. "I think you have a responsibility to treat them with great respect. It's quite a special process."

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How DNA is turning us into a nation of suspects

The year is 2025. The population is 325 million, and the FBI has the DNA profiles of all of them. Unlike fingerprints, these profiles reveal vital medical information. The universal database arrived surreptitiously. First, the Department of Defense's repository of DNA samples from all military personnel, established to identify remains of soldiers missing from action, was given to the FBI. Then local police across the country shadowed individuals, collecting shed DNA for the databank. On the way, thousands of innocent people were imprisoned because they had the misfortune to have race-based crime genes in their DNA samples. Sadly, it did not have to be this way. If only we had passed laws against collecting and using shed DNA...."—Professor David H. Kaye

© pursuitwire.com

Every dystopian sci-fi film we've ever seen is suddenly converging into this present moment in a dangerous trifecta between science, technology and a government that wants to be all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful.

By tapping into your phone lines and cell phone communications, the government knows what you say. By uploading all of your emails, opening your mail, and reading your Facebook posts and text messages, the government knows what you write. By monitoring your movements with the use of license plate readers, surveillance cameras and other tracking devices, the government knows where you go.

By churning through all of the detritus of your life—what you read, where you go, what you say—the government can predict what you will do. By mapping the synapses in your brain, scientists—and in turn, the government—will soon know what you remember. And by accessing your DNA, the government will soon know everything else about you that they don't already know: your family chart, your ancestry, what you look like, your health history, your inclination to follow orders or chart your own course, etc.

Of course, none of these technologies are foolproof. Nor are they immune from tampering, hacking or user bias. Nevertheless, they have become a convenient tool in the hands of government agents to render null and void the Constitution's requirements of privacy and its prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Consequently, no longer are we "innocent until proven guilty" in the face of DNA evidence that places us at the scene of a crime, behavior sensing technology that interprets our body temperature and facial tics as suspicious, and government surveillance devices that cross-check our biometrics, license plates and DNA against a growing database of unsolved crimes and potential criminals.

The government's questionable acquisition and use of DNA to identify individuals and "solve" crimes has come under particular scrutiny in recent years. Until recently, the government was required to at least observe some basic restrictions on when, where and how it could access someone's DNA. That has all been turned on its head by various U.S. Supreme Court rulings, including the recent decision to let stand the Maryland Court of Appeals' ruling in Raynor v. Maryland , which essentially determined that individuals do not have a right to privacy when it comes to their DNA.

Although Glenn Raynor, a suspected rapist, willingly agreed to be questioned by police, he refused to provide them with a DNA sample. No problem. Police simply swabbed the chair in which Raynor had been sitting and took what he refused to voluntarily provide. Raynor's DNA was a match, and the suspect became a convict. In refusing to hear the case, the U.S. Supreme Court gave its tacit approval for government agents to collect shed DNA, likening it to a person's fingerprints or the color of their hair, eyes or skin.

Whereas fingerprint technology created a watershed moment for police in their ability to "crack" a case, DNA technology is now being hailed by law enforcement agencies as the magic bullet in crime solving. It's what police like to refer to a "modern fingerprint." However, unlike a fingerprint, a DNA print reveals everything about "who we are, where we come from, and who we will be."

With such a powerful tool at their disposal, it was inevitable that the government's collection of DNA would become a slippery slope toward government intrusion. Certainly, it was difficult enough trying to protect our privacy in the wake of a 2013 Supreme Court ruling in Maryland v. King that likened DNA collection to photographing and fingerprinting suspects when they are booked, thereby allowing the government to take DNA samples from people merely "arrested" in connection with "serious" crimes. At that time, Justice Antonin Scalia warned that as a result of the Court's ruling, "your DNA can be taken and entered into a national database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason."

Now, in the wake of this Raynor ruling, Americans are vulnerable to the government accessing, analyzing and storing their DNA without their knowledge or permission. As the dissenting opinion in Raynor for the Maryland Court of Appeals rightly warned, "a person desiring to keep her DNA profile private, must conduct her public affairs in a hermetically sealed hazmat suit.... The Majority's holding means that a person can no longer vote, participate in a jury, or obtain a driver's license, without opening up his genetic material for state collection and codification."

All 50 states now maintain their own DNA databases, although the protocols for collection differ from state to state. That DNA is also being collected in the FBI's massive national DNA database, code-named CODIS (Combined DNA Index System), which was established as a way to identify and track convicted felons and has since become a de facto way to identify and track the American people from birth to death.

Indeed, hospitals have gotten in on the game by taking and storing newborn babies' DNA, often without their parents' knowledge or consent. It's part of the government's mandatory genetic screening of newborns. However, in many states, the DNA is stored indefinitely. What this means for those being born today is inclusion in a government database that contains intimate information about who they are, their ancestry, and what awaits them in the future, including their inclinations to be followers, leaders or troublemakers.

For the rest of us, it's just a matter of time before the government gets hold of our DNA, either through mandatory programs carried out in connection with law enforcement and corporate America, or through the collection of our "shed" or "touch" DNA.

While much of the public debate, legislative efforts and legal challenges in recent years have focused on the protocols surrounding when police can legally collect a suspect's DNA (with or without a search warrant and whether upon arrest or conviction), the question of how to handle "shed" or "touch" DNA has largely slipped through without much debate or opposition.

Yet as scientist Leslie A. Pray notes:

We all shed DNA, leaving traces of our identity practically everywhere we go. Forensic scientists use DNA left behind on cigarette butts, phones, handles, keyboards, cups, and numerous other objects, not to mention the genetic content found in drops of bodily fluid, like blood and semen. In fact, the garbage you leave for curbside pickup is a potential gold mine of this sort of material. All of this shed or so-called abandoned DNA is free for the taking by local police investigators hoping to crack unsolvable cases. Or, if the future scenario depicted at the beginning of this article is any indication, shed DNA is also free for inclusion in a secret universal DNA databank.

What this means is that if you have the misfortune to leave your DNA traces anywhere a crime has been committed, you've already got a file somewhere in some state or federal database—albeit it may be a file without a name. As Forensic magazine reports, "As officers have become more aware of touch DNA's potential, they are using it more and more. Unfortunately, some [police] have not been selective enough when they process crime scenes. Instead, they have processed anything and everything at the scene, submitting 150 or more samples for analysis." Even old samples taken from crime scenes and "cold" cases are being unearthed and mined for their DNA profiles.

Today, helped along by robotics and automation, DNA processing, analysis and reporting takes far less time and can bring forth all manner of information, right down to a person's eye color and relatives. Incredibly, one company specializes in creating "mug shots" for police based on DNA samples from unknown "suspects" which are then compared to individuals with similar genetic profiles.

If you haven't yet connected the dots, let me point the way: Having already used surveillance technology to render the entire American populace potential suspects, DNA technology in the hands of government will complete our transition to a suspect society in which we are all merely waiting to be matched up with a crime.

No longer can we consider ourselves innocent until proven guilty. As I make clear in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State , now we are all suspects in a DNA lineup until circumstances and science say otherwise.

Of course, there will be those who point to DNA's positive uses in criminal justice, such as in those instances where it is used to absolve someone on death row of a crime he didn't commit, and there is no denying its beneficial purposes at times. However, as is the case with body camera footage and every other so-called technology that is hailed as a "check" on government abuses, in order for the average person—especially one convicted of a crime—to request and get access to DNA testing, they first have to embark on a costly, uphill legal battle through red tape and, even then, they are opposed at every turn by a government bureaucracy run by prosecutors, legislatures and law enforcement.

What this amounts to is a scenario in which we have little to no defense of against charges of wrongdoing, especially when "convicted" by technology, and even less protection against the government sweeping up our DNA in much the same way it sweeps up our phone calls, emails and text messages.

Yet if there are no limits to government officials being able to access your DNA and all that it says about you, then where do you draw the line? As technology makes it ever easier for the government to tap into our thoughts, our memories, our dreams, suddenly the landscape becomes that much more dystopian.

With the entire governmental system shifting into a pre-crime mode aimed at detecting and pursuing those who "might" commit a crime before they have an inkling, let alone an opportunity, to do so, it's not so far-fetched to imagine a scenario in which government agents (FBI, local police, etc.) target potential criminals based on their genetic disposition to be a "troublemaker" or their relationship to past dissenters. Equally disconcerting: if scientists can, using DNA, track salmon across hundreds of square miles of streams and rivers, how easy will it be for government agents to not only know everywhere we've been and how long we were at each place but collect our easily shed DNA and add it to the government's already burgeoning database?

As always there will be those voices—well-meaning, certainly—insisting that if you want to save the next girl from being raped, abducted or killed, then we need to give the government all the tools necessary to catch these criminals before they can commit their heinous crimes.

It's hard to argue against such a stance. If you care for someone, you're particularly vulnerable to this line of reasoning. Of course we don't want our wives butchered, our girlfriends raped, our daughters abducted and subjected to all manner of atrocities. But what about those cases in which the technology proved to be wrong, either through human error or tampering? It happens more often than we are told.

For example, David Butler spent eight months in prison for a murder he didn't commit after his DNA was allegedly found on the murder victim and surveillance camera footage placed him in the general area the murder took place. Conveniently, Butler's DNA was on file after he had voluntarily submitted it during an investigation years earlier into a robbery at his mother's home. The case seemed cut and dried to everyone but Butler who proclaimed his innocence. Except that the DNA evidence and surveillance footage was wrong: Butler was innocent.

That Butler's DNA was supposedly found on the victim's nails was attributed to three things: one, Butler was a taxi driver "and so it was possible for his DNA to be transferred from his taxi via money or another person, onto the murder victim"; two, Butler had a rare skin condition causing him to shed flakes of skin—i.e., more DNA to spread around, much more so than the average person; and three, police wanted him to be the killer, despite the fact that "the DNA sample was only a partial match, of poor quality, and experts at the time said they could neither say that he was guilty nor rule him out."

Moreover, despite the insistence by government agents that DNA is infallible, New York Times reporter Andrew Pollack makes a clear and convincing case that DNA evidence can, in fact, be fabricated. Israeli scientists "fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva," stated Pollack. "They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person." The danger, warns scientist Dan Frumkin, is that crime scenes can be engineered with fabricated DNA.

Now if you happen to be the kind of person who trusts the government implicitly and refuses to believe it would ever do anything illegal or immoral, then the prospect of government officials—police, especially—using fake DNA samples to influence the outcome of a case might seem outlandish. But for those who know their history, the probability of our government acting in a way that is not only illegal but immoral becomes less a question of "if" and more a question of "when."

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