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SCOTUS Says DNA Collection Permissible After Arrest
schwit1 writes in with news about a ruling on the legality of the police collecting your DNA after an arrest. "A sharply divided Supreme Court on Monday said police can routinely take DNA from people they arrest, equating a DNA cheek swab to other common jailhouse procedures like fingerprinting. 'Taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee DNA is, like fingerprinting and photographing, a legitimate police booking procedure that is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment,' Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court's five-justice majority. But the four dissenting justices said that the court was allowing a major change in police powers. 'Make no mistake about it: because of today's decision, your DNA can be taken and entered into a national database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason,' conservative Justice Antonin Scalia said in a sharp dissent which he read aloud in the courtroom. Details of ruling available here.
Would the police be violating copyright? LOL
Given that DNA is a form of expression, the answer is positive.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
There are things in America that both parties hold in absolute agreement:
1) That we don't want a police state, dictatorship, or anything like it
2) The sneaky suspicion that the 'other party' is trying to push us towards exactly that.
It's kind of hilarious, actually.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Except your DNA contains about 700 MB of personal information...
It better be exactly 700 MB. The last spindle of CD-Rs I bought wouldn't even overburn to 702 MB reliably.