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.

Comments

Re:What if the person is innocent?

[myth24601]

Doesn't matter. This gives police license to run dragnets for DNA.

They can't solve a case but have DNA and a vague description, they will simply "arrest" anyone and everyone who is a close match to the description on trumped up charges that will be dropped after they get their DNA.

Re:I dont see the difference

[Zeromous]

The difference is, a finger print does not contain medically private data.

Facebookification

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The problem here isn't so much with the collection of DNA, but the retention. That seems to be a common theme here at the start of the 21st century - data collected for one purpose is then reused for other purposes.

I think it is reasonable for the police to check if someone they've arrested is a convicted felon. But once they've looked you up in their database of convicts, the collected data should be destroyed, be it DNA, fingerprints or even a mugshot. If you are subsequently convicted, they can go and re-collect the data for the purposes of making a permanent entry into the database of convicts.