For identification purposes law enforcement labs only analyze at a dozen or so short segments of the DNA. That's why they can do the test so quickly. For example it was technically possible that Bin Laden could have been positively id'd within hours of his capture. Short tandem repeats give very little data, and not enough to characterizes anyone's medical condition. As the ruling says, "Those loci came from noncoding DNA parts that do not reveal an arrestee’s genetic traits and are unlikely to reveal any private medical information."
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The most insightful and accurate thing I've read on Slashdot in a quite a while. Thank you.
For identification purposes law enforcement labs only analyze at a dozen or so short segments of the DNA. That's why they can do the test so quickly. For example it was technically possible that Bin Laden could have been positively id'd within hours of his capture. Short tandem repeats give very little data, and not enough to characterizes anyone's medical condition. As the ruling says, "Those loci came from noncoding DNA parts that do not reveal an arrestee’s genetic traits and are unlikely to reveal any private medical information."