David Kravets writes:
A federal appeals court Thursday upheld a voter-approved measure requiring California authorities to take a DNA sample from every adult arrested on felony accusations in the Golden State.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the challenge in hopes of striking down the measure, argued that DNA sampling of arrestees was an unconstitutional Fourth Amendment search and privacy breach. A lower court had refused to stop the program that has resulted in California securing a DNA database of more than 1.5 million people.
Read more on Threat Level. Obviously, I disagree with the court’s ruling and hope this eventually makes it to the Supreme Court, as I think if these DNA-on-arrest laws stand, why not just arrest everyone in the country and charge them with a felony so you can compile a massive national database? Couldn’t/wouldn’t happen, you say? Didn’t it already happen with our telecommunications being swooped up in nets without warrants?