Privacy Digest

DNA database constitutional, high court rules - Via The Burlington Free Press :

Law-enforcement authorities have the right to collect, analyze and store DNA samples from people convicted of nonviolent felonies, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled Friday.

In a narrow 3-2 opinion, justices determined the government's interest in monitoring forensic profiles of criminals outweighs their privacy rights.

Police and government lawyers argued they need the DNA database to identify the perpetrators of crimes, to exclude the innocent from suspicion, to deter crime and to help find missing people. The high court agreed those goals allow police to swab a convict's mouth, laboratory personnel to analyze and store the data, and local authorities to transmit the information to federal law enforcement.

"The intrusions occasioned by these uses are minimal and, like searching a fingerprint database, reveal nothing more than mere identity," Chief Justice Paul Reiber wrote for the majority. Joining him were associate justices Brian Burgess and John Dooley. "The information in the database, then, is not information defendants can reasonably expect to keep private as convicted felons."

Dissenters worried the ruling tramples constitutional safeguards against illegal searches and seizures, protections that extend even to convicted felons.

"If no current crime needs solving, the government's need to use extraordinary procedures that abandon the warrant and probable-cause requirement is difficult to justify. The State's interest is obviously weaker if it is gathering information for crimes that have not yet been committed," wrote Associate Justice Denise Johnson, joined by Judge Thomas Devine, who filled in on the case for an absent justice. "The privacy interests of convicted felons in their unique genetic code far outweigh the governmental interest in collecting, storing and searching the DNA of an entire class of individuals for the investigation of as-yet-uncommitted crimes."

(Read Original Article - Via The Burlington Free Press.)