Kennedy wrote the decision, and was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer. Scalia was joined in his dissent by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. "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.
This is an issue that could unite dems and reps. I think privacy as we once knew it is gone forever as technology advances the government and corporations will know almost everything about us. There is no turning back.
If they can find psychopathy via DNA then I hope they put their pictures up on the web. I want to see those intraspecies predators squirm.
I was not taking a side, only asking the obvious question. Offhand, it seems to me they should only be able to take DNA in situations where it is relevant to the arrest, eg if they have crime scene DNA they can compare it to. Just to take it routinely from everyone who is arrested and put it in a database? No, that is Orwellian and should be banned by congress. This kind of case reveals the deep scism among conservatives between the law and order types and the more libertarian thinkers. It's unusual for Thomas to vote differently from Scalia as well.
I did not think you were taking a side. I just said answering because I did not take the time to express myself better. sorry if I mis framed your point.
I took my far too many years to realize our system was all about controlling govt. I sort of believed the propaganda I learned in public schools. I bought into some of the junk that was preached in college. I really saw Ronald Reagan and small govt and individualism returning American to the way it was. I did not realize it was just a temporary blip in the trend of the democrat establishment and the republican establish taking turns looting the country for their cronies as they scale back our freedoms. Had we not had Reagan I might have tried to take a side early and been one of the cronies. I will make sure my kids know that if they are not entertainers they have to be bankers or a person who hires the bankers.
I agree with Scalia completely. And I think the danger here is that the police will ramp up arrests of people in the hopes of obtaining DNA samples and delivering evidence to prosecutors for solving crimes - and thus move their careers along. And I expect the counter argument will be that the arrests have to be justifiable, reasonable, or the DNA will be excluded. "Just don't get arrested". Right. However, prior Supreme Court rulings, (and ones for which Scalia voted) established the constitutionality/admissibility of evidence gained in warranted searches that were not the target of the search and not related to the crimes the police were investigating. And that principle might be applied to DNA in the future.
I think this is the way it is done now. I think what the dna issue is trying to resolve the cases sooner by taking everyone dna for every arrest. Also it seems to me lawyers (maybe the bar assoc.) in general were against this but prosecutors wanted it, I can't recall why.