maryland vs king

[Danzig]

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...gerprints.html


found that, in a search i just did (after that great hockey game, of course) from '05.

as for fingerprints and me being ok with them--i'm not sure when they started using and filing them, but probably before my time. guess it's something i never thought about, til now.

dna is supposed to be removed if there's no charges, or they're exonerated-as the article above says fingerprints are supposed to be...but like the above says, that doesn't always happen.
i feel like this is just a more invasive way of search/seizure. i guess i also didn't realize til reading about the ruling that states collected dna at arrest, not conviction (arkansas collects at conviction).

[Danzig]

1924 - The U.S. Congress acts to establish the Identification Division of the F.B.I. The National Bureau and Leavenworth are consolidated to form the basis of the F.B.I. fingerprint repository. By 1946, the F.B.I. had processed 100 million fingerprint cards; that number doubles by 1971.



yeah, like i thought, a little before my time!

[Danzig]

http://news.yahoo.com/police-now-col...192600381.html

Rather than serving as a tool to verify someone's identity, they argue that it's really a backdoor to circumvent the Fourth Amendment's protection against "unreasonable searches." Police had no reason to suspect King had been involved in that rape, yet they used his arrest and DNA to charge him for an unrelated crime.


The case did not break on the usual ideological lines. In a withering dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by three liberals on the bench, said it "taxes the credulity of the credulous" to suggest DNA testing is really about determining someone's identity:


The Fourth Amendment forbids searching a person for evidence of a crime when there is no basis for believing the person is guilty of the crime or is in possession of incriminating evidence. That prohibition is categorical and without exception; it lies at the very heart of the Fourth Amendment. Whenever this Court has allowed a suspicionless search, it has insisted upon a justifying motive apart from the investigation of crime. [SCOTUSBlog]

The court did not rule on specific limits for conducting pre-conviction sampling, which is another major point of contention. The court said it can only be done in the case of "serious" crimes. Yet that term is subjective, a point Scalia lambasted while arguing that the majority had "disguise[d] the vast (and scary) scope of its holding by promising a limitation it cannot deliver."

"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," he said.

[Danzig]

also, isn't fingerprinting done as an identification tool? dna most definitely is not.

[rpncaine]

Why wouldn't having someone's DNA be a HIPPA violation? You can't use fingerprints to look for specific gene anamolies you know. Potentialy you could clone someone from their DNA too.

[dellinger63]

Look at the bright side. How many jobs will this ruling create?


My view on the ruling, 'if you can't do the time don't do the crime' and with a rapist as the poster boy. Enjoy your time away Alonzo. I'm sure you'll have plenty of guys waiting on you.

And from now on instead of this ruling being about Alonzo let's make it about the poor 53-year old woman he raped and robbed who now can enjoy some sense of justice instead of worrying about him coming back because he got off on a technicality.

[Danzig]

The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed an amicus brief in the case, added that expanded testing could lead to even more problematic privacy issues, like an arrestee's DNA being used as a tool to probe family members. ACLU Legal Director Steven Shapiro blasted the ruling for creating a "gaping new exception" to reasonable searches, saying it ran counter to the long-held belief that the Constitution provided for searches only in cases of "individualized suspicion."


yeah, you're right dell. no big deal....just the fourth amendment getting chipped away at.
i'm sure it will only ever affect bad guys. just like drones will only kill bad guys, and only the guilty go to jail.