The State Demands DNA Database

The Supreme Court's ruling this week on collecting and storing DNA is yet another loss for American liberty - it bolsters efforts by State and federal officials to require every person in the nation to be cataloged and indexed, and steadily decreases the  concept of privacy.

I note too my view on the issue aligns me with Justice Scalia, a more than rare event.

Arguments for this new legal twist say it gives law enforcement the ability to solve "cold cases" - unsolved crimes. Seems reasonable, say some - but it's a fundamental shift in how our legal system works.

Justice Scalia noted:

"That, Scalia wrote, was the difference between DNA collection and fingerprints. Police take fingerprints primarily for identification, he explained. That’s acceptable because police must identify those they arrest. DNA, on the other hand, is collected for one reason only: “to solve unsolved crimes.” That is not acceptable, he wrote, because it’s exactly what the Fourth Amendment has always forbidden: a search of a person for evidence of a particular crime without any suspicion that he was the perpetrator."

Think of it this way - how would you define the basic function of Laws? Are they written to punish the guilty or to protect the innocent?

If you say "punish"  then your view indicates a belief we are each of us best seen as criminals-in-waiting, Guilty until proven Innocent.