THe once and future DNA sample
The police can surreptitiously lift your DNA off of discarded cigarette butts, coke cans and water glasses. Although the legality of this technique is still untested in court, it's becoming common practice. Part of what's to blame here is more sophisticated DNA testing methods that can work with increasingly smaller samples.
It's pretty clear that for a myriad of good and practical reasons, law enforcement has been creating uber-databases of all kinds of information, much of which is being done in a legal vacuum.
Posted on April 03, 2008
