The Bill of Rights is instinct with privacy, the Civil War Amendments with personhood. But the layers of our lives—the “persons, houses, papers, and effects”—are being peeled away by technology. The U.S. Supreme Court’s affirmation of DNA “test upon arrest” is among the latest developments in a mindset that can make being alive a crime.
A buccal swab is not as physically invasive as a blood test, but it is infinitely more telling than a fingerprint. The DNA collected from the inside of someone’s mouth contains unprecedented quantities and dimensions of information. Once entered into a crime scene databank, it transforms identification pretext into investigation context.
