DNA Will Eventually Be Public Domain

I must admit, I’m torn by this.

When a 60-year-old man spat on the sidewalk, his DNA became as public as if he had been advertising it across his chest.

Police officers secretly following Leon Chatt last August collected the saliva — loaded with Chatt’s unique genetic makeup — to compare with DNA evidence from the scene of an old murder they believed he’d committed.

On Feb. 1, Chatt was charged in one of Buffalo’s oldest unsolved cases, the 1974 rape and stabbing of his wife’s stepsister, Barbara Lloyd.

While secretly collecting a suspect’s DNA may be an unorthodox approach to solving crimes, prosecutors say it crosses no legal boundaries — that when someone leaves their DNA in a public place via flakes of skin, strands of hair or saliva, for example, they give up any expectation of privacy.

The important thing is to not to judge the process by the results.  It’s a good thing that they caught this guy.  But does that make the process by which they got him acceptable?  Consider that as technology progresses, we will be able to extract DNA from smaller and smaller samples.  At some point, we may be able to do it from a single cell.  We all leave dead skin cells all over the place.  When the technology reaches that point, if we have allowed this kind of police work, it will be impossible to ever keep your DNA away from the police. 

And at what point does DNA come under the 5th Amendment?  If my DNA can implicate me in a crime, don’t I have a right to keep my DNA to myself? 

Like I said, I’m torn.