Opinion ID: 787362
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Extent of the Intrusion Caused by the Search

Text: 155 The intrusion authorized by the DNA Act is significant. As the Supreme Court explained in Skinner v. Ry. Labor Executives' Ass'n, 489 U.S. 602, 109 S.Ct. 1402, 103 L.Ed.2d 639 (1989), a compelled intrusion into the body for blood to be analyzed ... must be deemed a Fourth Amendment search. In light of our society's concern for the security of one's person, it is obvious that this physical intrusion, penetrating beneath the skin, infringes an expectation of privacy that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable. Id. at 616, 109 S.Ct. 1402 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 767, 86 S.Ct. 1826, 16 L.Ed.2d 908 (1966); United States v. Wright, 215 F.3d 1020, 1025 (9th Cir.2000). Even though the Court has in some cases upheld such searches as constitutional, it has insisted that searches of an individual's body are severe, though brief, intrusion[s] upon cherished personal security that [are] subject to constitutional scrutiny. Cupp v. Murphy, 412 U.S. 291, 295, 93 S.Ct. 2000, 36 L.Ed.2d 900 (1973). 156 It is true that courts have sometimes described the privacy invasion caused by blood tests in less forceful terms. The search in question, however, constitutes far more of an intrusion than the mere insertion of a needle into an individual's body and the consequent extraction of a blood sample. 28 In prior cases dealing with the level of intrusion authorized by the taking of blood samples, courts did not confront a regime in which the samples were turned into profiles capable of being searched time and time again throughout the course of an individual's life. See, e.g., Schmerber, 384 U.S. at 768-69, 86 S.Ct. 1826 (describing the blood test as designed to produce evidence of inebriation at the time of the search). The startling advance of technology has magnified the power of the initial search authorized by the DNA Act, such that the invasion of privacy is vastly more significant that we might have previously assumed. Here, the DNA placed in the CODIS database contains sensitive information, and no one can say today what future uses will be made of it once it is entered into governmental files; certainly, today's restrictions provide no guarantees regarding future governmental uses. To reduce the searches authorized by the DNA Act to the physical act of taking blood would be to ignore the totality of the circumstances surrounding the search and to ignore the manner in which the advance of technology has affected the degree of privacy secured to citizens by the Fourth Amendment. Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 33-34, 121 S.Ct. 2038, 150 L.Ed.2d 94 (2001). We cannot ignore technological developments in the Fourth Amendment context, but instead must confront what limits there are upon this power of technology to shrink the realm of guaranteed privacy. Id. at 34, 121 S.Ct. 2038. 157 I would hold that the invasion of privacy required by the DNA Act is substantial. The Act is unprecedented in its scope and threatens only to expand once we have justified its initial forms. With the substantial nature of the invasion in mind, I turn to the reasonable expectations of privacy held by probationers and parolees.