Opinion ID: 787362
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Junk DNA and the Potential for Expansion

Text: 103 CODIS's potential to expand is not confined to its likely future inclusion of more and more categories of persons to be subjected to DNA profiling. The system also has the ability to identify an increasing amount of information about each of its profiled subjects as our understanding of DNA continues to develop at lightning speed. The plurality is correct that the DNA profiles currently on file in CODIS are based on analyses of junk DNA. See ante at 818-819. It takes comfort in the fact that scientists have long assumed that junk DNA is non-genic, that junk DNA samples taken contain only an identifying fingerprint, and nothing else. Id. That understanding of junk DNA has been disputed for some time. See Justin Gillis, Genetic Code of Mouse Published; Comparison With Human Genome Indicates Junk DNA May Be Vital, WASH. POST, Dec. 5, 2002, at A1 (noting that studies in 2002 revealed that junk DNA contains valuable information about how the body uses genes and that the instruction set [contained within junk DNA] is at least as big as the gene set, and probably bigger). Moreover, new discoveries are being made by the day that challenge the core assumption underlying junk DNA's name-regions of DNA previously thought to be junk DNA may be genic after all. See Clive Cookson, Regulatory Genes Found in Junk DNA, FIN. TIMES, June 4, 2004, at 11; Function Found for Junk DNA, L.A. TIMES, June 5, 2003, at A14. 104 The fact that scientists currently lack the capacity to comprehend the full significance of the data stored within junk DNA samples is irrelevant. As Judge Gould notes in his concurrence, CODIS retains individual DNA profiles forever — even if convicted offenders have completed their debt to society. See Gould concurrence, at 842. Moreover, the FBI encourages all laboratories to retain portions of the evidence samples they collect, see Federal Bureau of Investigation, Standards for Forensic DNA Testing Labs, at ¶ 7.2, available at http:/www.fbi. gov/hq/lab/codis/forensic.htm, affording the federal government the opportunity to re-test and re-analyze a virtually limitless number of samples as science progresses. See also PDS Brief, at 10 (The Act also neither requires, nor even recommends, destruction of samples after analysis.). Thus, as Judge Gould perceptibly observes, DNA stores and reveals massive amounts of personal, private data... and the advance of science promises to make stored DNA only more revealing in time. See Gould concurrence, at 842 n.3. 105 What type of information might the government eventually be able to extract from samples of junk DNA? Even today, as the plurality admits, DNA profiles derived by STR may yield probabilistic evidence of the contributor's race or sex. Ante at 818. Yet that seems to be a dramatic understatement. The DNA fingerprint entered into CODIS likely has the potential to reveal information about an individual's genetic defects, predispositions to diseases, and perhaps even sexual orientation. See Harold J. Krent, Of Diaries and Data Banks: Use Restrictions Under the Fourth Amendment, 74 Tex. L.Rev. 49, 95-96 (1995) (cited in Br. of Amicus Curiae Protection & Advocacy, Inc., at 6 [hereinafter Protection & Advocacy Br.]). DNA analysis can reveal the presence of traits for thousands of known diseases, and countless numbers of diseases which are currently unknown. Protection & Advocacy Br., at 6. More ominously, some have predicted that the DNA profiles entered into CODIS will someday be able to predict the likelihood that a given individual will engage in certain types of criminal, or non-criminal but perhaps socially disfavored, behavior. Id. at 7-8 (citing studies raising the specter that DNA profiles might be used to study the links between particular genes and the propensity for social deviance). 106 To say that CODIS profiles might actually be used for such purposes is hardly far-fetched. A report by the Office of Technology Assessment [hereinafter: OTA] of the U.S. Congress has warned that the possibility exists to test DNA acquired specifically for identification purposes for disease information in a database, and worse, that [t]his option may become more attractive over time, especially as the number and types of probes for genetic orders increase. OTA, Genetic Witness: Forensic Uses of DNA Tests, July 1990, at 10 (cited in Protection & Advocacy Br. at 12-13). The pressures will only increase as CODIS produces more hits, linking unsolved crime scene evidence to newly entered DNA profiles. The permanent maintenance of this type of information about untold millions of Americans, if not indeed about all of our citizens, affords the government monumental powers to intrude into the core of those intimate concerns which lie at the heart of the right to privacy. 107 It is true, as some of my colleagues argue, that today we are confronted only with the question of the constitutionality of the program before us. Yet the current CODIS database, when it is compared to its modest beginnings, represents an 108 alarming trend whereby the privacy and dignity of our citizens [are] being whittled away by [ ] imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen — a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of man's life at will. 109 Osborn v. United States, 385 U.S. 323, 343, 87 S.Ct. 429, 17 L.Ed.2d 394 (1966) (Douglas, J., dissenting). And when such a policy's constitutionality is determined merely by whether it seems reasonable under the totality of the circumstances, we all have reason to fear that the nightmarish worlds depicted in films such as Minority Report and Gattaca will become realities. This is especially the case given the potentially endless duration of our current war on terror, in the course of which we have already seen that war-time government seeks rapidly to expand its law enforcement powers and to increase its authority to take action against its citizens free from the ordinary rigors of judicial supervision. See, e.g., The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA-PATRIOT) Act, Pub.L. No. 107-56, 115 Stat. 272, §§ 206 (roving wiretaps), 215 (library records searches), 213 (sneak and peak searches) (2001). In such times, the pressures to expand CODIS further than ever before are certain to increase.