Opinion ID: 3050565
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Kriesel’s Privacy Interests

Text: It is true that conditional releasees like Kriesel have diminished privacy expectations. Samson, 126 S.Ct. at 2199; Kincade, 379 F.3d at 833. But as the plurality observed in Kincade, diminished does not mean extinguished. 379 F.3d at 835 (“Let us be clear: Our holding in no way intimates that conditional releasees’ diminished expectations of privacy serve to extinguish their ability to invoke the protections of the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures. Where a given search or class of searches cannot satisfy the traditional totality-of-thecircumstances test, a conditional releasee may lay claim to constitutional relief—just like any other citizen.”). Thus, while Kriesel cannot claim the level of protection afforded ordinary citizens under the Fourth Amendment, his privacy interests cannot be treated as weightless in the reasonableness balance. In considering that privacy interest, I also cannot overlook that the search here is not limited to the initial extraction of a biological sample from Kriesel, and with it, his DNA. Rather, the warrantless “search” permitted by the 2004 DNA Act extends to repeated searches of his DNA whenever the government has some minimal investigative interest. Kincade, 379 F.3d at 873 (Kozinski, J., dissenting) (“[I]t is important to recognize that the Fourth Amendment intrusion here is not primarily the taking of the blood, but seizure of the DNA fingerprint and its inclusion in a searchable database.”). Thus, I UNITED STATES v. KRIESEL 15327 look to the interests advanced by the government, mindful of the fact that the Act permits this ongoing search of Kriesel’s DNA for his lifetime.7