Opinion ID: 152917
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Limitations Of Our Holding

Text: We do not hold, as some courts have suggested, that once a DNA sample is lawfully extracted from an individual and a DNA profile lawfully created, the individual necessarily loses a reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to any subsequent use of that profile. See, e.g., State v. Hauge, 103 Hawai`i 38, 79 P.3d 131, 144 (2003) (citing state appellate decisions for the proposition that once a DNA profile has been lawfully procured from an offender, no privacy interest persists in the profile); see also Green v. Berge, 354 F.3d 675, 680 (7th Cir.2004) (Easterbrook, J., concurring) (stating, in challenge to state DNA collection statute, that lawfully obtained DNA sample may be put to various uses because the fourth amendment does not control how properly collected information is deployed). Instead, we narrowly hold that once a qualified federal offender's profile has been lawfully created and entered into CODIS under the DNA Act, the FBI's retention and periodic matching of the profile against other profiles in CODIS for the purpose of identification is not an intrusion on the offender's legitimate expectation of privacy and thus does not constitute a separate Fourth Amendment search. We recognize, as we did in Weikert, the possibility that the government may eventually seek to put Boroian's retained DNA profile to uses that go beyond the mere matching of identification records, thereby making the fingerprint analogy less powerful and providing the basis for an argument that a new search has occurred. [7] For example, scientific advances might make it possible to deduce information beyond identity from the junk DNA that forms the thirteen-loci profiles stored in CODIS. Weikert, 504 F.3d at 12-13. Future government uses of the DNA profiles in CODIS could potentially reveal more intimate or private information about the profile's owner and depart from the uses for which the profiles were originally lawfully created and retained. In this case, however, these are merely hypothetical possibilities. See United States v. Karo, 468 U.S. 705, 712, 104 S.Ct. 3296, 82 L.Ed.2d 530 (1984) ([W]e have never held that potential, as opposed to actual, invasions of privacy constitute searches for purposes of the Fourth Amendment.). Although Boroian points to ongoing research on the possible functions of so-called junk DNA, he concedes that none of the genetic markers at the thirteen CODIS loci have, to date, been found predictive for any physical or disease traits. Moreover, as we have described, uses of DNA profiles are restricted by statute to law enforcement identification purposes and other limited uses. 42 U.S.C. § 14132(b)(3) (emphasis added). As in Weikert, the possibility that junk DNA may not be junk DNA some day ... does not significantly augment [Boroian's] privacy interest in the present case. 504 F.3d at 13. Although CODIS is designed to conduct comparisons of the profiles in the national database and automatically report exact profile matches, Boroian further argues that in some cases CODIS may report a partial match. A partial match occurs when two profiles are similar but do not match exactly at all thirteen loci. Because we share more of our genetic material with biological relatives than with others, a partial match can suggest that the source of a crime scene sample is a close biological relative of the individual whose DNA profile partially matches the crime scene profile. Sonia M. Suter, All in the Family: Privacy and DNA Familial Searching, 23 Harv. J.L. & Tech. 309, 319 (2010). Boroian thus contends that through the process of partial matching, DNA profiles, unlike fingerprints, can be used to reveal biological relationships between individuals. Arguably, the government's use of CODIS to discover partial matches could raise privacy concerns not raised by a traditional fingerprint database. See, e.g., id. at 342-68 (discussing ways in which partial matching could implicate the privacy interests of both the offender whose profile yields a partial match, and the offender's relatives who could be subjected to law enforcement scrutiny as a result of the partial match). However, we need not address these hypothetical concerns here. To the extent that Boroian seeks to suggest that his own privacy interests are infringed by partial matching, he has not alleged any present or imminent use of CODIS to check his DNA profile for partial matches. He relies solely on a 2006 CODIS Bulletin, which states that the occurrence of a partial match in the national database is an exceptional event and that even if a partial match does occur an offender's personally identifiable information may be disclosed only in narrowly specified circumstances. [8] The record contains no other information shedding light on how frequently partial matches occur in the national database, exactly what they reveal, or what kind of follow-up investigation is done when a partial match arises. Thus, any potential invasion of Boroian's privacy due to a partial match with his DNA profile is at this point purely speculative. To the extent that Boroian seeks to invoke the privacy interests of a familial relation who might someday be subjected to law enforcement scrutiny based on a partial match with Borian's profile, that claim is similarly speculative.