Your DNA is everywhere. Can the police analyze it?

Anybody who has watched a crime drama knows the trick. The cops need someone's DNA, but they dont have a warrant, so they invite the suspectto the station house, knowing some of the perps genetic material will likely be left behind. Bingo, crime solved. Next case.

A human sheds as much as 100 pounds of DNA-containing material in a lifetime and about 30,000 skin cells an hour. But who owns that DNA is the latest modern-day privacy issue before the US Supreme Court.At its core, the issue focuses on whether we must live in a hermetically sealed bubble to avoid potentially having our genetic traits catalogued and analyzed by the government.

The Supreme Court's justices will meet privately on February 27 to consider putting a case with thisscience-fiction-like questionon their docket. The dispute blends science, technology, genetic privacy, and a real-world, unspeakable crime against a woman.

Then came another suspect, Glenn Raynor, the woman's former classmate. He voluntarily met with police, said he wasn't the rapist, and refused to submit to genetic testing.

During the interview, his arms rubbed against the chair, so police swabbed the chair's arm rests. The genetic material they discovered matched crime scene evidence found on the victim's pillowcase and patio. Rayner moved to suppress the DNA evidence, arguing that the police breached his genetic privacy in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

In a 4-3 decision last year, Maryland's top court ruled against Raynor. Leaving one's genetic material behind is akin to a fingerprintso no privacy invasion occurred, the majority reasoned.

"In the end, we hold that DNAtesting of the 13 identifying junkloci within genetic material, notobtained by means of a physical intrusion into the persons body, is no more a search for purposes of the Fourth Amendment, than is the testing of fingerprints, or the observation of any other identifying feature revealed to the publicvisage, apparent age, body type, skin color," the court ruled 4-3.

The three dissenting judges said the case sets a dangerous precedent.

The Majoritys approval of such police procedure means, in essence, that a person desiring to keep her DNA profile private, must conduct her public affairs in a hermetically sealed hazmat suit. Moreover, the Majority opinion will likely have the consequence that many people will be reluctant to go to the police station to voluntarily provide information about crimes for fear that they, too, will be added to the CODIS database.... The Majority's holding means that a person can no longer vote, participate in a jury, or obtain a driver's license, without opening up his genetic material for state collection and codification. Unlike DNA left in the park or a restaurant, these are all instances where the person has identified himself to the government authority.

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Your DNA is everywhere. Can the police analyze it?