SCOTUS Says Yes To Less Liberty

In a slap to the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable search and seizure, the Supreme Court voted 5-4, allowing law enforcement to forcibly collect warrantless DNA samples from individuals who are arrested, but not convicted of a serious crime.  Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, and in a surprising twist, was joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Breyer and Alito. Kennedy wrote that there's no difference between a DNA swab and fingerprinting, and it would result in the prosecution of more violent offenders.

Dissenting were Justices Scalia, Kagan, Sotomayor and Ginsburg. Scalia wrote the dissenting opinion. “As an entirely predictable consequence of today’s decision, your DNA can be taken and entered into a national DNA database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason.”
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article scotus_upholds_dna_swabs_for_some_arrestees_scalia_says_majority_reasoning_/

Senator Ted Cruz, in his criticism of the decision, said “So now the government can capture, without a search warrant, the most personal information about an individual, and use it to search vast databases for unrelated offenses.”  http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/03/ted-cruz-denounces-supreme-court-ruling-on-warrantless-dna-collection/#ixzz2VHSoW6wW