The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear a Maryland case involving the warrantless sampling of DNA from an individual who was arrested but not convicted of a crime, ABC News reports. A lawyer involved in the case said, “Our DNA is our blueprint” and contains “deeply personal information…” In a filing, the Obama administration told the justices that “DNA fingerprinting is a minimal incursion on an arrestee’s privacy interests.” The Electronic Privacy Information Center said, “Once an individual’s DNA sample is in a government database, protecting that information from future exploitation becomes more difficult.” The court is expected to hear the case on February 26. Meanwhile, a column in Nature analyzes genetic privacy and the risks and advantages to sharing such data.
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