> Obviously, DNA contains far more information than fingerprints, to the point where it literally contains an entire copy of you.

No, it doesn't literally contain an entire copy of you.

I was just being brief. It contains an entire blueprint of your biological morphology to a degree of accuracy that given appropriate measures could be used to construct an identical twin with identical susceptibility and predisposition to disease, ability, intelligence, to the extent that those are determined by genes. That includes a number of very private things, from everything to susceptibility to certain mental diseases to penis size.

And no, the government shouldn't get to know any of that about you without a fucking court order.

If the government really wants your DNA it isn't hard to obtain legally. They'll just follow you around everywhere until you leave behind your DNA and then grab it. They'll wait until you drop your coffee cup in a public trash or spit on the ground or leave behind a cigarette butt. Many crimes have been solved this way.

For example see COMMONWEALTH v. Jeffrey BLY http://caselaw.findlaw.com/ma-supreme-judicial-court/1186295...

>Suppression issues. (a) Physical evidence.   Bly argues that the method used by the Commonwealth in obtaining his known DNA sample constituted a nonconsensual seizure and thus violated his rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, under art. 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights and under the search warrant requirements of G.L. c. 276, § 1. The judge denied Bly's  motion to suppress on this issue, finding that the cigarette butts and water bottle seized by the police constituted trash that was abandoned by Bly.

Or STATE OF WASHINGTON v. JOHN NICHOLAS ATHAN http://www.denverda.org/DNA_Documents/Athan.pdf

>We find there is no inherent privacy interest in saliva. Certainly the nonconsensual collection of blood or urine samples in some circumstances, such as under the facts of Robinson, invokes privacy concerns; however, obtaining the saliva sample in this case did not involve an invasive or involuntary procedure. The relevant question in this case is whether, when a person licks an envelope and places it in the mail, that person retains any privacy interest in his saliva at all. Unlike a nonconsensual sampling situation, there was no force involved in obtaining Athan's saliva sample here. The facts of this situation are analogous to a person spitting on the sidewalk or leaving a cigarette butt in an ashtray. We hold under these circumstances, any privacy interest is lost. The envelope, and any saliva contained on it, becomes the property of the recipient.

But that requires a significant new effort for each individual. It has been possible to do Facebook-level surveillance for millennia, if you knew who you wanted to follow in advance, and paid someone to follow them. You could even save the information for later use. Facebook essentially pays people in trinkets to surveil themselves, and stores the results forever. The sequencing companies are trying to "unlock value" in an analogous way for DNA.

This argument is directly analogous to legal targeted wire-taps vs bulk surveilance.

aka the Elliot Stabler maneuver, if you've watched enough SVU ;).

Your second description of DNA is still incorrect.

Why am I arguing with user:pervycreeper at this time on a Friday...sigh...

Yes, development in utero and epigenetics play a very substantial role in 'copying' someone, let alone, I dunno, living your life. That said, fingerprints are not nearly as complete an identifier as genetics. Also, fingerprints don't carry, unless analyzed with chromatography, almost any health information. DNA with have an abundance of health information and your pre-dispositions to certain diseases, your genetic linage and the skeletons in that closet, and the information about the health of your children whoever they may be with. DNA is very much more invasive than fingerprints and gives leverage to those with the money to process that info. Fingerprints say you touched this thing at some point before the print degraded. DNA says your grandfather was a cheating hound-dog and your daughter is very likely to get breast cancer. That data can be much more damaging.