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Re:EFF to Supreme Court: The Fourth Amendment Covers DNA Col... by evgen on Thursday February 19, 2015 @02:23PM (#9076281)
But law enforcement is not using the encoded information, they are just taking a unique pattern from the information and using it for identification purposes.
Re:EFF to Supreme Court: The Fourth Amendment Covers DNA Col... by remarkEon on Thursday February 19, 2015 @04:14PM (#9077101)
I could for sure envision a situation where they use the encoded information. Let's say they find that the sample comes from a person who is predisposed to a heart condition and they already have a description putting him in the 40-50 age range. That's a pretty significant piece of information that can help narrow down a search or canvass, especially if there's any other meta data they can correlate to the crime.
Re:EFF to Supreme Court: The Fourth Amendment Covers DNA Col... by bayesianhorse on Friday February 20, 2015 @12:03AM (#9079027)
Why would your example be unreasonable? Sounds like good police work.

Just that it is very unlikely that you could infer the clinical manifestation of a heart condition just from DNA alone...

Re:EFF to Supreme Court: The Fourth Amendment Covers DNA Col... by remarkEon on Friday February 20, 2015 @12:28AM (#9079089)
No, I would not consider it unreasonable but a lot of people probably would. And I don't know enough about inferring future health conditions from DNA alone, but I meant it as an example for a future possibility. If anyone does know, exactly, what you can infer from DNA alone and how that would be extremely helpful.