Here’s yer swab…
The Supreme Court has decided to take on a case involving the process of arrests. Identified—check. Photographed—check. Fingerprinted—check. Cheek swabed—uh, wha? Yeah, it is done before conviction in some places. See, the law has been closing a lot of cold cases this way, too. DNA.
The law figures you can voluntarily take a cheek swab (or perhaps they’ll have you drink a root beer and get your saliva that way). Enter it into a database and you have a bar code of DNA with a name, photo and fingerprint to match.
And now I wonder about those offers that claim to trace your ancestry with just your saliva for $100 to $150 bucks. So you can pay for your bar code, too, since these companies would have to fork over to the law any records the lawmen require.
And here we are, griping about social media tracking and browser tracking, what companies do with information we submit—because it’s all voluntary, you see. You don’t have to use the product. © 2013 Sandra Davidson
A Layering of Perception 