Policy

Federal Court to Hear DNA Collection Case

Can information be stored permanently?

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Lily Haskell was arrested while attending a peace rally in San Francisco in March 2009.

Police took her fingerprints and swabbed the inside of her cheek to collect a sample of Haskell's DNA, which was entered into a state database and shared with a federal database run by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  She was never charged with a crime and was soon free to go.

But her most private, biological data will remain with the state indefinitely.