The New York Police Dept. has been doing a lot of DNA sampling in pursuit of bad guys. But what happens to the samples of those people who aren't the bad guys? Including people who offer up their DNA samples on request. They're kept on file for later checking against other crimes that might occur.
This is problematic for a number of reasons. First, DNA contamination can take place for a number of innocuous reasons (as the article notes some examples of). Second, while "innocent people have nothing to hide," there's a difference between being innocent of a crime the police is investigating, and wanting your movements and activities to be revealed to all. Being identified as a (legitimate) protester that then gets arrested after the fact for purposes of harassment. Being picked up and questioned because you were at a location that you'd rather other people (family, employer, etc.) not know you were at. All sorts of potential complications there.
And, of course, all of this assumes that the NYPD work in a perfectly fair and just and equitable and honest fashion, and doesn't use such samples to plant evidence to close cases, frame people they don't like, harass people whose opinions they don't care for … or that the samples they're collecting aren't skewed to being not-rich-people-who-have-lawyers-and-would-object.
But, hey, Law And Order and Catching Crooks surely trumps all other considerations, right?
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