Last Friday the United States submitted a request to Hong Kong for the extradition of Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor who disclosed details related to NSA's (National Security Agency) Surveillance program. U.S. authorities had charged Snowden with offenses of espionage and theft of government property. However, now this specific request to Hong Kong appears to be null and void since Snowden left Hong Kong for Moscow.  Some sources (i.e.Snowden proponent, Wikileaks) claim that Snowden's final destination will be Ecuador, where he will be seeking asylum. No doubt, the U.S. will seek Snowden's extradition from whichever country he visits, though no guarantee exists that the requested country will accede to the request. 

Background to the Snowden Extradition story:

First, I read that the Verizon phone and wireless company publicized its customers’ personal identifying information to government authorities.  This alarmed me because I had been a Verizon customer close to ten years, and my family in the United States still uses Verizon on a daily basis. My first inclination was as follows: I have a right to privacy and why should any individual or even government agency be entitled to my personal information without any justification?! My second thought was that perhaps this was part of some top secret operation, so why and how did it become uncovered?

Then – flash – came the Edward Snowden story and NSA Surveillance.  Edward Snowden disclosed the fact that the government had been retrieving personal information of millions of individuals by gaining access to their phone, email, and other communications’ accounts with different companies and institutions.  Snowden was privy to this information because of his position as an analyst in a private company contracted to work for NSA. In a recent Q& A session with Snowden, he specified the very reason why he felt compelled to disclose the government’s “hacking” activities, stating:

Thus, apparently, Snowden was bothered by the same question I asked earlier and sparked a debate on issues of privacy & civil liberties and national security. Why should government agencies be entitled to personal and confidential information in which people have a reasonable expectation of privacy? 

The legal authority actually enabling government access to individuals’ confidential information lies in the FISA Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was enacted to allow physical and electronic surveillance of individuals in order to collect foreign intelligence information on those suspected of espionage and terrorism. The Act, originally enacted in 1978, went through various amendments, one of which allowed the government to obtain personal identifying information of citizens without the use of a warrant for the purposes of anti-terrorism.   

The Snowden saga leaves one once again pondering, under what circumstances can a government agency infringe upon one’s reasonable expectation of privacy right? On the one hand, one can argue that under an amendment to the FISA Act, the government’s actions for retrieving personal information without a warrant is legitimate today in order to target suspected terrorists.  On the other hand, others, aside from Snowden, (i.e.  ACLU) have argued that even such programs violate fundamental constitutional rights.

On June 3, 2013, the US Supreme Court, in Maryland v. King, ruled that the DNA Swab testing of an individual,   under arrest, did not violate the fourth amendmenat right to privacy.  Writing for the majority, Justice Kennedy stated that getting a DNA swab is a “reasonable search” and a “legitimate police booking procedure.”  The Court essentially compared it with fingerprinting, claiming DNA swabs are like fingerprinting, just a more accurate form of identification. Though, dissenting, Justice Scalia, pointed out that DNA could not possibly be used as identification pursuant to an arrest since the DNA testing results ordinarily takes months to receive. Rather, DNA testing is used to solve crimes. 

This case has major implications because now anyone who gets arrested could be subject to a DNA swab. On the one hand, I see it is a positive move in that the actual perpetrators of crimes may be more easily located and prosecuted. Hence, victims can find some sense of peace in that their aggressors will face justice.  Likewise, those wrongfully accused of crimes can be exonerated through new DNA findings.

On the other hand, it is a setback, especially for civil rights advocates, as it can be viewed as a violation of an individual’s privacy rights under the Fourth Amendment. Individuals should have a reasonable expectation of privacy surrounding their own DNA. I do acknowledge that individuals’ privacy rights have been limited under certain circumstances, such as those of prisoners convicted of crimes.  However, this ruling doesn’t merely allow for swabs of those not yet convicted, rather it is an open invitation for DNA swabs of all arrested, including unlawfully arrested (checkout Scalia's dissenting opinion on page 33). That is a scary thing. So, I think the question to still consider is at what point do we really think it is legitimate to limit one’s fourth amendment privacy rights and to what extent?  

For more on this case and a quick three minute film clips, view the NBC News Clips, which also features attorney Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project.