A divided Supreme Court held Monday that police can take DNA samples from people under arrest in the hope of tying them to unrelated crimes, in a ruling that touched both on fast-changing technology and age-old issues of citizens’ rights against state searches.

Authorities previously have been able to take such samples from convicted felons, whom courts consider to possess minimal privacy rights. At issue Monday was whether people who merely have been arrested—and may ultimately be released or acquitted of the charges that led to their arrest—also must submit to a cheek swab that would be matched against a nationwide DNA database of evidence from unsolved crimes.

That practice, currently followed by 28 states and the federal government, allowed police in Wicomico County, Md., to link Alonzo King, arrested in 2009 for assault with a shotgun, with an unsolved 2003 rape. He later was convicted of the rape and sentenced to life in prison.

The Maryland Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, voided the rape conviction. It held that the state law providing for taking arrestee DNA samples violated the Fourth Amendment, which generally requires police to demonstrate probable cause that an individual has committed a crime before they can search him or her.

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The Liberty Report Take: Just another step forward towards a loss of freedom and liberty as we move toward a Police State.  It should probably be a prerequisite that the Supreme Court Justices actually understand the Constitution as well, not just prior court decisions and culturally accepted practices.