The DNA Database and Civil Liberties
Lord Justice Sedley call for everyone to be put on the national DNA database including foreign visitors, isn’t nearly as outrageous as it seems. He told the BBC,
“Where we are at the moment is indefensible. We have a situation where if you happen to have been in the hands of the police, then your DNA is on permanent record. If you haven’t, it isn’t.”
Which means that Britain has the largest DNA database in the world, 5.2% of the UK population is on it, including children under 10. About a third of the people on it haven’t been convicted of any crime. The police have the power to take samples from anyone arrested for a recordable offence but they don’t have to destroy it if the person isn’t convicted of the offence.
Lord Justice Sedley is right that is indefensible but the answer isn’t to put more people on the database – it’s to take people off it. The right not to have our DNA helf by the state, unless we have been convicted of a serious crime, ought to be a civil right but it isn’t. And we all know that it’s not going to be under this Government. So in a perverse way, what he is suggesting would be fairer.
He also suggests that it should only be used “for the absolutely rigorously restricted purpose of crime detection and prevention,” which is great in principle but once it is created, there can be no guarantees that it will be. When it was set up it wasn’t the intention that innocent people should have their samples kept, they were meant to be destroyed but a barely contested piece of legisaltion changed all that and now, the police have been given almost unrestricted power to take samples, and they have already abused that power – black people and Muslims are disproportionately recorded on it because of police bias. Could we trust a future government not to use this for racial profiling?
Another problem that he doesn’t take into account is that police and Government records are notoriously unreliable. Addiing another 55 million names or so isn’t going to make it any more reliable. The chances of errors of more input errors are extremely high. Also, DNA anaylisis isn’t a precise science, forensic scientists have to interpret DNA evidence, sometimes that is simple but sometimes it’s not. With more people on the database there is a far greater chance of false positives in complex cases.
steph
amica
rob
That’s exacty how I feel and I hate it.
My respect for politicians is at an all-time low, and every time I pick up the papers, it dives down another couple of notches.
Just today we’ve got Call Me Dave’s demented pursuit of Greeness kicking off again with the Tory Boys promising to whack up the price of tellys and add £2,000 to the cost of a family car.
Fine for millionaire Old Etonians like him and his mate Zac Goldsmith, who apparently came up with the idea.
But for hard-up voting-fodder like me, it ain’t gonna play well at the ballot box.
Redleader said:
I think there are enough free-thinkers to oppose them but how effective can we be? We don’t live in a democratic society, which is why most people fee disengaged. It’s why I don’t vote in general elections, what the point? You swap one lot of establishment lackeys for another lot. (sorry way off-topic)
Ian Blair is a piece of scum who feels no action on the killers of Jean Charles DeMenezes should be forthcoming. *spit*
Zadehamin, good point. Sir Ian Blair was accussed by his own watchdog of basically being an incompetent bumbling buffoon and asked to resign. Neither the police or gov can be trusted with this information.
The sorry fact is that this lot have no idea where the line should be drawn.
The government and its compliant judiciary think that 9/11 has given them carte blanche to advocate almost any sanction they wish.
They are wrong.
I only hope there are enough free-thinking individuals left in the UK to be bothered to try to stop them.
I say individuals as opposed to political parties, as it is clear that the major political groupings are devoid of significant differences in policy, and will hitch their flagging bandwagons to whatever cause celebre may be passing by at any given time.
Steph, the Met Police Anti-Corruption squad was found to have unlawfully tapped the telephone conversations of Chief superintendent Ali Dizaei, an ethnic-Iranian and the Met’s most senior Muslim officer, who is also legal adviser to the National Black Police Association, in the most expensive witch hunt in the history of the service. The operation – codenamed Helios – was directly overseen by Met Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, back when he was deputy commissioner. Thus, there is good reason for Muslims or ethnic-minorities to distrust the police and to want to avoid be placed on a national DNA database, which is so open to abuse.
Welcome to the 21st century police state. As if they don’t have enough information on us as it is. So much for technology for making our lives better. I’m a city boy but now envy people who live the simple life in the country side.
You are welcome Steph, I’d love to brag that those editors at the torygraph loved what I wrote but alas, I can’t and have to fess up that it was published on one of their ‘free’ stumps, similar to bcuk, interesting debates though, kudos for getting it all going!