Judge Says, Record DNA of Everyone In the UK 403
Many readers informed us about the opinion of Lord Justice Sedley, a senior UK Appeal Court judge, who said that everyone in the UK should have their DNA recorded in the national database — including visitors. Reader ChiefGeneralManager writes, "Sedley calls the current database 'indefensible' because it contains a hodge-podge mix of people, including children and those who have been in contact with the police. His view is that we should make it compulsory for all DNA to be recorded to remove this anomaly. The UK Information Commissioner has expressed some concerns, but not dismissed the idea outright." And reader john.wingfield adds, "Just under two weeks ago, the Independent reported that the Government has admitted that an eighth of all records on the DNA database are false, misspelled, or incorrect — over half a million records. This raises the possibility of a breach of the 4th data protection principle of the Data Protection Act 1998: 'Personal data shall be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date.'"
Identity card not needed anymore (Score:3, Interesting)
This is what expects us.
Oh, sure. (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're against this, you probably have something to hide and you should be prosecuted anyway. If you didn't do anything wrong, you have nothing to hide, so why you should care? After all, we need to be protected from the terrorists!
You can't be against this, because it will protect the children. After all, if we have their DNA and they're kidnapped, we'll be able to find them quicker. Will someone please think of the children?
*sigh*
I'm moving to a deserted island in the middle of the Pacific to start my own country. Anyone care to join me?
Re:I find this highly offensive (Score:0, Interesting)
Backwards Logic (Score:3, Interesting)
How about we stop adding people to the database so easily in the first place.
I also love that for once, it's a judge proposing authoritarian measures, and Labour who are opposing it: A spokesman for Prime Minister Gordon Brown said to expand the database would create "huge logistical and bureaucratic issues" and civil liberty concerns.
(For non-UK readers, Labour being the Government that have repeatedly brought in authoritarian measures, and plan bureaucratic nightmares like the national ID card scheme, ignoring any civil liberty concerns...)
Only a tiny sample of saliva, blood, semen
Hmm, if we are forced to all turn up to have our DNA taken, can we choose to spit, bleed or er
Re:This bit says it all... (Score:1, Interesting)
Of course, we won't mention the % of the 17 teens shot or stabbed in London this year who are black or the colour of the killers who have been arrested so far. Clue: Considerably higher than 40% were black.
Could be an interesting political tactic... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Oh, sure. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I hope someone else can (Score:2, Interesting)
DNA from visitors? (Score:4, Interesting)
Besides, Paris has better airshows, and Germany, Spain, and Italy all have better F1 races. Guess I'll take my tourist dollars there instead.
Chimeras (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I find this highly offensive (Score:2, Interesting)
The law, and indeed common sense, says that if you're not convicted of a crime, you shouldn't be treated like you've performed one. So what the Judge is really saying here is that the current composition of the database is a legal anomaly that should be cleared up. Either you can chuck away quite a lot of that data as unreasonable on Civil Liberties grounds, or if it's actually as useful as the Police claim, then the 'fair' solution is to put _everyone_ on there, whether they happen to have been attacked by someone or not.
Either one or the other, and it's up to the politicians, not the judges to decide which.
Re:Hmm... (Score:1, Interesting)
and iris-scanned for the forthcoming ID card
- you lose you job
- you lose access to social security
- you lose access to medical treatment
- you are fined 2000 quid for each offence of not turning up
and they keep this up till you submit or die of starvation.
My grandfather died in the second world war fighting fascism yet
my pathetic generation will be queueing quietly to be fingerprinted;
it sickens me. I've enough computer skills to be able to skip the
country in a couple of years but I pity the poor fuckers I'll be
leaving behind.
Tourism in England (Score:3, Interesting)
And let's go ahead and give a rest to that tired old bullshit about "If you have nothing to hide then..." Everyone has something they want hidden, even if they won't admit it. My argument is that, regardless of if I have something to hide or not, I _DO NOT TRUST ANY GOVERNMENT IN THIS WORLD_ with my DNA on file and for them to "protect" it while "only using it to solve crimes". Virtually all things that have been expressed in this manner are then perverted for some other use, above and beyond what the stated intent was. Someone in power will eventually decide they can use the database for other "good" and seek to extend their reach further and further into the homes and lives of all people - the criminal AND, especially, the INNOCENT.
I, for one, hope that the people of the United Kingdom will stand up against this complete and utter invasion of their lives and take back some control of the information that is connected to them. I also hope that the people of the United States and other countries (Australia, Canada, and many others) also stand up and take back control, because those so-called free countries many of us are living in are looking more and more like they're creeping into fascism and/or totalitarian or police states.
We must dissent.
(Kudos to all those who get the reference in my last line
Re:I find this highly offensive (Score:3, Interesting)
Just because you feel guilty for the acts of your ancestors doesn't make your biased assumptions accurate.
criminals can already fake their DNA (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately a criminal can very easily hide their DNA by injecting foreign blood into their circulatory system. It has been done, according to Wikipedia.
Wikipedia says [wikipedia.org]: Dr. John Schneeberger of Canada raped one of his sedated patients in 1992 and left semen on her underwear. Police drew Schneeberger's blood and compared its DNA against the crime scene semen DNA on three occasions, never showing a match. It turned out that he had surgically inserted a Penrose drain into his arm and filled it with foreign blood and anticoagulants.
This means that criminals have a way to bypass DNA checks and hide their identity. It's harder than making a fake ID card, but it's still relatively easy. Therefore, a national universal DNA database would not help to catch the smartest (and probably most dangerous) of the criminals. It could help to catch a few stupid or clueless criminals, but these are not too dangerous compared to the smarter ones.
Therefore DNA evidence is not the final answer to whether a person is guilty. It can contribute to an investigation, but no one must base a decision solely on DNA identification. With this in mind, the ROI of a massive universal national DNA database may be much lower than this judge thinks.
Re:Oh, sure. (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, right.
I want some of whatever he was smoking.
Re:Oh, sure. (Score:2, Interesting)
The government (in the USA anyway) has at LEAST the following: Your full name, birth record, race, eye color, hair color, parents names and IDs, your social security number, address, drivers license number, license plate, vehicle VIN number, vehicle registration number, insurance information, bank account numbers, credit account history, mortgage information, phone number (if you have ever included it on a form or called them from home, but they can get it on request anyway if you haven't), tax history, employer name(s), payroll information, fingerprints (from birth, typically elementary school age in most states, and adulthood if you've ever been to a police station or filed them voluntarily), your dental records and medical records (by request of a judge or coroner), military ID and rank (if any), and the list goes on.
Fact is, DNA registration is expensive, and time consuming. Of all of the above ways to identify you, the easiest being by government issued ID, and second by fingerprint, there's no reason they'll ever process your DNA unless they actually suspect you of a crime. It's too much info to include in a chip on your ID card, and can't yet be used in real time like a fingerprint scanner at the grocery store (nor likely will it be). In some cases of currently open serious crimes that are unsolved, they'll run it periodically (every few years?) against a DNA and fingerprint database. You only have to worry if you have actually committed and gotten away with a serious crime, and not only was your DNA present, but convincing information (provable in court) that the DNA was left there by the criminal at the time of the crime. (just having your DNA there does not convict you, in fact, should they even question you simply on DNA presence also, with no direct connection to the time frame of the crime, you could probably sue and win for false persecution). The DNA actually has to be collected from something like the smoking gun itself, or from skin scratches under someone's fingernails.
Also, there's nothing in your DNA fingerprint that's considered private. It's simply a unique form of ID like a fingerprint. We're not talking about genetic screening here, just simple enzymatic analysis of certain key markers in your DNA. It's basically a process that targets a few hundred locations in your DNA to confirm or deny if you have certain common traits. This is not a detailed gene by gene map of your DNA. There's nothing they can tell by looking at your DNA map that gives ANY remote clue as to your medical condition, genetic defects, or anything further, outside of common inheritable traits that are easy to scan for that virtually everyone should have. (not that they don't have access to your medical history anyway should they ask a judge).
Using a live blood sample we could go deeper, check for parenthood links, specific genetic traits, and such, but this requires a live blood screening. We're not asking you to put your blood on file for such testing (unless you left some of it at a crime scene), we're just asking you to go to a lab where a genetic fingerprint is taken, filed in a database, and the blood destroyed. A piece of paper or a database record is easy to store and track, but blood is extremely expensive to catalog, protect, and store as it has to be done in a frozen state. We're not doing that... From a forensic perspective, it's pointless.
The only people who fear this type of genetic fingerprinting and criminals and paranoids. Unfortunately, because most criminals (not an opinion, but a clearly documented fact) are of minority origin, minority groups have stepped forward to condemn this process and are making it a privacy issue. Once you commit a crime, you forgo any right to privacy.
Re:'visitors DNA' (Score:3, Interesting)
US: I have a sketchy muslim name, so I invariably get corralled into a side room, fingerprinted, "registered" and interviewed. If it takes less than 2 hours to complete this process, I consider myself fortunate.
UK: the nice lady at the customs booth says "welcome back," scans my passport and waves me through. Total time spent dealing with government officials: less than 2 minutes.
It boils down to the fact that the UK-- and the rest of Europe-- understands the business of accomodating foreigners, and attempts to handle the process flexibly and professionally. The US, on the other hand, is too preoccupied with maintaining it's illusory fortress to treat foreigners as anything more than unavoidable security hazards. This shows when the tourist dollars are totted up: all my vacations have been to Europe and Asia over the last few years, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this.
Re:Could be an interesting political tactic... (Score:3, Interesting)
Indeed. The value and accuracy of a DNA database decreases with size as the number of false hits and prevalence of simply mislabeled and misidentified samples increases. With a whole-population database you'd start dragging provably innocent people into court in the range of thousands or tens of thousands per year. This already happens; in the UK, a man with advanced Parkinsons, unable to drive or even dress himself was thrown into jail over several months for a robbery 200 miles from his home, despite even having an alibi. He was later released as a more complete DNA test proved the first one wrong. But while a few cases of innocents getting sacrificed on the altar of biometrics can be ignored, I doubt large scale wrongful prosecutions could.
Not to mention that crime scene contamination with DNA evidence is even easier than ruining fingerprint evidence. Go to the nearest cleaning waste bin and get a vaccuum bag used for cleaning buses or something. Put it in a vacuum cleaner (or other more practical dispersal device) and hit reverse. Smirk as hundreds of thousands of DNA samples cover the scene.
Perhaps latex catsuits or biohazard gear will become mainstream fashion; with prevalent DNA usage, you had better be careful where you deposit any cells or hair. Shed them in a public place, and anyone can use them to 'reliably' place you at a crime scene.
Re:I find this highly offensive (Score:5, Interesting)
What "the government" is and isn't. (Score:5, Interesting)
"The Government" is a hodgepodge of agencies with mutually contradictory goals and aims, most of whom would sooner throw rocks at each other than cooperate. This is, perversely, a good thing.
Why? Because although "the government" may know a lot about you, it doesn't know all of that in any one place. There's no single database -- yet -- where you can sit down, CSI-style, and bring up any citizen's dossier. Your local police department knows your name, address, and how many parking tickets you've gotten this year, but they don't have access to your tax information from the IRS. (And the IRS is actually pretty snarky about not sharing information casually; if I had a dime for every time one of my LEO buddies bitched about the IRS making them jump through hoops, I'd be a rich man. I guess there's honor among thieves or something.)
This is the way the system is supposed to work. (Well, I'd like to see the size of the bureaucracy cut down dramatically, but that's a different topic.) In order for the bureaucracy to function, it needs to know a certain amount about you. But different agencies need to know different things. As long as the data is kept compartmentalized -- as it is, in large part, today; owing less to design than simply because it's a really hard problem to correlate it all -- it's not a mortal threat to privacy.
It's when you start to get all that information put into a single database, and where there's a natural primary key that allows the database to be easily searched and information to be linked (why do people get paranoid about SSNs? Because they're the obvious choice for a primary key), that you start to get really Orwellian. With minor exceptions, we don't have anything like that in the U.S., although there are a lot of people trying.
Re:Insurance company screening a red herring ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Identity card not needed anymore (Score:0, Interesting)
It can come close. From the cache [64.233.167.104]:
On March 15, 2002, the FBIs National Crime Information Center (NCIC) set a new record for transactions processed on a single day, with 3,295,587.
The average response time for these transactions was .1467 second.
Response time is the time it takes for NCIC to receive, process and
respond to the inquiry. The 2002 year-to-date averages have been 2.8
million transactions per day with an average response time of .16 second.
The US also has CODIS (Combined DNA Index System) which is a DNA database for searching. I can't find any stats for that database but if the DNA is indexed then queries shouldn't take too long. Even fingerprint searches using AFIS don't take long. If NCIC can respond as fast as it does with all those queries throughout a single day then CODIS should be able to do a search and provide a response just as fast. Extracting the DNA is still going to be the long pole in the tent but once it is extracted and you are assigned a barcode all they have to do is scan your barcode (on your hand or forehead) and allow that to kick off the query to CODIS. Cancel or Allow?
Re:DNA samples tend to clear the innocent ... (Score:3, Interesting)
So will identity theft take on a whole new meaning thanks to unthinking legislation like this. Prior to any crime, a random trip on public transport to pick up DNA samples to obfuscate the crime scene, perhaps even a black market that sells a random range of various types of random DNA samples. What crime will you dead cells be committing tomorrow, hmm?