Via NO2ID, this in the Daily Mail (yes, I know, I know, the Daily Mail and all that…):
The storage of DNA samples taken from innocent people in England and Wales must be stopped, an ethics body has said.
The Nuffield Council on Bioethics called for the law in Scotland – where samples from those found to be innocent are routinely destroyed – to be applied across the UK.
Those canny Scots seem to have the right idea with their separate law. The Nuffield Council is absolutely correct.
Allowing police to keep the DNA taken from anyone who had been arrested, even if cleared later, was unethical, it said. Such a decision smacked of a “police state”, it added.
Indeed. There is no justified reason why the DNA of innocent people should be be on any database without their express permission and none whatsoever by the state. The state is not your friend. Although, of course, there is always someone who thinks this kind of totalitarian bullying is acceptable.
As per comments on (I believe) Guido F. I wonder of Lord Levy’s or Ruth Turner’s DNA was retained.
“I wonder of Lord Levy’s or Ruth Turner’s DNA was retained.”
Were their samples even taken? I doubt it. They would both qualify for the “celebrity exemption” per the putative children’s database.
No doubt in ten years time they’ll be asking for your ID card (with DNA records on the Register) when you buy a six-pack of cheap lager. Even if you’re a 72-year-old man.
Did anyone see the panorama programme on this? Apparently 66% want all adults on the database and 33% think that all babies should be added at birth. So I am not alone. The programme pointed out several good points.
1. More criminals will be caught (including murderers and rapists) who otherwise would carry on committing crimes.
2. DNA evidence is only PART of the evidence – it may lead you to the correct person but more evidence is needed to convict (which is only right).
3. More innocent people (from all classes) might be investigated but many more innocent people will be cleared (usually working class).
4. The civil liberties objections are abstract, i.e. there is no practical concrete objection ever framed – it is all theoretical.
I wish you guys would actually consider that what you are really objecting to is a ‘fear about a fear’ rather than something that is real. Get in the real world – no wonder the Daily Mail likes you fake libertarians, you are up there with astrology, homeopathy and religion – relying on gut feeling rather than real evidence.
I didn’t see the Panorama programme. Just because lots of people want something, it doesn’t make it right. Democracy is merely the dictatorship of the majority – nothing more. When someone can come out with something so outrageous as “civil liberties objections are abstract” then he demonstrates a totalitarian soul. Your other statements are the usual unsubstantiated assertion and wishful thinking – and you’ve got the cheek to lecture me about evidence. Put your own house in order first. The reality is that more innocent people will be investigated and their lives made a misery for no good reason.
There are plenty of practical objections and they have, indeed been voiced. There will be more noise in the data, more opportunities for miscarriage of justice. Yes, DNA evidence is a useful tool, but as police officers will tell you, should you ask them, the only need the DNA of the bad guys, not the whole population.
Also, my body belongs to me; not the state. My DNA, by extension is a part of my body and I am not prepared to hand it over to the state – I am not subservient to the state and will never cooperate in this type of wholesale theft.
Our “fake libertarianism” as you insist upon incorrectly calling it, is something my grandparents’ generation went to war to defend, it is something that generations of Britons shed their blood and gave their lives for. You may think it cheap but some of us value those liberties. And, yes, I do live in the real world and come from an ordinary working class background. When you cheapen our liberties, you cheapen the sacrifice of people like my grandfather – a working man who endured the miseries of the convoys so that people such as you could enjoy the liberty you would cast aside so readily. Shame on you. Joe Stalin would be proud.
I did see the Panorama programme, Neil. There was considerable coverage of a case I mentioned to you before. You ignored it then. No doubt you felt the 6 month imtimidation of a frail man with Parkinson’s on entriely false allegations of Burglary were simply a price he should be prepared to pay to make sad authoritarian gits like you feel safe and smug whilst crime continues.
Just to add one other point about majorities being right – frankly, I place far more faith in the pronouncements of the Nuffield Council – being experts in their field – than I do in the opinions of the great ill-informed and prejudiced majority.
urko – The terrible harrassment of the innocent man with parkinsons was because the police placed too much emphasis on the DNA evidence – it just highlighted the incompetence of the police more than anything else. Like I have already said, DNA can only be part of an investigation, there needs to be other evidence as well to back it up and the police and public need to be educated on this. But for every wrongly accused person like this, there are many more rapists and murderers put behind bars and many more innocent people who are ruled out of an investigation earlier on than they otherwise would be. Before DNA evidence there were still cases like this where the police wrongly harrassed people. DNA evidence is more likely to prove someone’s innocence than make them a suspect. It is just more evidence – you are just making detection harder if you rule out evidence for no good reason.
longrider – this ‘DNA is MY property’ argument, is just meaningless waffle. Every time you shake hands with someone you give them some of your DNA.
As for only needing the DNA of the bad guys – that is wholely wrong. As I have said above – DNA is as useful in proving innocence as guilt – ruling people out of an investigation more likely than not. Also of course, it is much easier to find the bad guys DNA if you already have it on a database. A lot of rapists and murderers (don’t we want to catch them before they offend again?) have completely clean records and would never be found unless the database is expanded. The Panorama programme highlighted the case of a village where all the men were DNA tested ‘voluntarily’. This allowed the police to track down the murderer (who they had determined was local to the village) to South Africa where he had fled to (he had a clean record and would never have been detected otherwise). I suppose you think THIS is a price worth paying to protect…well whatever it is you think you are protecting, because I haven’t got a clue what losing your ‘DNA property rights’ is about and how in Mary’s aunt this could be in any way detrimental to your life.
Neil, clearly you know far more about crime detection than this police officer. You’ll forgive me if I place more precedence on his evaluation of the proposal than yours – firstly because he is an occupational expert and you clearly are not and secondly, because he places value on liberty, which you clearly do not. Note, the point he makes echoing my earlier comment here:
Spelled out simply – this will mean more miscarriage of justice.
This is a meaningless non sequitur. The person I shake hands with is not going to store that DNA and use it to harass me at some future date – and, importantly (I keep saying this despite you having no understanding of the concept) I choose to shake hands with someone, I do not choose to share my DNA with the state – a state in which I am unable to place any trust whatsoever.
I have no problem with people voluntarily offering DNA to help in a specific investigation as this is specific, limited and reasonable – providing that that DNA is destroyed once the investigation is complete. And that, frankly, is what the Nuffield Council is quite rightly saying.
What I object to – and clearly such abstract concepts are beyond your limited reasoning – is that I do not belong to the state; it is subservient to me and I decide what, if anything, it may take from me. I do not accept that it needs my DNA and it is not going to get it.
Perhaps you would like to nip down to your local police station and volunteer your DNA right now?
The Majority in favour argument is utterly vacuous – unless you’re going to use that to frame policy in all areas, in which case, we wouldn’t have gone in to Iraq, just to take one random example, Neil.
It’s true that DNA database or not there will be good and bad Police practise – it’s just that having the database encourages lazy investigations and provides a more effective way of framing people (mostly working class) up.
DNA collection and retention of the whole population only appeals to those who have not thought it through (and are therefore speaking from a position of ignorance) or those with a controlling, authoritarian streak, who believe the population should be treated like naughty schoolchildren who must be constantly watched in case they get into mischief. I am not a naughty schoolchild and deeply resent this government treating me as such.