A debased database

David Bouvier

It is also mentioned too rarely, that the whole database started when the police illegally started retaining samples they were required to dispose of, and instead of firing/prosecuting the people responsible, it was later legitimised.

On past form the police will simply ignore a law requiring disposal of samples and do what they damn well like, at least until a senior police officer finds he has no pension, and perhaps no liberty as a result.

Dungeekin

If you want to know the time . . .

. . . Don't, for the love of all that's holy, ask a Policeman. You'll only get nicked.

News reaches Vitriol Towers that your friendly neighbourhood StasiPlod have a habit of detaining innocent people, on trumped-up charges, just to get your DNA on their database. It seems Life imitates Art. Sorry.

Lovely. So you're walking down the street, minding your own business, when a burly stormtrooper in a stab vest grabs you and sticks a swab up your first available orifice, all in the name of 'Building Safer Communities'/'Tough on Crime in YOUR Community'/'Working For Safer Communities'/'Insert Pointless Marketing-esque Strapline Here'.

It's hardly Dixon of Dock Green, is it?

The oft-wailed cry of those caught speeding or committing some other egregious offence against 'the community' is, "why don't you go and catch real criminals?". And while I'm not normally one for cliche, that phrase sounds particularly apposite in this case.

This action by the police is not about lowering crime at all, not about catching criminals. It's about laziness.

To catch, say, a serial burglar requires expensive Scenes of Crime examinations, costly detectives and, perhaps, even (whisper it softly) overtime. None of these are acceptable, because they take the focus of the police away from the important goals of filling their 'Report on the Incidence of Reporting of Reported Crime (in YOUR Community)' forms in triplicate. Add in the fact that their all-black uniforms and Toys'R'Us Batman Utility Belts weigh so much they can't go running after felons as it's a Health & Safety risk, and you see the truth.

Collaring anyone within 500 yards of a parking-ticket and sticking a cotton-bud up their bottom means the Stasi don't have to go running after fleet-footed drug dealers, or enduring the rigmarole of following up clues to a real crime. Their arrest statistics look great, the DNA Database bulges with millions of 'suspects' - and we're so disillusioned with the whole thing that when we're stabbed in the face for our mobile phones we don't even bother ringing up for a 'crime number'*. So the 'reported crime' statistics look good too.

And if it turns out, one day in the future, that somebody on the database is wanted for a serious crime - non-payment of Council Tax or something - well, that proves why we must have a Database of Everyone. For the good of the Community, innit.

Oi, Z-Cars. Stop being the paramilitary wing of the Office of National Statistics, and go and catch some real criminals.

Jeremy James

Oh what nonsense this all is.

DNA should be taken at birth and finger prints as soon as a baby has fingers to print. Think of the time it would save the police.

Colin

I hear the arguments that having everyone's DNA on a database will make the job of the police easier and I smile politely at the deluded fools who spout the left wing mantra of "if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear". When considering the merits or otherwise of storing DNA, I tend to think of the following:

1. There is scant, if any credible evidence that storing the DNA of innocent people has done anything positive to advance the fight against crime.

2. There are literally hundreds of thousands of convicted criminals, people with a track record of criminal activity, who are not on the database, simply because they were caught and convicted before the regime began the harvesting of DNA. Why is there no retrospective action to gather their DNA?

3. What kind of society do I want to live in? I want much less state that we currently have, not more. I want the state to be honest about the purpose for the acquisition and retention of my data - including DNA and I want it to be careful and diligent in its handling of my data.

How long will it be before the DNA on the database is sold to insurance companies, or used by the NHS for research purposes? Before the apologist trolls start, there are plenty of examples of the state collecting my data for a specific purpose, then using it for another; in some cases for financial gain. For example, when I filled in my electoral registration form, for the first time, many years ago, it never occurred to me that the information I handed over, under penalty of law, for the purpose of allowing me to vote, would be sold to all and sundry and used to bombard me with forests worth of junk mail. Nobody asked my permission to allow councils and private organisations to be able to make vast sums from the sale and infinite resale of my very valuable data.

At the very least, I should have been paid a commission...

dcw

Does nobody sue for wrongful arrest any more? Or did New Labour take that right away as well?

Chris lancashire

Why? What's wrong with holding peoples' DNA. The Police can have mine for the asking.
A large DNA database will help to solve and reduce crime more quickly and, in all likelihood, save lives and injury.

Occasional Ostrich

It seems that Chris Lancashire and Jeremy James are naive fools. Surely this morning's disclosure must have alerted them to the possibility that if "mission creep" has already crept so far it's likely to creep further, and in directions that the innocent public would reject instantly if (a) it had been informed of them and (b) it were allowed to express its opinion.

Robert Eve

As one of the approx 800,000 innocents on the DNA database I'm hoping that the Tories will insist on the DNA records of those never charged to be deleted soon after the election. The way innocent people have been treated over this issue is one of the reasons we don't have much time for the police anymore.

However I'm a whole lot more angry about our continued membership of the EU.

MisterE

Should we be expecting Alan Johnson to freak out again, and for Jonathan Montgomery to be looking for a new job come lunchtime...??

Keith

Dungeekin

I think you'll find that Plod is all too keen on overtime.

Keith

Publius

We really are sleepwalking into a tyranny of unimaginable darkness by setting up all these tools of control, surveillance and oppression. DNA databases, Euro Gendarmarie, CCTV, ID cards, world government, microchip tracking, designer babies, the rule of “experts”. There will be nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

Rooski

Repeat the antidote:

"I have nothing to hide, so I have nothing to prove".

Innocent unless proven guilty.

Nicholas

I think Jeremy James post may have been ironic but Chris lancashire would feel quite differently about this if he was arrested and accused of doing something he hadn't using DNA evidence that he couldn't explain.

Unfortunately this mantra seems to have found its way into the reasoning of a large number of people who show an incredibly naive trust in the goodwill and efficiency of the state and its police.

I cannot see why this should be different to fingerprints which were never retained once a person had been released without charge or acquitted in court (with no other convictions). Why DNA should have been treated differently I don't know but the lack of accountability for this "creep" and the fact that it was not scrutinised by parliament is of real concern.

There are lots of ways we could prevent crime, many of which could impose intolerable burdens on the innocent. There has to be a balance between crime prevention and the liberty and privacy of the individual. The balance has been tilted too far to the convenience of the state.

Anne Wotana Kaye

If the British police force was ever truly independent, it certainly ceased to be under the regime of politically Correct Nu Labour. Perhaps I sound paranoid, but even writing this blog is dodgy these days. DNA will be stored as confidential health records are stored, and the only hopeful thing is that like all data stored by these oiks, they will lose it! International crime syndicates will be able to use these DNA records for recruiting the brightest and most successful criminals. A veritable Jobcentre.

Piers Fallowcherry

@Colin

'I smile politely at the deluded fools who spout the left wing mantra of "if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear" '

Sadly this is not a only left wing mantra; it is more the depressing & widespread manifestation of a stunted imagination. You only have to glance at the comments attached to stories in the Daily Mail to realise this.

Chris lancashire

We can all post "What if" scenarios. What if your daughter had been raped and murdered and it could have been prevented by the existence of a widespread database?

So let's forget the "what ifs".
IF DNA is totally unique to an individual AND if the comparison tests are foolproof, then I have absolutely no objection.

Watt Tyler

Yes Nicholas

It turns out that DNA is not to be relied upon 100% to solve a crime. The quality of a sample found at a crime scene can be disputed. If not contested, then DNA can link a person to a crime, but in some case it is still only circumstantial evidence.

The Police are mistakenly over confident about DNA as a crime-fighting tool, and there have been cases where totally innocent people were arrested because of a mix up in the system, the infalability of which the authorities are convinced by.

Actually, this is not about "crime-fighting". When does the police do that anymore? No, the police are Labours Social Engineering Enforcers, and as such also act to collect information for the purposes of controlling society.

I am quite happy for idiots to volunteer themselves into a Marxist-Police state if they really want to, but why do the cretins have to do it to my country? Great Britain of all places?

It goes to show once again that we have become a crappy little country, with crapy people in it.

Watt Tyler

Chris Lancashire

Our criminal justice system could prevent a multitude of crimes by making sure that convicted criminals stay in jail for an appropriate amount of time! That would be something they could do now, but they don't. DO YOU THINK THEY ARE SERIOUS ABOUT STOPPING CRIME?

How is knowing the DNA of an innocent going to stop crime, unless you want to go down the path of the Minority Report and try to guess what crimes someone is genetically predisposed to.

Innocent until proven guilty. Don't you get it?

Publius

The liberal Weimar Republic collected data on its citizens. The illiberal Nazis who followed made rather unpleasant - and unforeseen - use of that data.

Quite apart from that, a DNA database might well furnish so-far unforeseen kinds of data on us. Perhaps, Chris Lancashire, some insane jobsworth of the future might decide that your DNA showed you had a propensity to become, say, a rapist or paedophile, and must therefore submit to tagging, or chemical castration. Or that your wife must submit to compulsory abortion on the grounds that any possible children would be deemed unsuitable.

Pie in the sky, you might say. Just like gassing six million Jews was pie in the sky.

Tom Pride

ACPO have denied that arrests are being made so as to secure DNA samples where arrests would not have been made in the past. With Sir Huge Orde in charge and his overtly political intervention to thwart Tory elected police chiefs that does not inspire confidence.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/5556213/elected-police-commissioners-are-a-test-of-whether-the-tories-are-serious-or-not-about-their-agenda.thtml#comments

I remember hearing at the time of the arrest of Damien Green that the police had chosen to arrest him rather than invite him in for questioning to so that they could raid his home and offices, seize his belongings and obtain a DNA sample.

If the police are confident enough to behave this way toward an MP what chance for the rest of us?

And talking of police databases, have you heard of the £9 million “central domestic extremism unit”?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/the_daily_politics/8376398.stm

Nothing to fear have you?

Colin

@Chris lancashire @1:11pm

"IF DNA is totally unique to an individual AND if the comparison tests are foolproof, then I have absolutely no objection."

Would you object if at some point in the future you were informed by your insurance company that they no longer felt able to provide cover on the grounds that you have a genetic predisposition to some disease or other?

Chuck Unsworth

Never, ever, trust a copper.

JohnBUK

Chris Lancashire & others; Fine, you go ahead and furnish your DNA, but why should YOU decide for ME? There is a discussion to be had about this and we've not yet had it (as usual). Until then I understand the European Court has ruled the current practice in the UK is unlawful in which case Liebor should pass a law(if they can) or abide by the decision!

ssleddon

I mean this solely in a respectful and helpful way: Chris Lancashire and a few others really ought to read Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago to find out what happens when we become subjects of an all-powerful state. Let's remember who is supposed to be serving who!