Brown goes crime-fighting

Sir Graphus

When you wrote "Brown's conversion to computers", I thought he'd started lobbing laptops about instead of phones. I've got an image of him watching Steve Jobs' launch of that i-tablet thing, and Brown, nodding in appreciation, thinking, "that could make a really satisfying thud against a wall; these Nokias don't give the satisfaction they used to."

As far as data transparency goes, I'd just like the govt to stop losing my data.

EyeSee

Please bear in mind Brown is superficial. Anything he says that is a good policy, or sensible is just co-incidental. It wont actually happen. Brown and his cowering cabal are an unmitigated disaster for the country that has to endure him.

Mark M

I always find the DNA database hard to argue against solely because of these cases and for the most part it actually is the case that if you're innocent you've nothing to fear. But then, I don't think it's appropriate that everyone should be held on the database in case they should ever offend.

My preferred solution is one where DNA can be collected and held by the police if you are arrested and it can be used to investigate crimes BUT it cannot be solely used in a court of law to prosescute in the first instance. That is, if DNA from a crime is matched to you, the police may use that to investigate you further but should they not find anything else then you go free. DNA should only be used on it's own to convict reoffenders.

startledcod

Mealy mouthed politico speak: on the subject of CCTV GoBro said "CCTV reduces the fear of crime and anti-social behaviour", note the fear not the incidence. So it is a panacea in reducing the fear but not effective in reducing the actualite.

Follow the excellent Big Brother Watch to find out how effective CCTV really is.

I can only imagine the pleasure of catching GoBro on the late night bus back to his gated community (bunker).

BrianSJ

So we remember:
“Billions of pounds has been spent on kit, but no thought has gone into how the police are going to use the images and how they will be used in court. It’s been an utter fiasco.” This is the estimation of the UK’s CCTV system by a senior police officer, Detective Chief Inspector Mike Neville, who also discloses the news that only about 3% of crimes are solved with help from CCTV footage. (May 2008)

2005 Report Many projects did not have clear objectives. Partly this reflected an uncritical view that CCTV was ‘a good thing’ and that specific objectives were unnecessary. It also typified a lack of understanding of what effects CCTV could achieve and the types of problems it was best suited to alleviate.

Marcher Baron

"Because I know that the hard working majority will never be able to afford to live in a gated community or hire a private security firm ..." Of course we won't be able to, because you've taxed us until the pips have squeaked and then you squeezed us some more to waste on your pet (failed) projects!

Fees Office Clerk

CCTV records crime...it does nothing to prevent it.

Tanuki

If the "DNA Database" is so compelling, I really think all its advocates should volunteer to have a sample of their DNA placed thereon.

Hell, it might just help positively identify who threw a particular Nokia!

The Bellman

If you throw enough shit at a wall, some of it will stick. But like every other 'eye-catching initiative' and recycled or purloined 'policy', even the coincidentally 'good' ideas are pretty unlikely to see the light of day in any meaningful sense. And if they do, they'll be implemented at great expense and incompetently, and get weighted down with targets and processes, and processes to reinforce the inadequacies of the initial processes. And on a computer system that doesn't work.

I don't think the analogue/digital distinction does justice to the full trousers-down horror of McSnotty and New Labour's reign. Analogue is a good reversionary mode for when the satellites and electricity fail. McSnotty isn't even a rough-and-ready alternative. He simply is inadequate to the responsibilities of government. He is being kept afloat by wishful thinking, a misplaced sense of familiarity verging on the Stockholm Syndrome, a captive market and printed and borrowed money. And, God help us, a deformed version of patriotism. He's more like British Leyland.

Moriarty

I always assumed that the gate at the end of Downing St was to keep Brown in rather than criminals out.

Colin

This content of this speech is what's known as a target rich environment. All that's needed now is for someone in the tory party to start "brassing up" brown, with no regard to ammunition expenditure...

For example:

In response to this little gem - "The next time you hear somebody question the value of retaining DNA profiles from those who have been arrested but not convicted, remember Jeremiah Sheridan. And most of all remember the innocent woman he attacked."

How about: "The next time you hear some regime ministerial f*ckwit extolling the rehabilitation value of early release of prisoners, remember the, literally hundreds of innocent people, violently killed, raped or assaulted, that would otherwise have been unharmed, had we been operating a credible criminal justice system...

Or words to that effect...

Michael Booth

No no and thrice NO - 'if you have done nothing wronmg you have nothing to fear' is Ingsoc Newspeak for 'New Labour: stamping on the face of Liberty forever.' We are INNOCENT until proven guilty. The state has no right whatsoever to hold data in case people offend. PLEASE remember what happened in the GDR when everyone was bugged and the subject of security files. DO NOT automatically believe governments when they tell you it is for your own good - governments LIE

TrevorsDen

"CCTV reduces the fear of crime and anti-social behaviour."

No it does not. Time and again the news shows us CCTV ppictures AFTER a crime.

In fact CCTV is the reason fore the rise of the hoodie and the heavily disguised vandals that walk the steet.

So as ever with his crass pontifications, CCTV has created the opposite - gettit? ... the OPPOSITE of what Brown claims.

This means that by hois own standards his own yardstick his own criteria his remarks are a load of bollocks.

But consider this as well ....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1566752/80-per-cent-of-CCTV-images-ineffective.html
"Britain's surveillance society was exposed as ineffective by a damning official report which revealed 80 per cent of CCTV footage is of poor quality"
"cameras are mostly used to trap motorists rather than catch criminals"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/2334239.stm
"Crime surveillance methods in Caernarfon have come under fire from traders who say the CCTV in the town is ineffective.
Business owners claim the problem has been compounded by a lack of police on the beat. "

http://www.cctvcore.co.uk/19-09-2007-lib-dems-suggest-cctv-ineffective-on-crime.html
"Lib Dems suggest CCTV ineffective on crime"
"According to an analysis of London’s £200 million CCTV network by the Liberal Democrats, there is no evidence that CCTV cameras help to solve crime."

CCTV is totally useless - except at giving Brown a self serving soundbite.

The Bellman

@startledcod: Quite. The soundbite repeated by Sky all day was that 'fear of crime' hasn't gone down by 'as much' as the rates of crimes McSnotty has decided to use. But we have CCTV which, as you correctly point out, does very little to reduce crime but has a mild placebo effect on a 'sense' of security. So the answer is obvious: a CCTV on every street. And, because of increasing domestic violence, a CCTV in every home.

In fact, why not one in every room? After all, think of the 'jobs' that would be 'created' - to install and maintain the cameras and networks, and to monitor the image feeds, 24 hours a day. This is the route to McSnotty's dream: everyone employed by the state, and anyone somehow not employed by the state under constant supervision. For everyone's own good, of course.

The whole speech shot through with typical McSnotty elision: now he gets to frame the debate as 'the broken society' = 'crime'. But crime has gone down, therefore 'society' isn't broken. And not one Tory on the news to rebut his simplistic, fatuous cockwaffle.

Tiberius

Thought you were talking about Brown duffing up staff who steal paperclips for a minute there, Pete.

Why bother? Nothing Brown says is fit to reside at the bottom of a sewer.

Fearless Frank

I can think of various gated communities where some MPs would feel at home.
They have names like Pentonville, Strangeways, etc

Holly ......

Over the past two hours I have been calling friends & family to start a three day news fast.
We have agreed not to watch any news,buy any newspapers or visit blogs.
Anyone fancy a few days off?
Tuesday/Wednesday & Thursday.
Lets show these people we want proper balanced reporting in this country.
See you Friday.

Sir Graphus

In all seriousness, it would be quite good if this were a speech from a politician who hadn't been in power for 13 years watching the police become politicised, deskbound, and not terribly interested in crimes against hard-working families.

I might be inclined to agree with him about data collection if they hadn't been so greedy for it, misused and lost so much of it these last 13 years.

bartimeus

Didn't the EU tell MCSnotty not to hold the DNa of innocent people ?

DNA evidence is only of value if you trust the people holding it not to use it for other purposes , or to lose it.

NuLab = NoTrust

2trueblue

The Bellman, Not a Tory in sight. The BBC and the media are bought by the Brown lot, using OUR money, again. The media in total seem to be seem to be on the flip side right now, even the Telegraph is wobbling, must be flipping to the other side as their people move closer and closer to those in the Westminster village. Brogan ought to get out in the real world more. Must cancel my subscription, it used to be such a good paper.

In2minds

Gordon Brown on DNA - as you might expect Brown wants it both ways. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled,two years ago, it is unlawful and a breach of privacy to hold DNA of the innocent. Nulabour and the UK police are happy to break the law on this ruling. Funny how Nulabour are head-over-heels on some EU rulings but not keen on others.

As for the Jeremiah Sheridan case I'll come to that after looking at the Stefan Kiskco case again; it's all very well saying Sheridan would still be walking tha streets but for DNA retention. This ignores the fact that Kiskco would never have gone to prison if the police used the DNA they had. The pick-and choose appproach to EU rulings and the use of the DNA smacks of the Stasi way of doing things.

Brown says he wants a "strong, modern police service". I'll settle for an accountable one. But then that applies to government too. Has the retention of DNA been discussed in parliament? I'm sure Brown, "big clunking fist" likes strong unaccountable things.

The fact is NO2ID is winning the argument here. This has Nulabour rattled, I know of several university based NO2ID groups who are getting a lot of pressure from the Nulabour elite in the students union. Bullying, the Nulabour way of working!

Steve Tierney

I love that line: "If you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to fear" - regarding DNA databases.

It's just so utterly naive that its quite charming. In a Disney-movie way.

Nicholas

Good post from In2minds. The trouble is that when Brown utters the ridiculous, authoritarian, typically New Labour soundbites that fly in the face of other known facts the media just let him get away with it.

The single example, moral blackmail justifications used to impose on our liberties are so obviously manipulative they should be ridiculed as such immediately. Brown's fatuous, fat-headed rhetoric is an argument for compulsory DNA farming for the whole population - not the retention of DNA from innocent people. The cynical ploys behind so many New Labour initiatives are finally being exposed. Read Raab in Assault on Liberty to see a different perspective on DNA.

I bet the fat bounder does want a "strong" police service, a "strong", politically motivated, ideologically controlled police service too no doubt. We have watched the way that Ship of Communist Fellow Travellers has been heading for the last 13 years.

Publius

Not much surprise to hear that Brown supports a Stasi state.

Camp David

Holly -

I've been doing this for a while now, to preserve what's left of my sanity.

Tim Carpenter LPUK

Brown, like so many, just does not get it.

The Law is there to protect the innocent, including the falsely accused. The problems with DNA is that it can sometimes only place a fragment of you at the scene. The example of the McCanns where their hire car showed DNA evidence of Madeliene, but this could as easily have fallen from other items.

DNA is being treated like fingerprints. It is NOT the same. Fingerprints really do mean you touched an object (and one can discuss if an object was moved/planted and I suspect that fingerprints can be planted, but that is another sphere) but DNA is no sure fire proof a person was even at a scene (except in certain cases as actual rape).

We live under an Authoritarian administration that does not blink twice let alone think twice about misusing new legislation (e.g. Terror act for Islamic, oh, I mean Icelandic Banks...silly me) when it suits, so to have a DNA database and the means to "prove" one was there, relying on someone to somehow have to then disprove their presence when in truth DNA skin or hair is NO proof of co-location or of time. This shift to force the burden of proof onto the defendant is utterly at odds with Common Law and UK practice.

davike

The Tories should just pick apart everything Brown says. He is very careful not to promise to DO anything real, just gives the impression that he's going to do something, by using strange circumlocutions like "I think everybody would want to be reassured that blah blah.." Nonsense but quite successful. Hague or Gove should just pick his verbiage apart and try to find the main verb.

Yosemite Sam

The logic of Brown's position is that every person's DNA should be held not just those who happen, randomly, to have been arrested but not charged or convicted. So I have a suggestion. Why not take the DNA of every child at birth, furthermore, why not implant a microchip in every baby at birth (I understand this happens with horses and livestock) that includes all the biological information necessary to ID the child, plus facilities for permanent tracking of that child geographically via satellite or ground level trackers or both. That would obviate the necessity for ID cards. After all, no one could be more innocent than at birth - but might commit a heinous crime sometime in their three score years and ten.

JohnAnt

I like that photo:
'Police confirmed that a 59 year old male had been cautioned for littering and for the use obscene abuse, after a mobile was thrown down on the pavement.'

Ex-Tory voter

"We are INNOCENT until proven guilty" Ah, Michael, where have you been? Under European law (Corpus Juris) we are guilty until proven innocent! Just one of the many ways that the European legal system (to which Lisbon binds us) differs from our own Common Law. Perhaps now you begin to realise why some of us feel that the subject of the EU is a tad important.

James Hammerton

Suppose we had a database of DNA samples from all serious unsolved crime scenes.

When Jeremiah Sheridan was arrested in 2005 and had has DNA taken, it could have been checked against the database of crime scene DNA samples and a match for the rape he committed would have turned up. He would have been caught then rather than being released and several more years of investigation being required to finally get him for this crime, and it would have been done without retaining the DNA of arrestees who aren't convicted of a crime.

It seems to me that retaining the DNA profiles of people who are arrested but never convicted of crimes is simply unnecessary if you have the crime scene DNA samples database to check any arrestee against.