Slashdot Mirror
Privacy Fears Over UK DNA database
jukal writes "An article at BBC about the UK's DNA database as a privacy threat. 'More than 1.5 million DNA profiles are now held on the £187m National DNA Database and the target is to have about three million profiles stored by April 2004. '... this has alarmed the inventor of DNA fingerprinting (Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys), who has now 'launched an outspoken attack on the way the genetic profiles of suspects in the UK who have been cleared of any crime are still stored by the authorities'."
What is it they say about the road to hell and all that?
Although Professor Jeffreys is trying to be fair to everybody, all it needs is for a few unscrupulous politicians to become involved to mess up his scheme. Should the database be set up, the firt calls will be asking to extend it to disease markers as money for public health can be better spent when we know which diseases the population is more susceptible to. After that I can see various groups asking for extension after extension for various reasons without respect for the individuals who make up the database.
What we are better off doing is not storing the information at all. At least then nobody will be tempted to misuse it, and the technique will still be available to law enforcement to eliminate suspects from their enquiries.
Supposedly, Einstein said after the first tests, when he saw the destructive power of the bomb: "The only things infinite are the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the universe".
The key difference is, of course, that they were building a bomb with no possible "peaceful uses", whereas this guy was building a tools that could have many different positive uses.
Grr! Arg!