Slashdot Mirror
Judge Says, Record DNA of Everyone In the UK
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.'"
I thought this was done already. Which is why they keep pennies in circulation...
Summation 2
Why not? In the U.S., don't we already record fingerprints at birth? Let's just all do this.
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?
My blog
I interpret this as 'because the police are arresting a disproprtionately high proportion of ethnic minorities and the contents of the DNA database reveals this, we should just profile everybody so that the apparent discrimination disappears'. Maybe they should try dealing with the apparent racism and/or social inequality rather than brushing it under the carpet?
todo - The developer's equivalent of confession: "Forgive me Father, for I have sinned..."
WHO'S ON THE DATABASE?
5.2% of UK population
Nearly 40% of black men
13% of Asian men
9% of white men
Source: Home Office and Census
Enuff said. When the remaining 91% are going to be DNA recorded, they start squirming. Majority of ethnic minorities kept quiet and bore it all....
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Delete the database.
A lot of people stated they would refuse to vacation in the States anymore because of the fingerprinting at Customs. This is far, far worse.
Okay, I can see that the current situation of including people who aren't convicted of a crime is unfair, but to suggest that the only possible solution is to treat everyone as if they have convicted a crime?!
... at them?
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
Then compare core samples through the brain.
Nothing wrong with that, and if you use a bore small enough people won't notice.
liqbase
This is what expects us.
What you say !!
You have no chance to survive make your time.
I'm not real familiar with the way the British courts work, but I know that in the US a tactic sometimes used by judges that want a law overturned is to simply enforce the letter of the law. The idea is that the law itself is so flawed that by enforcing it strictly and literally it becomes evident that the law should be changed. Similar thing happened recently where some congressmen tried to reinstitute the draft, the reasoning being that if it's important enough for US soldiers to fight and die in Iraq, then it's important enough for every eligible US citizen to join up. Of course, and this was their point, if it's not that important, then we shouldn't be there. Maybe this judge is making the same point about DNA profiling: either everyone has to be on record, which would raise some serious privacy and legal issues, or no DNA records are kept at all because there isn't a fair way to do it.
This unbiased moderation brought to you by the Porcine Aviation Group!
Fine. Just don't expect me to visit.
Besides, Paris has better airshows, and Germany, Spain, and Italy all have better F1 races. Guess I'll take my tourist dollars there instead.
What about chimeras - people who have two different sets of DNA in the same body? They allegedly make up a small but not insignificant fraction of the population. How will the system deal with them?
If they could get some of the Page 3 Girls to creatively accept "DNA samples", this might work.
If not, could someone please post when this is actually put into force? It'll make my future travel plans easier if I can strike one more country off my list of places to visit.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
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: 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.
That does not matter. If these loose words of the judge are ever put into law (unlikely, but given surveillance-mad Britain, who know...), this proposal would force every Briton - and visitor - to prove his or her innocence for every crime in the future. That will take time, but UK authorities don't care about that. Their abstract view of justice (catching criminals) has blinded them to the liberality upon which Western justice is based.
Speed be damned. This is about the slow constriction of society.
I already avoid traveling to America; now, perhaps I will need to avoid the UK as well. Although not perfect, at the least the EU has its privacy directive.
"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.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
this proposal would force every Briton - and visitor - to prove his or her innocence for every crime in the future
I apologize, I haven't had my morning coffee yet, but I don't understand. DNA samples tend to clear innocent suspects, not falsely implicate them. In the US numerous people suffering from false imprisonment, DNA tests were not available at the time of their trial, have been released as they managed to get DNA tests performed. Thank goodness for long term preservation of evidence.
The homepage for the Canadian National DNA Data Bank says that DNA samples are taken only from convicted criminals. The site says:(emphasis added)
Moreover, this page discusses debate (in 2005) about whether or not a DNA database could help with missing persons investigations. The discussion doesn't mention using an already-existing DNA database of all citizens (or all citizens born since 1994) but instead seems to discuss the creation of a new database. In the discussion about whether such a database should be created, they say: In short, this sounds like a proposal for a voluntary system where loved ones of a missing person could donate DNA samples to help locate the person or identify their remains. It makes no mention of an existing effort to retain DNA on all newborns since 1994.
Anyone have any further information on this subject?
(Anecdotally, I'm not aware of any such DNA testing on any children recently born in Canada--e.g. my nephew.)
Once everyone's DNA is indexed somewhere then it opens up a can of worms. It's inevitable that at some point it will be misused. Perhaps it's opened up for other uses (Insurance companies, public domain, etc) or maybe someone just gets access to the data.
In the US, since the 1970s, government agencies have been restricted in terms of what information they can collect and what they can share even amongst each other and subcontractors. Since then privacy rules have become even more restrictive, in particular with respect to medical information.
The insurance company screening argument is a red herring to a degree. They could collect a DNA sample as part of a mandatory physical. Unless such profiling is outlawed, it will happen regardless of whether or not there is a national DNA database.