Slashdot Mirror
Inside England and Wales' DNA Regime
Sockatume writes "The UK's Human Genetics Commission has published its report on the collection of DNA by the Police forces in England and Wales. Currently, Police collect DNA from every suspect in a case which could lead to a criminal record, and retain that material, which the European Court of Human Rights has ruled illegal. The government plans to keep all DNA samples for suspects from England, Wales and Northern Ireland for up to six years, except for DNA from individuals arrested during terrorism-related investigations, which will be retained forever. The report states that the police frequently performed arrests solely to collect DNA, that certain demographics (such as young, black men) were 'very highly over-represented,' that there was 'very little concrete evidence' that the DNA database had any actual use in investigating crime, and that the database contained material from individuals arrested in Scotland and Northern Ireland, outside its remit. Of the 4.5m individuals in the database, a fifth have never received any convictions or cautions from the Police. The report recommends that an independent advisory body oversee the database, and that laws be passed to limit the uses of the database, while tracking those with access to it, and making misuse of the information a criminal offence."
Police collect DNA from every suspect in a case which could lead to a criminal record ...
So they started with the politicians then?
I'm serious though, the people who passed this and put it into place should first enter their own DNA into the system as a sign of good faith and unwavering confidence that this system will never be used negatively to persecute anyone nor will it ever produce a false positive on a match.
My work here is dung.
In the US too, and for fingerprinting as well.
Such evidence should only be collected without consent with a warrant and if the individual is not charged and convicted with a crime such evidence should be removed from any database/storage and destroyed/deleted. If it is taken with consent then the individual should have the right to ask that it be destroyed after the investigation is complete.
On a wider note many such police/law enforcement databases need to be more thoroughly regulated, including things such as "Do Not Fly" lists and terrorism suspects. There needs to be a clear legal way for both puting someone's name on the list, and removing it, as well there also needs to be a way for individuals to know why they are on any such list.
I'm shocked, I tell you! Shocked!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
and who watches the men watching the watchmen?
Seriously, America may be full of religious idiots who believe some bible over empirical evidence but at least the States aren't an orwellian nightmare of a police state that makes the DPRK look like the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.
How do you Brits tolerate this on a daily basis? Hell, you can't even have real knives because mummy + doddy took them away from you.
Certain demographics (such as young, black men) are also 'very highly over-represented' in prison.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Of the 4.5m individuals in the database, a fifth have never received any convictions or cautions from the Police.
Than means that for approx 80% of the people they initially suspected, they were right! Far be it for me to support Big Brother, but its hard to find fault with a law enforcement system that actually seem to be doing what it is supposed to.
You can. [No,
Here in the United States they've taken your DNA from birth since the 1970's (even earlier if you were in the military or other government programs). Every state does it. They bury the "consent" form in the mountains of paperwork you need to sign while at the hospital. That's if they haven't gotten rid of the consent requirement. Minnesota got rid of parental consent in 1997.
Even though some states let you "opt out" by having them destroy the blood samples after the tests they still keep all the information obtained. They then sell that information to companies, who then patent your DNA. If you ever require gene therapy you'll have to pay that company a large sum to use your own DNA. Who knows what else they do to it.
http://www.cchconline.org/pdf/MINORITY%20REPORT%20Genetic%20Info%20-%20FINAL.pdf
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
Oversight isn't a fix for something that shouldn't exist in the first place. If you can't trust the original owners to be ethical with something of such corruptible power, do you really want to risk trusting *anyone* with this?
What about this? Are we just supposed to pretend it never happened?
Caveat Utilitor
their colonial regime for whom the U.S.A. still works.
Yours In Ashgabat,
K.T.
Will any of you fight this intrusion into your persons by force? What's that? No? Even the Taliban are brave enough to try to defend their way of life against the demeaning incursions of the USA/British/Israeli Axis, but when it comes to the victims in the Home countries, well you just bend over for it every time. This is why I will always admire organizations like Hezbollah more than you, even if I don't agree with all of their ideas - at least they have the balls to stand up against your violent and intrusive regimes and define their cultures in opposition to it. Since none of you will ever go to the lengths necessary to protect your rights and human dignity, you had better pray to God that the economic collapse happens sooner than later and cuts off the ability of your malignant regimes to continue these debauches.
When the USSR fell, it fell largely peacefully - but I expect the US/UK/Israeli Axis regimes to wage total war on their own people before fading from history.
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
I can't say it's surprising that there is " 'very little concrete evidence' that the DNA database had any actual use in investigating crime." If you look at the UK, the trend lines all seem very alarming - billions of pounds spent on crime fighting theater that doesn't actually fight crime, loss of basic freedoms at a rate even the Tudors or the Puritans would have found alarming, all with no apparent actual oversight of any of it. This just seems part of the same pattern.
that think any DNA evidence presented is absolute, pure, handed-down-from-god-almighty proof of guilt are a big part of the problem. Especially if you have a giant, tailor-made repository of DNA already harvested from 'The Usual Suspects' to help 'solve' those pesky cases that stand in the way of pay raises, big promotions, or running for political office on a law and order platform. Just sprinkle your handy sample of pre-collected DNA liberally at that stone-cold-whodunit crime scene and announce "Hey, look what I found!".
... also be able to charge, fine, and incriminate the policemen who continue to do things illegally, thus setting example and ensuring better policemanship.
The police don't respect the law because very few people actually make them do it.
Make them.
"Members of the Jury, if you accept the scientific evidence called by the Crown, this indicates that there are probably only four or five white males in the United Kingdom from whom that semen stain could have come. The Defendant is one of them. If that is the position, the decision you have to reach, on all the evidence, is whether you are sure that it was the Defendant who left that stain or whether it is possible that it was one of that other small group of men who share the same DNA characteristics." - Phillips LJ, cited from Wikipedia article. To be truly effective as a tool in prosecution, every man, woman and child would need their DNA profile kept on record, and British public records, up to and including massive numbers of tax returns (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1082402/Tax-website-shut-memory-stick-secret-personal-data-12million-pub-car-park.html), have a history of being woefully insecure. None of this bodes well for much of anything.
You will find that travelling to the United Kingdom requires little more preparation than a visit to any other state. :-)
Consider your visit as you would to Delaware, only with PAL and and DVD Region 2.
Difficulties with Wireless are non-existant. Since laptops generally have auto-switching power supplies, a mains-adaptor for the socket is all you require. Get a proper, British one. These have a FUSE in the adaptor. British mains are of varying conditioning and quality. 240 Volts is manly, compared to a piddling 115v US, and arcs have occurred! The United lounge at Heathrow terminal one gave a nasty puff of ozone and a loud crack, when I unplugged from a socket there, last June.
Regarding customs inspections? Be reasonable. It is always harder dealing with the aggressive robots in U.S. ports than it is with the merely weary Sikh gentlemen and distracted, west-indian, ladies who will get there shift over as-soon-as-possible in Heathrow and Birmingham.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It's bizarre but there still seems to be this perception that the police are a fine bunch of chaps who will universally do their best to apply the rules sensibly and fairly. There are plenty of police officers who that description applies to, I'm sure - but that's not an excuse for lawmakers and the justice system to assume it holds universally true.
At the end of the day, the police are there - in practice - *to catch potential criminals*. Sorting out who is and isn't guilty is not their job, that's the job of the courts (as it should be). So the police don't really have an incentive to be especially fair or reasonable; that's not what we've tasked them with doing. What lawmakers sometimes seem to fail to understand is that if we pressure them to achieve "catch all the terrorists / criminals" then they'll try to do that, even if they "catch" many innocent people too. If we give them new tools to do that then *they will use them*. If the tools we give them are extremely blunt instruments, like the ability to hold innocent people's data on the DNA database, they're going to use them to their fullest extent. If we want them to behave sensibly, the laws need to be more focused and less open to abuse.
It's the same issue with various "anti-terror" laws. Allegedly local councils in the UK have used these to put people under surveillance for reasons unrelated to terrorism (like whether they're using their rubbish bins correctly and whether they live in the locality of a school they have applied to). We gave them overly broad legislation and assumed that they wouldn't use it, even though it helps them to do what they see as their job. None of these organisations can be relied upon to act in the best interests in society because each of them only sees part of the big picture - our politicians are *supposed* to maintain the balance of power with targeted legislation that results in society's best interests being served overall. That goal can't be reached by handing out disproportionate powers indiscriminately.
... and making misuse of the information a criminal offense.
Wait a sec. You mean it isn't a criminal offense already???
I spit at their attempt to get my DNA! Oh, wait...
Putting the "anal" back into "analyst"...
They just take away our freedoms one at a time. Even though a commission will maybe take down this flagrant offense toward human rights they will just plant another bomb at the subway like they did last time and they'll come back in full swing. People for the love of who ever you pray to let's all unite. I feel that in the future we'll be so well manipulated that we won't stand a chance. We'll be shot in plain daylight with the argument of being supposed terrorists. Read the Patriot Act . You can be arrested, detained and tortured indefinitely, with no charges and without any rights. Let's organize a big protest while there's still the time. Time is ticking against us. It' doesn't take long. 1 day a year for 1 hour the whole world will be united against what is after all our own system that we support and accept.
We can wipe world hunger and such grotesque inequities in 1-5 days tops + 1-2 years of world reconstruction. This is vs a lifetime of slavery.
Whenever a computer, car, or something else becomes outdated you go and get a new one. Why not do the same with this fascist economic system of ours? I don't know what to believe any more. I feel that Zeitgeist is the only way we've got if I ever want to see those poor starving children receive what was their all along.
>>> The government plans to keep all DNA samples for up to six years, except for terrorism-related investigations, which will be retained forever.
This is true even if the person is found not guilty. All this means is that to get what they want which is records of everyone's DNA forever all they need to do is claim some fake terrorism-related possibility at the time of arrest.
Even for non-terrorism arrests, we only have the government's word that they aren't keeping the records past 6 years. The UK government have frequently proved they routinely lie about stuff like this.
"The report recommends that an independent advisory body oversee the database, and that laws be passed to limit the uses of the database, while tracking those with access to it, and making misuse of the information a criminal offence." It's too late. You can never put the shit back in the donkey.
Then != than you morons.
Is a police likely to file charges against another policeman?
Is a police likely to file charges against a Prosecutor?
Who exactly is going to file charges against who in order for
this illegality to have real effect? If something is illegal,
then someone is at risk of going to jail. Who exactly is at
risk when the people who have access are all law enforcers?
"three-quarters of young black males, aged 18 to 35, are now on the database"
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?