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.
I'm shocked, I tell you! Shocked!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That's not the issue. The issue is that one in five people in that database really have no business being there.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Well then we better go arrest those trespassers!
sigs... don't talk to me about sigs....
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
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!
No, that means that 80% of those have had some form of criminal conviction or caution at any point in their life, which could be for a large array of fairly minor things.
Cautions can be given out for petty vandalism or fairly minor crime, lots of things that people may have done during their younger years. Not the sort of crimes that i think DNA should be kept on a database for.
Certain demographics (such as young, black men) are also 'very highly over-represented' in prison.
You mean like, they are in prison, so they represent a black man in prison?
You probably meant to say something like "young black men commit a disproportionate amount of violent crimes, leading to a disproportionate young black prison population."
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
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.
The problem is that the police use DNA for fishing expeditions instead of doing real police work. Rather than bothering to investigate and find likely suspects that they can then interview and perhaps ask for a DNA sample, they just arrest anyone who has merely been accused and take their DNA. Even if it turns out that are completely innocent that DNA is kept forever and tested against all future crimes.
Let's say you accidentally brush against someone on the street. A few days later the police arrest you because a hair with your DNA was found at the scene of a child rape and murder. You now have to explain how your hair got there (it landed on the clothes of the person you passed in the street and was transported there) and your whareabouts at the time of the crime. You will need to involve other people to confirm your alibi, which means they will find out that you are a suspect in a child rape and murder. You will not be able to go to work while in custody, and will have to explain your absence to your employer.
All because the police couldn't be bothered to try and figure out who might have done it, they just grabbed any DNA from the scene and looked in their database, then arrested everyone who matched to see who could provide an alibi.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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!".
Tim, Terry, and Ted would like a word with you.
That word would be "kaboom".
The vast majority of "middle east" folks who are here are here because they're tired of all the shit in their home countries. The guy next to me is Iranian; he's here now with his family because he's not going to get dragged into the street by the secret police or arrested because he went to University.
Most people, no matter where they are from, don't want to blow things up or destroy buildings. (Personally, I realize that some buildings have to be blown up, but that's because of the work I do. Frankly, if you're getting shot at by the Navy, then it's probably not a big loss if we kick you off the planet.) They want to go about their lives without the fear of being blown up or shot at.
These "Muslims" (and just for the record, not everyone from the middle east is a Muslim.) emigrating to the Western world are often highly-educated (like the non-Muslim Professional Engineer next to me that I referred to earlier), young, and wanting to make a solid contribution to the countries that they are now calling home.
We were not attacked by Muslims. The attacks on the Cole, the Twin Towers, and the Pentagon were performed by brainwashed puppets controlled by a billionaire megalomanic sociopath who convinced them that they would be better off dead. They were no more Muslim than the Branch Davidians or Manson's followers were whatever religion they purported to be. The Koran is pretty clear about the "Thou Shalt Not Kill" rule, same as the Torah and the Bible. (There are parts like Leviticus in the other texts as well, so don't cut and paste something out of context from a website.) I've had Muslim co-workers, and they are as opposed to violence as anyone else. This includes hating Hamas for rocketing Israel and condemning 9/11 as a travesty.
The TSA is bullshit security theater, plain and simple.
We got into this mess from political gaming, not from "liberals". Liberals want the government out of people's lives, smaller government, and no deficit budgets.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
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 also share this sentiment. Since processing this DNA costs money, to minimize the cost, police should use whatever features there that indicates an individual would be more susceptible to crime.
As another example, the number of samples of men are also probably a lot larger than women. That isn't discrimination - it is statistics.
The difference with DNA (and to some extent fingerprints) is that it turns the tables on the accused. You are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, and it is up to the police to make that proof. Instead they now just go directly to the database, meaning that if the real criminal is not on there but your DNA is then it will be you who is arrested and now has to explain how your DNA got there while the police go through your life looking for anything they can to attack your character or use as leverage against you. Only have you have been ruled out will they look for the real perpetrator.
Even worse are the so called "voluntary" testing of entire communities. If a woman is raped and says it was by a white male age 20-35 the police have been known to ask all white males aged 20-35 in the area to submit a "voluntary" DNA sample. Anyone who refuses to "volunteer" becomes a suspect and has to explain their decision to decline, as well as being arrested and forced to give their DNA anyway and suffering all the consequences I already mentioned.
The balance between the police's power to investigate and that of citizens to be private is a tricky one. If you gave the police absolute power they could catch a lot more criminals, but you would also be living in a police state. I think you just have to accept that some people will literally get away with murder, but such is the price of freedom.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
No, it's a culture thing passed down by their bredhren. I have a Nigerian friend who, alone with all the rest of his brothers, question authority at every moment, are always on-the-make, see evading the law as a life-game with the police. British born blacks do not act this way unless influenced by their self-segregated same-skin-coloured peers.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.