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UK Police Promise Not To Retain DNA Data, But Do Anyway
redalien writes "In 2008 I invited two policemen into my home and voluntarily gave them a DNA and fingerprint sample to help with a murder investigation, as they'd promised it would only be used for that investigation. I was never under any suspicion and could just as easily have said no. Almost a year after the investigation closed they have now confirmed that they've retained my samples and at my request have begun an investigation to see if there are sufficient 'exceptional circumstances' to remove them. I'm not the only one who was told samples would be removed, so if you've had such a promise from the police I recommend contacting their data protection registrar immediately."
This isn't the first time the police have lied.
Seriously?
I would think you would have more to fear from your barber and a possible black market in DNA traces, for investigative misdirection. Who else might become suspect, doctors, are hospitals removing all samples or are they being put on file as well. Even public transport might be considered an unsafe DNA dispersal risk location.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Data should not be retained if the condition of obtaining it was that it would not be retained. Anything else is immoral, and should be illegal.
Conservation of angular momentum makes the world go round.
Tell it to them WHEN? If you can't wait long enough to have a lawyer present without giving up your right to mount a full legal defense, then the UK system is even more broken than the US one.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
The local district attorney on the Duke rape sat on clear, exonerating DNA evidence that the psycho stripper erred or lied. They had 6 or 7 DNA samples from her (and underwear) that failed to match any DNA of the falsely charged Duke kids. Ooops, wrong team!
So why bother with the free DNA?
Of course, the police and DA everywhere else will cluck their tongues and say this never could happen at their place. Today, only a fool considers government and corporate reps as anything but potentially dangerous adversaries, and their promises as anything more valuable than glib promises printed on second hand toilet paper.
A line from National Lampoon's Animal House came to my mind first thing:
"You can't spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes! You fucked up... you trusted us!"
I mean really - how could this guy possibly have expected them do drop something as useful* as a DNA fingerprint?
* useful in this context means "everyone is a suspect which makes my job easier as a cop"
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
If you talk to the police without consul, during an investigation you have waived your rights and demonstrated to the police that you are an idiot, not honest or friendly.
Bullshit. You just make it harder for them to do their job. Sure there are cops who are crooks, or just jerks, but if you presume that they all are then you are no better than your make-believe stereotypical policeman. Have a think about which dark corner of society would benefit if everyone starts being hostile towards the police.
We had a policeman knock on our door a while back. There was a grassfire a few km down the road and a car vaguely fitting the description of our car parked in our driveway was seen leaving the scene. By the time he knocked on our door I assumed he had already put his hand on the bonnet etc to see if had been driven recently, and he even told us that our car didn't really match the description after all. We chatted for a while and he left. If i'd had behaved like a prick like you suggest what would it have gained me?
I can only begin to guess at what a horrible job it must be most of the time. You'd see the worst of people every day. You'd have to knock on doors at 3am and tell parents that they have one less living child. Every time you pull someone over you know that there is a slim chance that someone's going to pull a shotgun on you. And if you make it hard for them to do their job then the only people left doing the job are the ones who don't take your sort of shit lightly.
Hopefully if you ever need the assistance of the police, you won't run into one that you've pissed off along the way.
Bullshit. You just make it harder for them to do their job.
The only time the police have an easy job is in a police state.
If you're not a criminal, victim or witness then you have no reason to talk to the police about a crime, and if you are a criminal then you have no reason to talk to the police without a lawyer. So there are very, very few cases where talking to the police is actually beneficial, and many where it's going to get you in a world of hurt... even police themselves will admit that.
Remember, these are the people who recently shot an innocent guy in the head eight times for 'suspicion of looking a bit muslim' and walked away with no consequences. Britain is rapidly approaching a police state if it isn't already there, which is precisely why I left a couple of years ago.
How the hell could it "help with a murder investigation" to provide them with a sample of your DNA?
Presuming you are innocent, you are simply opening yourself up to a false positive match, either now or in sometime in the future.
You have everything to lose, and nothing whatsoever to gain.
In the case of a degraded DNA sample, it's possible to have the statical odds of you being a match for a sample in the range of 100,000 to 1. That doesn't seem so bad unless you consider that there might be 1,000,000 records on file. Statistically that's 10 database hits, and if you are the lucky one cold hit, combined with the apparent belief that juries find scientific evidence infallible, you could easily be convicted. It *has* happened before that the only evidence that links a suspect to a crime is a cold database hit.
Just don't give them a sample without a court order, ever.
One good thing about the New Labour gleichshaltung is that British people have largely lost the trust in the police that they used to have. The way the police have behaved over DNA, and over the Stockwell killing, and the way they've treated anti-war demonstrators, have all had their effect. As Joe Orton pointed out, it's a far healthier society when people have a proper wariness of the police.
In 2008 I invited two policemen into my home and voluntarily gave them a DNA and fingerprint sample to help with a murder investigation, as they'd promised it would only be used for that investigation. I was never under any suspicion...
Of course you were under suspicion - they just didn't have enough evidence to get a warrant to force you to give up your DNA so they bamboozled you into doing it voluntarily. Of course they kept it on file, they were suspicous enough of you to request a DNA sample thus you are under permanent suspicion for the rest of your life and probably a ways beyond.
What you did was the equivalent of getting pulled over by a cop and when he looks in your car window and doesn't see anything to justify a search , instead of letting you go on your way, he asks you if he can go ahead and search your car anyway and you said yes.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Seriously, nothing good ever comes from talking to the police or giving them anything that they don't have a warrant or court order for. Police are also allowed to lie, however if you lie to them you're guilty of a crime.
It doesn't matter for a different reason: if the majority are decent and honest, why do they close ranks and defend the corrupt minority? They're not being part of the solution, they're part of the problem.