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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."
Its funny. Im a Brit living abroad in a former soviet Country for the last two years, and the more I see the more I realise how big our illusion of freedom is in the UK.
We have more Security Cameras than anyone. Our government wants to record every website, email and text number used. We are profiled beyond compare.. Even our internet private is monitored.. :)
1984
You have more chance of being free elsewhere.
Well, presumably the police having your DNA *on file* increases the likelihood that you'll be hauled in by them for other things, should there be a spurious match (say). And regardless, if they're keeping personal information they promised not to keep then that's a serious moral issue regardless of the practical consequences - can people trust the police at their word? Should they?
Something bugs me whenever someone brings up "don't talk to the police" as a general rule. (Before I go on, let me say that I'm a libertarian and, while I find that the majority of police officers are good and honorable people, no police force is worthy of blind trust and it is every citizen's duty to keep governmental power to a pragmatic minimum.) The OP said that he volunteered the DNA during a murder investigation. Perhaps the victim was someone close to him, and he had an interest in helping the investigation along as much as possible, perhaps even by volunteering evidence so as to eliminate himself as a suspect so the police could move on sooner. How does one balance an altruistic need to volunteer information to the police against the general "don't talk to the police" principle of avoiding self-incrimination?
Could you tell us more about these target systems? Thanks.
Hmm, there's gotta be a WP article to link to at this point, but I can't find a good 'un.
A lot of game theory was based on the idea that people are not actually altruistic. Combined with the fiefdoms that existed within the UK civil service, the government came up with the idea of creating a Free Market of rewards to measure and assess the performance of state employees.
Massively simplified, if a policeman solves a crime, he gets a point towards his next pay rise or promotion. But it appears that solving something like a rape is worth the same as solving a crime like drug possession. Considering that to solve a rape, it would require many hours of police work, getting an error free case to court, etc.. But solving a case of pot possession is as simple as
"I'm going to search you under section 44". Pat-down... "Is this your weed?"
"Yes"
"Do you accept this police caution"
"Yes"
Case closed, achievement unlocked.
The effect is that the police focus on simple (usually victimless) crimes, not ones that require actual police work!
A real world example of targets being gamed to the detriment of everyone is the target in hospitals to get the time reduced from when someone comes into an A&E department and when they are seen. What some hospitals did was to simply get a nurse to go round the waiting room and greet people. Bang, patients interacted with by medical staff, times reduced, targets hit.
The excellent films by Adam Curtis give a lot of insight into the modern world. The films that make up The Trap talk about targets, and some of their real world consequences.
Car analogies break down.
A real world example of targets being gamed to the detriment of everyone is the target in hospitals to get the time reduced from when someone comes into an A&E department and when they are seen. What some hospitals did was to simply get a nurse to go round the waiting room and greet people. Bang, patients interacted with by medical staff, times reduced, targets hit.
More infamously, if they slipped up and let somebody wait for longer than the target time, that person would be lucky to get attended to at all, because the hospital had lost that "point" already and so would concentrate on points that they could still earn. The UK government has largely replaced measurement as a tool of management with measurement as management, in the name of objectivity (making rewards and penalties automatic on the results of measurement, rather than the measurements triggering humans to look at what is going on). The results are not pretty.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
It doesn't really matter whether the majority of police officers are "good and honorable people" (which is probably doubtful anyway since it's a profession that attracts bullies disproportionately). What does matter is that it's their job to get you. That's right, they're out to get you. Any law professor will tell you that they are allowed to lie to you at any time, and do a couple of other things to you, just to catch you for something, preferably for the crime they're investigating. They have no incentive whatsoever to make sure they get the right guy, their only job is to get someone convicted.
Take for example this case. A guy was found stabbed in a cupboard. They had no clue who might have done it. Finally, it was decided that he actually stabbed himself and then put himself in a cupboard. You have to wonder, why did the police go around collecting DNA samples in the first place if there was no foreign DNA on the crime scene to begin with. Clearly, either DNA was collected from random people in the hope of getting them convicted for any other crime, or the final conclusion that the guy stabbed himself is another lie to make their crime solving statistics look good after months of fruitless investigation.
By the way, while the individual likelihood of being misidentified through your DNA markers as a match for one given piece of evidence is very small, your chance "matching" some completely random piece of evidence among the millions they got lying around is actually getting higher with increasing database size. So if your DNA is on file, and is routinely compared to every new piece of evidence that comes in, an individual's chance of being framed by the birthday paradox is higher than one might think.
A friend of mine was arrested, and was treated respectfully by the police, assured that answering questions now would make everything easier later etc. etc. and then when he came to court all his statements are read out by the officers, out of context and with their 'interpretation' of his meaning, needless to say not to his benefit. Hardly seems like the reasonable actions they promised.
If you or I lie to the police it is "perverting the course of justice". If they lie to us it's "well done, you've made sarge".
"Fuck 'em, and their law".
Car analogies break down.