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UK Police Promise Not To Retain DNA Data, But Do Anyway

Posted by kdawson on from the most-private-thing dept.

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."

31 of 372 comments (clear)

  1. Not the first by GigaplexNZ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This isn't the first time the police have lied.

    1. Re:Not the first by ls671 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      He could have spotted the lie just as soon as they promised him the samples would be removed. Almost everybody on /. knows that it is almost impossible to delete data from fail-over sites, backups, archived data, etc. in a way that one can guarantee that all traces of the data has really been destroyed everywhere...

      --
      Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
    2. Re:Not the first by Cassini2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Police are allowed to participate in a ruse to gain the trust of a suspect.

      Make no mistake. You were a suspect in a murder case, until cleared. In a police investigation, everyone is a potential suspect. As such, be careful what you volunteer, because until proven otherwise, you are a suspect and can be lied to.

    3. Re:Not the first by DangerFace · · Score: 5, Informative

      On the bright side there is an increasing consensus that DNA evidence is a lot less useful than CSI: would have us believe.

      It makes sense, really - it takes quite a while and a fairly large sample to sequence someone's genome with proper error checking, so the crime labs generally don't bother. Instead, they focus on a few areas of chromosomes called loci, and pick sections of non-coding DNA called short tandem repeats. US labs will normally look at 13 loci, UK labs 10. Many experts have testified in a court of law, under oath, that a match of nine loci is 'tantamount to unique identification'.

      Studies have been done on small sections of some DNA databases, comparing every profile with every other profile, and found this to simply be false. In Arizona 65 493 profiles were made available - 122 pairs matched at nine loci, 20 at ten, 1 at eleven and 1 more at twelve. In Illinois 220 000 were checked, and 903 pairs matched at nine or more loci, and in Maryland 30 000 were checked, providing 32 matching pairs.

      Add to this the problem that eyelashes, skin fragments etc can be carried on the wind, or from a random frottage, and we have some important cases being 'solved' with what amounts to deeply circumstantial evidence. With any luck this fascination with DNA being used as the be all and end all, the assayer of truth, will end as soon as possible.

      PS: most of that informative stuff about loci and short tandem repeats was pretty much lifted from New Scientist #2742, dated 9 January 2010. IANAGeneticist, and would feel a small pang of guilt without adding this disclaimer.

      --
      Be smart, help people!
    4. Re:Not the first by ThatsNotPudding · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No prosecutor worth their aspiration for higher political office will ever acknowledge any of this. They (and law enforcement in general) need a body count, and a body count they shall have.

  2. You believed them when the promised? by nedlohs · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seriously?

    1. Re:You believed them when the promised? by internewt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Seriously?

      That was exactly the kind of thing I thought!

      Unfortunately the police, with the help of politicians, have thrown away any respect I may have once had for them. If the police came to my house, doing door to door enquiries, then I would not talk to them at all, and I most definitely would not invite them into my home.

      The police have become servants of themselves, through the target systems that exist to gauge their performance. They do not respect the communities they police any more, and I think most police would actually laugh at you if you told them they are pubic servants.

      ACAB.

      At this point, if you are nasty fucking pig or a pig apologist, you set the box below to troll, overrated, offtopic, flamebait, or redundant.

      --
      Car analogies break down.
    2. Re:You believed them when the promised? by wizardforce · · Score: 4, Informative

      Just replace "don't talk to the police" with "don't provide DNA/etc voluntarily to the police." You don't gain anything by talking to the police nor providing genetic evidence without a proper warrant. Different reasons same good advice.

      --
      Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
    3. Re:You believed them when the promised? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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?

    4. Re:You believed them when the promised? by internewt · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.
    5. Re:You believed them when the promised? by digitig · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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?
    6. Re:You believed them when the promised? by thasmudyan · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

  3. Hairdressers by rtb61 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:Hairdressers by Pinky's+Brain · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If you're not in the database then you won't need to fear a planted sample either. Not being in the database reduces your risk both from false positive and from planted sample ... being in the database is a pure lose/lose situation.

    2. Re:Hairdressers by Lemming+Mark · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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?

  4. Condition for Non-Retention by kandela · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  5. Freedom is a lie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  6. NEVER talk to the police. by jcr · · Score: 4, Informative

    Watch and learn.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    1. Re:NEVER talk to the police. by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 5, Informative

      UK citizens: Ignore the advice in this video. It is accurate for the US legal system, not the UK legal system.

      I've watched the whole thing before, and there are so many items in the video that simply do not apply that the whole thing should be ignored. Hell, the very first frame you see is regarding the Fifth Amendment: We don't have a constitution.

      Do you want advice on how to deal with the police in the UK? Go to Citizen's Advice. The internet has some basics, but they're not comprehensive.
      Do you want instructions on how to handle arrest? That's easy: Comply. Do nothing to resist. Listen to everything that is said. As soon as you're arrested, say nothing about the reason for your arrest. Not "I didn't do it!" not "It was that guy!" There will be time for this later, after you've spoken to a solicitor.

      Confirm personal details at the station, nothing more, and when asked state politely but firmly that you can not answer any questions regarding your arrest or enter an interview room until you have spoken to a professional legal representative. It's because you've not done this before, and want everything to be done right. Law is complex. Late at night (if required) this might be a phone call, but you can still request a solicitor to attend in person. Usually this will be the next day, which is good. Try and get some sleep; You can't go anywhere or do anything, and talking to anyone is a bad idea.

      IANAL, IANYL, this is not legal advice etc.

      --
      Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
    2. Re:NEVER talk to the police. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      However (and I speak as a recent ex-policeman from the UK), the key is "MAY harm your defence". If you can give good reason in court as to why you didn't disclose it ("I needed to speak to my solicitor first", "I didn't want my wife to find out about my affair", "I was being threatened by the bad guy") the court will take this into account and allow the evidence (or at least give due consideration to your reasoning). I will not automatically exclude the evidence (note the full stop and the word may). Of course this won't apply where you don't have a good reason (i.e. it was to cover your tracks) or if someone is harmed or a further crime committted (you don't give the info giving your acomplice time to kill the hostage and bury the body).

    3. Re:NEVER talk to the police. by internewt · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.
  7. govts in disintegration; remember the Duke case by harvey+the+nerd · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  8. WAIVE NOTHING..EVER..EVER!! by fred911 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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. They are not your friends. The do not have to tell you the truth. When asked to waive my rights by an officer of the law I respectfully tell them that I am unable to waive them without the advice of an attorney. That pisses them off and they usually start threatening warrants and other harassment.

      "With respect for your position sir, I respectfully decline any more communication without an attorney present, and understand you have a job to do, please proceed with what you have to do. Am I under arrest or are you detaining me? If so please provide consul. If not have a nice day!"

    --
    09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
    1. Re:WAIVE NOTHING..EVER..EVER!! by jamesh · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:WAIVE NOTHING..EVER..EVER!! by 0123456 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  9. its on record till your 100th birthday by blackest_k · · Score: 4, Informative

    Unfortunately the Police are under no obligation to remove the DNA from the database until your 100th birthday I've read through the regulations they work under. In the appendix there are form letters for the chief constable to tell you that your dna can not be removed, there is no example of a letter saying it can.

    In the UK the police retain records of everyone even if you have never been arrested or charged with anything it is enough to be associated with someone with a criminal record for this to be recorded on your record. I believe they refer to these as non arrestable offenses. I say your record but its the polices record of you. Over time the Police are not forced to share what they have on you with other agencies but everything is kept on record for their use and they do have the option of clearing your record once you reach the age of 100.

    Of course your Dna will not only identify you but close matches may suggest a brother or a son or other close relative may be worth investigating. There is no political will from either of the main parties to curb the current legislation they have both contributed to it. So you either live with it or leave and hope that there is no worldwide database created in your lifetime.

    Rule number one where ever you are don't get involved with the Police if you can possibly avoid it.

    http://www.genewatch.org/sub-539482
    http://www.runnymedetrust.org/events-conferences/econferences/ethnic-profiling-in-uk-law-enforcement/the-report/the-national-dna-database/the-national-dna-database-2.html

    The second link spells it out for you using big letters and crayon, yes you are on record and for all practical meanings of for the rest of your life.

    The European Court of Human Rights

    In December 2008, in the case of S. and Marper v. the UK, the Grand Chamber of European Court of Human Rights reached a unanimous judgment that the blanket retention of innocent people's DNA and fingerprints by the UK Government contravenes Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the right to privacy).

    At the time of writing, the Government has yet to implement a response to the judgment. Its initial proposals to retain DNA records from innocent people for 6 or 12 years, depending on the offence for which they were arrested, were widely criticised. They have been replaced with an alternative 6 year retention time for innocent adults (3 years for under-16s), in the Crime and Security Bill 2009/10. However, both opposition parties regard these proposals as unacceptable.. The Government has also made a welcome proposal to destroy the original DNA samples (biological samples), which are currently stored by the commercial laboratories which analyse them, and which contain unlimited genetic information which is not needed for identification purposes.

    I guess that this judgment may change things but currently there is no change and it will remain that way until compelled to change. note the opposition fighting against the change it can be viewed as because the proposals are still draconian or more cynically to block any change in the current status quo.

    Unless legislation does go through and so far it hasn't then any plea to the chief constable to get the dna record removed due to exceptional circumstances will fall on deaf ears because after all being innocent of any crime is hardly exceptional in that database.

    --
    Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
  10. Don't give a Sample by missileman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

     

  11. British police by dugeen · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  12. Don't Talk To The Police by rhook · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  13. It doesn't matter for a different reason by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  14. England is not the same as UK by augustw · · Score: 5, Informative

    The headline is incorrect: it's not UK police, it's English Police who hold onto DNA. DNA samples, and profiles, are routinely destroyed at the end of the relevant enquiry in Scotland, which is a quite distinct legal jurisdiction from England.