Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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."

16 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 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.

    2. 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!
  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 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?

    3. 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.
    4. 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. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

     

  7. 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.

  8. 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/
  9. 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).

  10. 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.