Big Brother wants your DNA

The U.K. already collects DNA from all people who are arrested—not convicted, arrested. Now a judge says that every man, woman, and child in the U.K. should be part of a natiowide DNA database.

A senior appeal court judge has called for a national DNA database recording everyone living in or entering the country.

Currently, suspects arrested over any imprisonable offence can have their DNA held even if they are not charged, or are acquitted.

Lord Justice Sedley said the current UK database, the biggest in the world, is “indefensible” because it effectively puts the innocent on a par with the guilty.

He argued that an expanded database would be fairer and also aid crime prevention.

Now get a load of the judge’s logic:

“We have a situation where if you happen to have been in the hands of the police then your DNA is on permanent record. If you haven’t, it isn’t. That’s broadly the picture.

“It means that people who have been arrested but acquitted, some of them because they are innocent, some of them because they are just lucky, all stay on the database.

“It means where there is ethnic profiling going on disproportionate numbers of ethnic minorities get onto the database.

“It also means that a great many people who are walking the streets and whose DNA would show them guilty of crimes, go free.”

He said reducing the database could lead to serious offenders escaping conviction when they would otherwise have been brought to justice.

The only option, the law lord said, was to expand the database to cover the whole population and all those who visit the UK.

George Orwell has spun so many times in his grave over things like this in Britain, he’s drilled through into the neighboring plots.

Is this judge really saying that it isn’t fair that criminals’ DNA is in the database, but innocent people’s is not? Is he saying that the only way to not have a racist, unfair DNA database that singles out ethnic minorities is to have everyone in the DNA database? Because that’s exactly what it sounds like he’s saying.

And gee, there’s no way this plan could go wrong. There are currently about 60 million people in the U.K. There’s no way that John Smith of Number Two, Privet Drive, Little Whinging, could be confused with John Smith of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place in London. Nope. Why, DNA labs are just as trustworthy as any other human-driven organization: Smooth, error-free, and always reliable. Especially when run by government bureaucrats.

And just to show you how little the Britsh government regards its citizens’ privacy, here are some quotes from the Home Office on the National DNA Database:

Why are people who have not been convicted on the database?

Before 2001, the police could take DNA samples during investigations but had to destroy the samples and the records derived from them on the Database if the people concerned were acquitted or charges were not proceeded with.

The law was changed in 2001 to remove this requirement, and changed again in 2004 so that DNA samples could be taken from anyone arrested for a recordable offence and detained in a police station.

Does this pose any privacy problems?

Any intrusion on personal privacy is proportionate to the benefits that are gained.

By the end of 2005, about 200,000 samples had been retained that would have been destroyed before the 2001 change in legislation. 8,000 of these samples matched with DNA taken from crime scenes, involving nearly 14,000 offences, including murders and rapes.

In 2005-06 45,000 crimes were matched against records on the DNA Database; including 422 homicides (murders and manslaughters) and 645 rapes.

So according to the Home Office, 75% of the DNA samples taken from arrestees were not identified with any crimes. But they’re keeping them on file, just in case those people actually do commit a crime someday. Because that is a “benefit” that outweighs the personal privacy intrusion to innocent people.

There, but for the Constitution, goes America.

Europe has never gotten over its habit of thinking that the ruling elite know what’s best for the peasantry. That’s what really runs their nanny-state tendencies. Gotta take care of the peasants, dontchaknow. Noblesse oblige and all that.

God save us from catching this particular disease. The good news in this story:

Prime Minister Gordon Brown this morning denied there were any plans to introduce a universal database however.

That’s a relief. For now.