DNA database: who’s watching your genes?
Published: 23 July, 2009, 14:21
Edited: 15 February, 2010, 11:39
TAGS: Crime, Health, UK, SciTech, Human rights
The National DNA database in the UK currently holds information on five percent of the population, proportionally ten times bigger than its US equivalent, and there are no signs of it being discontinued any time soon.
It was created in 1995 as a crime-fighting tool, and has never been far from controversy. This intensified in 2004, when a law was passed allowing the DNA of innocent people to be retained by the police.
Now, anyone who is simply arrested (and not necessarily cautioned or convicted) has their genetic code entered into the database.
In December, it was ruled that this contravenes the European Convention on Human Rights, but still the database keeps growing.
“We think the DNA database is really out of control,” Helen Wallace, the director of GeneWatch UK, told RT.
“It was set up to keep the DNA of convicted criminals, but now it contains about five million people’s profiles, about a million of whom may well be innocent and many of whom are children.”
Research has shown that the database is racially biased. Three out of every four young black men have their genetic DNA code stored, suggesting the police arrest far more black people than white, even though statistics say whites have a higher rate of offending. Matilda MacAttram, the director of Black Mental Health, argues this effectively criminalizes an entire community.
“Statistically, the genetic heritage of every black citizen in the UK is on a criminal database, even though this group doesn’t have a higher propensity to commit a crime,” she said.
“And in this country, which is held up as a bastion for civil liberties and human rights, one is innocent until proven guilty by a court of law, and until the law changes, that’s what the police who are supposed to be upholding the law should adhere to.”
The organization Black Mental Health UK hopes a change of government at parliamentary elections (which must take place by June next year) will bring about a change in policy concerning the national database.
Opposition parties support the system that currently exists in Scotland where the law on genetic information storage is different from the rest of Britain. There, DNA is collected on arrest, but automatically deleted from files in the vast majority of cases if no charges are brought.
“We need a different system. We need a system where the reality is if you are arrested for an offence and you’re cleared, that your samples are cleared off the system,” David Burrowes, the Shadow Justice Minister pointed out.
“But only in particular circumstances such as those who are charged with serious violence or sexual offenses should they have their samples kept for a period of up to five years, as happens in Scotland,” he added.
In the meantime, the database continues to grow, and introducing the Scottish system isn’t even under discussion by the ruling Labour party.
Despite a decision by the European Court of Human Rights that retaining innocent people’s DNA is illegal, the police are still adding 400,000 profiles to the database every month.
In August, a consultation on the future of the database will be held, but police chiefs at Scotland Yard and the Home Office, responsible for British internal security, still proposes keeping the DNA of innocent people for up to 12 years.
Read also How does my DNA work?
23.07.2009, 12:33
2 comments
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I think it stinks. I sometimes wonder if Orwell - by writing a novel that is so horrifying in its depiction of totalitarianism - unwittingly sounded the death knell for British Democracy. Great thinkers like Churchill and Hardy would never have accepted such a database, particularly a general database that includes the innocent.
A good example of how this is a bad thing: A guy in the UK was arrested when he helped stop a fight outside a pub. Police later apologised and he was never charged with any crime - but his fingerprints and DNA had already been taken. A few months later, he received a letter, asking him to come to a local police station. He went to the police station and was promptly arrested for "theft of post". Apparently, the police had found his DNA on letters from the postal system that had been stolen and then recovered. After some investigations by his lawyer, it was found that the letters on which the police had found his DNA were his own - he had posted some letters, which were amongst those stolen. This is a clear example of why the police are far too stupid to be allowed to have any such database. There is another issue: forensic DNA matching is good enough to distinguish between one in ten million. That means that for a UK population of 60 million, one might expect to get 6 matches for a given DNA sample. If you are unlucky enough to have your DNA on the database and happen to match a sample in this way, you are effectively screwed because juries are told that DNA evidence is incontrovertible. Then there's the issue of planted DNA evidence - there is some evidence that this may already be happening and innocent people are being framed, either by the real criminals or by over-enthusiastic policemen, keen to reach a monthly target. Lastly, there's the more sinister concept of trying to identify people with "criminal" genes. Some companies in the USA are already trying to identify job candidates who may be genetically disposed to certain ilnesses, so as to avoid higher medical insurance costs. It is not much of a stretch to get into the area of trying identify undesirable personality traits, as in the film "Gattica".
Oh yes I remember seeing Gattica. That was one eerie movie.