UK Police Arresting People Just To Add To DNA Database?

from the civil-rights? dept

We were just talking about how pretty much any government database will get abused by government employees eventually. But it's not just on the accessing or revealing of data that this can happen. How about the collection of data as well? Jabberwocky alerts us to the news that police in the UK have supposedly been arresting innocent people just to add them to the UK's DNA database. The report looking into this, sarcastically titled "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear?" finds that nearly one in five of the DNA records in the database are from innocent people. And part of that is an "arrest first, ask questions later" policy towards collecting DNA:

The commission had received evidence from a former police superintendent that it was now the norm to arrest offenders for everything possible. "It is apparently understood by serving police officers that one of the reasons, if not the reason, for the change in practice is so that the DNA of the offender can be obtained," said Montgomery, adding that it would be a matter of very great concern if this was now a widespread practice.

Oh yeah, to make matters worse: "there is very little concrete evidence on the importance of the DNA match in leading to a conviction and whether the suspect would have been identified by other means anyway." Don't you feel safer now?

Filed Under: arrests, civil rights, database, dna, privacy

UK DNA Database Found To Violate Human Rights

from the storing-non-convict-DNA dept

A European court has slapped down the UK for violating human rights with its fingerprint and DNA database, in that it retained the data on people not convicted of crimes. Until now, the UK police recorded fingerprints and DNA info on everyone arrested, but two guys who weren't convicted felt that their info should be deleted from the database, and the court has now agreed. The UK's defense was that "this info is important in fighting crime." Of course, so would be forcing everyone to wear a GPS device and record everything they do on cameras only the police can watch -- but we don't allow that because it's a violation of privacy. Either way, the UK now needs to start destroying info in its database and purge its data on other people who weren't convicted.

Filed Under: dna, fingerprints, human rights, uk