Posted on 01/04/2006 6:08:30 PM PST by blam
Freedom fears as the DNA database expands
By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor
(Filed: 05/01/2006)
The government was accused last night of compiling a national DNA database "by stealth" as police reported a rapid increase in genetic profiling in recent years.
New Home Office figures estimate that by 2008, the samples of some 4.2 million people - seven per cent of the population - will be contained on a central criminal database, which is growing by about half a million a year.
Damian Green: Alarmed at how fast the database has grown
The system, which held only 700,000 samples when Labour took office in 1997, now exceeds three million and includes 140,000 from people never charged with any offence.
Proportionately it is easily the largest DNA database in the world and is 50 times the size of the French equivalent.
The next largest is in Austria, where less than one per cent of the population is included. The coverage in Germany and America, is half of that.
The growth in the UK database has followed several legal changes allowing the DNA taken from people who are acquitted, or arrested and questioned but never charged - or even cautioned - to be retained indefinitely.
No other country gives its police greater freedom to obtain, use and store genetic information and most remove the profiles if the person is acquitted or not charged.
Opposition parties and civil liberties campaigners complained that the British database has effectively become a "permanent list of suspects" containing the DNA of thousands of people who may have done nothing wrong.
Damian Green, the Tory home affairs spokesman, acknowledged that the database was a valuable crime-fighting weapon but said there had been no national debate about the speed of expansion.
"It is a little alarming to discover how fast the database has grown," he said.
"We need a proper public debate about whether we should be building up such a huge database. If the Government wants a database which has the details of everyone, not just criminals, they should be honest about it and not construct it by stealth."
Andy Burnham: 'UK world leader in use of DNA'
Official figures released to Lynne Featherstone, the Liberal Democrat spokesman, show the base has 125,000 profiles of people arrested but never charged or cautioned. In the past, this DNA would have been destroyed.
The base also holds profiles from 15,000 people questioned during inquiries who allowed their DNA to be kept.
Mrs Featherstone said: "This is an intolerable infringement of liberty and personal privacy.
"There is no purpose or justification for keeping the DNA record of anyone who is not charged with an offence.
"We cannot be absolutely certain that there will be no misuse of the DNA database. There are no real safeguards to control it."
But the Government, which has invested £300 million on expansion over five years, has said it gave the police an invaluable detection tool.
The Home Office report said the number of direct DNA detections rose from 8,612 in 2000 to 19,800 last year. A further 15,700 crimes were detected following investigations linked to original cases where DNA was taken.
Since a law change in 2001 to let police keep DNA from acquitted people, 200,000 profiles that would have been destroyed have been kept.
Of these, 7,500 have been matched with crime scene samples involving 10,700 offences, including 88 murders, 45 attempted murders, 116 rapes and 62 sex attacks.
Last November, a builder was found guilty of a murder and rape he committed in Essex 27 years ago after DNA taken when he was arrested for drink driving matched a sample on the database.
Andy Burnham, the Home Office minister, said: "The UK is a world leader in the use of DNA to detect crime. It has enabled the police to make greater use of ever-improving technology at crime scenes.
"Our main objective now is to ensure that the National DNA Database is kept up to date and that newcomers to crime and those that have so far evaded police attention have their profiles added to it as soon as possible."
Each record on the database contains details of 10 specific sites - called microsatellites - on the human genome.
But Prof Sir Alec Jeffreys, the pioneer of genetic fingerprinting, has suggested this could allow false readings and said the number of DNA markers should be increased to 15.
Ministers have discussed extending sampling to non-criminal areas. The Health Department asked the Human Genetics Commission to consider whether it would be practical to take the DNA of all babies at birth but was advised against this on cost and ethical grounds. But the issue is still "open".
Were you at the scene of the crime or not? What's wrong wit dat?
Imagine what the Nazi government could have done with a DNA database.
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