Our DNA
This week, following the convictions of two high profile murderers using DNA evidence, senior police officials have called for the introduction of a national DNA database in the UK. The mandatory database would include the genetic code of all residents and visitors to the UK, regardless of innocence or guilt. The Government was quick to dismiss the suggestion, and I am inclined to support their decision.
It is revealing that the Home Office raised mostly practical concerns with the proposed scheme. Aside from the huge potential cost, they seemed to have realised that the public is becoming distinctly displeased with their losing of data on a truly impressive scale. Storing the DNA information of everyone in the country (even tourists) would, needless to say, pose serious problems were the information to get into criminally-minded hands. Aside from the (not improbable) possibility of the data accidentally being mislaid, we ought to be wary of who would have apparently legitimate access to the data. In early 2007, five civil servants who operated the database were arrested on charges of trying to steal information. The prospect of information loss, then, is not wholly unimaginable.
Even if the Government have learnt from their mistakes in data security, the so-called ethical issues are worrying nonetheless. It is all too easy to cry ‘civil liberties’ as an all-purpose, throwaway remark. Nevertheless, we are not unjustified in maintaining an inexorable opposition to being forced to give our details to such a database. It would erode both our privacy and our position as free individuals in a nation which has always prided itself in peoples’ right to be free from the prying eyes of the state.
Yet there is more to fear than an instinctive dislike. With a government which already seems bent on imprisoning innocent people who somehow have a predisposition to crime, we should be very worried about potential ‘genetic profiling’, even if it is only a distant worry. That it is becoming increasingly possible to uncover the predispositions and characteristics of a person from their DNA alone could make it a devastating weapon for anyone who wanted to weed out potential villains. These would not be thought crimes; worse, they would be genetic crimes: one could be guilty merely of having a genetic propensity to be evil. Once information is collected, it seems, there is no turning back.
Finally, the alarming chance for anomalies with the technology the database would use (Low Copy Number testing) is too great to detail here, but means that it will not stand as evidence in a US court. Reliance on such an unreliable system by the police could in practice hinder the chances of successful prosecutions in important cases.
It is not often that this Government decides in favour of our civil liberties. We should be mighty thankful therefore, that on this lonely occasion, it has.
