Human Rights Court Calls UK DNA Database a 'Breach of Rights'

psmears writes "Describing a judgment that is likely to rein in the scope of the UK DNA database, where at present the DNA of those arrested by the police is kept permanently (even if the people concerned are never convicted, or even charged), the BBC reports that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that keeping such people's DNA in the database 'could not be regarded as necessary in a democratic society.'" Reader megla adds a link to the full text of the judgement.

Figures...

where at present the DNA of those arrested by the police is kept permanently (even if the people concerned are never convicted, or even charged)

I'm pretty sure they already do this in the US with fingerprints. No conviction? Well, if we find your fingerprints at any crime scene in the future, you're gonna get it.

Re:Figures...

Unlike fingerprints your DNA can also be used to partially identify relatives as well. Law enforcement could use this to make partial dna matches to a person that would otherwise not be in the system if a relative already was.

Re:Figures...

So you'll happily post your bank account number and PIN code, then? How about your Social Security number and real name (and if not a US Citizen, similar ID)?

Privacy may or may not be "contrary to democracy", but it is essential to any civilized society. I seriously do not want or need to know how often you do anything sexual and in what ways. I also have zero interest or need to know your bank account access details, what kind of food you eat or may be allergic to, or any other detail that is usually private for that matter.

That's the thing - there's a huge difference between information that is in the Public Interest (e.g. criminal records, court proceedings, Deeds and property abstracts, etc), and stuff that only you know about and would prefer to not spread around.

/P

Re:Figures...

Democracy relies on people having access to as much information as possible so they can make wise decisions. Privacy is contrary to democracy.

A bold but vague statement.

Access to information is good, but it should be relevant information. A lot of private information is irrelevant to participation in a democracy.

Re:Figures...

Democracy relies on people having access to as much information as possible so they can make wise decisions.

I think you're confusing democracy with capitalism. Capitalism requires the public to have as much information as possible about products and organizations. Democracy requires the government to have only as much information about its citizens as are necessary. As others are pointing out, privacy is necessary to avoid tyranny.

Re:Figures...

When did the ability to obfuscate the truth about things and operate from the shadows become an important part of democracy?

At, or at least not later than, the time the secret ballot became an important part of democracy.

Re:Figures...

I'm not sure where you live, but Secret Ballots [wikipedia.org] are part of just about every western democracy. That's right, privacy is pretty much integral to all modern democracies.

Re:Figures...

I've been told that in Michigan if you are not convicted you can file to have your fingerprints pulled from the database. I don't know how it works elsewhere.

The terrorists have won!

Well, now whenever someone gets off, they'll bemoan those "damn bleeding heart liberals who let another one get away over their preeeeciiious rights". What nobody on either side of the debate wants to admit is -- you can't have a perfect justice system. No matter how much technology, funding, profiling, science, and everything else you throw at it, it will be flawed. Innocent people will be found guilty, guilty people will get away, and there will always be doubt and speculation.

As a society we have to decide what's more important: Catching as many criminals as possible, or providing a system that is as fair as possible. The two are mutually exclusive -- you either bias towards letting the guilty get away so the innocent are not needlessly punished, or you sacrifice some innocents to "protect the greater good".

The Court here has basically told the UK -- The rights of the many outweigh the sins of the few.

Re:The terrorists have won!

> With this ruling, what they're saying now is that this hypothetical person would walk, because the DNA sample would not be in the database.

Yes, the same way his DNA wouldn't be in the database, when he hadn't have been arrested for a crime he didn't commited in the first place.
Or the same way, this hypothetical person walks free, because not all persons are DNA sampled from birth, or have to wear a GPS tagged collar the whole day around.

The point is, a person being arrested, but not convicted, is not guilty. The same way everyone else is.

Cynical about the EU no longer.

Sometimes I'm cynical about the EU. To be sure, there is a lot of completely pointless and stupid busy work such as regulating the curvature of bananas and so on. On the other hand, the UK government seems capable of such outright maliciousness that the only thing we have left is the EU. I'll take bouts of stupid and useless over bouts of mindless repression any day.

The sad thing is, we neither elect the EU nor the house of lords. Yet I find myself agreeing with them much more often than with the elected government. Well, what do you expect? Despite getting only 37% of the votes cast, they act like they earned their large majority.

About time too

As a British citizen I'd say that this practice was an absolute outrage. If someone has been officially charged and found guilty then fair enough, a DNA profile is justified as part of the price of doing the crime. But to do this merely on arrest is a gross affront to civil liberties and one that has left 1/12 of the population on this database.

The argument is often made that it is a handy tool for solving past crimes and if you have done nothing wrong then you have nothing to fear. I beg to differ.

There have already been cases of criminals planting false DNA on crime scenes (Dr. John Schneeberger of Canada) and, while the technology is very useful, it is not the be all and end all of evidence.

Easily fixed

keeping such people's DNA in the database 'could not be regarded as necessary in a democratic society.'"

Jacqui Smith will just ensure we're no longer listed as a democratic society. That should side-step this issue.

I tried so hard to think up an insightful comment

I really did, I tried so hard to think up an insightful comment in response to this story but all that I could do was sit giggling to myself at how upset Jacqui Smith is over this and how she aint gonna sleep well tonight.

For those that don't know, Jacqui Smith has been involved in or is responsible for:
- UK ID card scheme where every citizen has a biometric ID card
- A national database of every single child's details
- 42 days of detention without trial for terror suspects
- This very DNA database of even innocent people
- Plans for a scheme to store all telephone call, text message and e-mail records
- Massive nationwide CCTV surveillance programs
- Silencing of political opponents by using heavy police force
- Allowing local councils to use terrorist laws to spy on citizens to catch them for such offences as trying to get their kids into a specific school outside their catchment area or letting their dog foul in a public place
- Creating a scheme for newspapers to put up wanted posters from CCTV images of people dropping litter

There are plenty more but simply too many for me to remember all of them right now. This woman is evil and must be stopped, period. We can't put the blame on just her however because people like Gordon Brown have the power to stop her but aren't and opposition parties could be far, far more vocal about how evil this woman actually is and yet they're not.

I'm pretty sure the lives of our grandparents here in the UK and the rest of the world weren't given on the beaches of Normandy, the fields of France and other places so that it would eventually be our own government that would rise up against us and begin to enforce the same level of dictatorship as seen in the many facist nations during World War II. The very fact Jacqui Smith is pushing for this kind of regime should make it the responsibility of everyone with the power to make a noise- politicians, media and so forth to stand up and refuse to accept this. It is the complacency and ignorance amongst the average joe on the street towards this type of thing that makes me understand now how over time evil totalitarian regimes can arise.

I do not believe Britain will every reach the point Jacqui Smith is hoping thanks to the EU injecting at least a little bit of common sense into the situation as per this article but the very fact that she has been allowed to get this far is simply unacceptable in a modern, free society.

Re:My complaint about the committee that approves

You lost me at "Phlegmatic cockalorums". Allow me to retort - Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. Then you'll be a mile away, and have his shoes.

Re:Hold on a moment. Wacky Jackie might not agree

The police have really overstepped the mark these past few years and it's showing with their latest search of the MPs office.

They think their above the law and I'm sick of these policemen that never get charged with doing anything wrong.

Off the top of my head the police have been caught speeding, killing people because their visa expired, racial abuse, searching without a warrent, etc. They're above the law and I am happy they have been bought down a peg, even though it's a pretty small victory.

They still no to be more responsible for what they do.

Re:Do I mind if the government keeps my DNA on fil

I mean, what is the government going to do with my DNA? Clone me? Invade my privacy by finding out what diseases I'm vulnerable to?

Use it to drag you out of your house and charge you with a crime you may or may not have committed, just because a computer says that you might be the suspect based on that DNA (when in truth you may well not be). All it would take is for a small database corruption or some programmatic error, and suddenly you end up having a lot of explaining to do, even if you have nothing to explain.

There's also the 'what if' angle of if/when your government gets repressive. Easier to figure out where and who you are down the road when they have DNA to match you up against...

/P

Re:Do I mind if the government keeps my DNA on fil

All it would take is for a small database corruption or some programmatic error

Actually, less than that. All it takes is a misunderstanding of statistics. If you have a large DNA database and a DNA sample from a crime-scene, then if you use it to find suspects - as many politicians would like to do - then you are bound to get a significant number of false positives, even when the tests are very accurate. The "1 in a billion" statistics that get thrown around regarding DNA matches estimate the chances of two random people matching. Once you expand your search to a country of 60m, the chances of a coincidental match is significant. Read up on the birthday paradox. And because people are told the "1 in a billion" statistic, whoever gets fingered for the crime is seen to have a massive chunk of evidence pointing to his guilt.

There's also the 'what if' angle of if/when your government gets repressive.

That argument has never really held weight with me. Do you also advocate gay people remaining in the closet? After all, if people know that they are gay, then if the government decides to execute gay people, they are fucked. How about atheists? People who wear glasses?

Re:Do I mind if the government keeps my DNA on fil

Are you kidding me? This is the government that loses data left, right and centre and you don't mind them maintaining your DNA?

Then perhaps you'd like to hear about the case in the US where two men one white, one black both had the same genetic markers in the police database?

or how about when you are called in for a crime you didn't commit like Jill Dando case where they matched the wrong guy's DNA. The evidence was so strong there right? The amount of DNA evidence was almost nothing yet the court was in the mindset of DNA == foolproof.

Re:Do I mind if the government keeps my DNA on fil

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jul/20/local/me-dna20 [latimes.com]

Google it yourself next time [letmegoogl...foryou.com].. or is that too difficult for you?

Re:Do I mind if the government keeps my DNA on fil

It is probably worth noting that DNA evidence can be wrong... There have been numerous cases in which a false positive led to someone being wrongly imprisoned. The probability of false positives is significantly higher than most people realize as well. This mostly has to do with the fact that they only sequence part of your DNA -- the parts most likely to differ from one person to the next. This introduces a statistical error rate.

It's a dirty little secret.

Re:Do I mind if the government keeps my DNA on fil

Not particularly, no. I don't really mind the government maintaining a DNA database.

This is the same UK government that is so expertly careful about protecting [scmagazineuk.com] personal [theregister.co.uk] information [securitypark.co.uk]. Any information you give them (and I mean anything... contact details, date of birth, NI number (=SSN for you Americans), medical history, tax returns, your library borrowing list that shows you have a penchant for lycanthropic porn, etc. etc.) you may as well cut out the middleman and post it on MySpace for the world to read, chances are it will become that public in short order anyway. And you're willing to trust them with your DNA?

In that case I have a bridge you may be interested in purchasing...

Re:Do I mind if the government keeps my DNA on fil

You do realize that they don't store the entire sequence in the database. DNA identification is based on a set of marker pairs, which are considered to be among the most variable in the human genome. It is of no use in mapping the genome. Close pairs have been discovered between completely unrelated people in the existing databases. So a plausible scenario: DNA shows a close match with your brother who was detained but never charged nor convicted (protesting against new 3 strikes law). As a result the Police pull you in as a "person of interest" since a close match is usually interpreted as matching someone related. Your boss finds out you have been questioned for murder at the same time you are competing with another co-worker for a promotion. Guess who gets the promotion?

Re:Do I mind if the government keeps my DNA on fil

Not particularly, no. I don't really mind the government maintaining a DNA database

...

I mean, what is the government going to do with my DNA? Clone me? Invade my privacy by finding out what diseases I'm vulnerable to?

How about convict you of crimes you didn't do? Here's how it goes down.

1. Some criminal who is not you, and whose DNA is not on file, commits a crime, and carelessly leaves behind some DNA.
2. Police get the DNA, and run it against the DNA database, looking for a match. Yours matches. And yes, this can happen. I'll cover why below.
3. You are charged with the crime. The jury is mightily impressed with the DNA evidence, and your lack of an alibi. Welcome to jail!

It is a popular misconception that DNA tests uniquely identify people. That would be true (ignoring twins...) if they compared at enough positions. However, such tests are expensive. So what they actually do is compare at a few positions.

This is not enough to uniquely identify you. It is enough to narrow the possibilities down to, in a good case, a handful of people. When that is combined with non-DNA evidence, it is almost certain.

For instance, suppose you've got a woman raped, robbed, and murdered. Through traditional police methods, you find out that she was seen shortly before the crime arguing with her ex-boyfriend who was stalking her, and that she had a pizza delivered where the delivery man turned out to be a paroled serial rapist, and finally, a burglar had been known to be working the neighborhood at the time of the crime, and he had some of her jewelry when he was caught a few days later (but claims he found it on the ground and was never in her house).

Do a DNA test on those three suspects and get a match on one, and you've got your criminal. Sure, there might be a dozen (or even hundreds or thousands, depending on the test you do) people in the world that match, but the chances that someone would have been identified as a suspect through non-DNA traditional police methods AND be one of those dozens (or hundreds...) are low.

In other words, the proper way to use DNA testing is to use it in a Bayesian fashion with other evidence to seal the deal.

Without safeguards in place to prevent misuse of the database (such as using it to pick suspects in lieu of finding suspects the old fashioned way), an incomplete DNA database is a major risk to your rights, if your DNA is included.

Re:Breach of rights until...

Nice troll, but I'll bite. The one crucial aspect you're missing has to do with the word "arrested". It's justifiable to store somebody's DNA after he's been convicted. But an arrest is just an accusation. There is no due process, no judge, no jury, nothing of the sort. There ought to be no penalty for an arrest alone. That's what "due process" means.