If you have fingerprints it’s a lot harder to harvest fingerprints and move them to crime location.

There’s also the issues that a finger print is just that, a finger print. DNA is considerably more. You cannot tell gender, race, propensity to disease, psychological tendencies and various other factors from a finger print that you can from DNA.

My DNA is everything I am, everything I have been and everything I will be, or could be. I’d be a lot less concerned about a fingerprint database than I would be about a DNA database. But, my liberal instinct still insists that having such a database for innocent people is highly illiberal and just plain wrong.

I think a liberal society is one where the focus is on making sure that an innocent person is never wrongly convicted and the price for that is that sometimes the guilty walk free. The universal DNA (or just a fingerprint) database is a step in the direction of reversing that attitude; you’d rather give up your rights to make sure criminals are caught. Instead of the police figuring out who could have done it then using DNA evidence to prove it, they just look you up in the database and if you can’t prove you weren’t there you’re guilty. The state no longer needs to prove you guilty, the burden is now on you to prove yourself innocent. A fundamental reversal of the principles of our society.

I mean why do we allow witnesses in court at all? Has nobody considered the possibility that they might lie?

We really are getting too far ahead of ourselves here, Martin. There is no way on earth you can get these things out of a DNA fingerprint which consists of about a dozen locus points. The fingerprint identifies the person – that is all.

Tell me how you can distinguish between a DNA swab that’s for a fingerprint and one that’s for an entire genome map?

The point is that once the government has the swab what’s to stop it doing additional tests on it? “He take a swab anyway, might as well test for condition X, Y, Z while we’re at it.” All it would take is a quick vote in parliament by a majority government and it’s law and there’s nothing the public can do about it. The first tests might be for something beneficial like tendency to alzheimers or diabetes, to help the NHS in planning and assigning resources. Then more and more tests are added and more and more information like that is stored.

It’s not that bad Lois. Just think of it as a trivial medical procedure, which might even save your life.
It’s not that bad Lois. Just think of it as a trivial medical procedure, which might even save your life.

Or, more likely destroy it. If your DNA is picked out of the database you’re a suspect in a crime. That’s the whole point of it isn’t it? Once criminals start deliberately contaminating crime scenes with random DNA we’ll get masses of false positives (we already get quite a few nowadays, DNA fingerprinting isn’t the exact science it’s made out to be on TV, it can only give probabilities of a match, sometimes as low as 1 in 10, or 1 in 20).

The problem I see with the DNA database is that it removes the presumption of innocence. If your DNA is matched then you are guilty until you can prove you’re innocent. The police and CPS won’t be forced to explain why your DNA is there, you’ll be forced to explain why it shouldn’t be there. You’re guilty… and if you can’t show an alibi, you’re off to jail, even if you’re innocent.

Thank heaven for small mercies!

Chris Phillips

Had Blair’s brain not been so befuddled by religion, I think he might have made one of the great PMs. But I’m afraid he completely blew it.

Not quite so hypothetical.

Whether I’d disobey the law, if I was legally obliged to provide a DNA sample? No, I shouldn’t.

I’m glad to hear it.

Whatever your question means, it seems like a diversionary tactic to me.

My question didn’t mean anything more than it said. No need for diversions, though I don’t think I have a great deal more to say on the subject.

What are you asking?

Whether I’d change my mind and support it, in the hypothetical circumstance that a majority of the population supported it? Of course not.

Whether I’d disobey the law, if I was legally obliged to provide a DNA sample? No, I shouldn’t.

But none of that has any bearing on the argument. Whatever your question means, it seems like a diversionary tactic to me.

Chris Phillips

? ? ? ?

My position is that I’m against your universal DNA database.

Had I not made that clear enough for you already?

Chris Phillips

We really are getting too far ahead of ourselves here, Martin. There is no way on earth you can get these things out of a DNA fingerprint which consists of about a dozen locus points. The fingerprint identifies the person – that is all.

Probably. But I think that rather than continuing to take shots at me, you really ought to make your own position clear. I am perfectly well aware of the fact that liberty and democracy are two separate things, and that liberty needs some sort of special protection. So, for instance, if the majority of a population wish to persecute homosexuals (which is pretty much how things have been throughout most of history) then that is wrong. In short, democracy is not a mechanism for allowing a majority to exert a tyranny over a minority.

Now, are you seriously telling me that a DNA database would come into that category? I only ask, because it isn’t altogether clear. Suppose 60%, 75% want a DNA database? Can we have one? If not, then at what percentage? I’m just talking broad brush principle here. It’s time we wised up to the fact that the public at large do not necessarily buy into the civil liberties agenda so beloved of Westminster liberals. When it comes to DNA, street cameras, even ID cards (which I’m against by the way), people are quite able to imagine how these things might even protect their liberties, not threaten them.

I think that on DNA and other issues, we are very much in danger of going down some self-indulgent path of political purity, leaving the electorate to vote for parties with sensible practical alternatives.

Laurence Boyce has now evidently thought better of it, and says:
“Forget God – she doesn’t exist. It’s nobody’s “fault” as such.”

Is it asking too much that you’ll avoid wasting everyone’s time with such patent silliness in the future?

Chris Phillips

‘The public will never (in my view) go for implantable devices, because that is abhorrent and intrusive. The public will (in my view) go for a DNA database, because that is not abhorrent and intrusive’

I FIND THE WHOLE CONCEPT OF BIG BROTHER BEING ALLOWED TO STICK A SWAB INSIDE MY MOUTH TO GET A DNA SAMPLE – IRRESPECTIVE OF WHETHER OR NOT I MIGHT HAVE DONE ANYTHING WRONG – UTTERLY ABHORRENT AND INTRUSIVE.

(caps lock on deliberately)

Oh and I can’t trust big brother not to misuse the data.

Forget God – she doesn’t exist. It’s nobody’s “fault” as such. I’m in favour of a DNA database. So are lots of other people. It will happen. By 2020 at least. That’s my hunch.

You’re just being fatalistic. Just because you feel something is inevitable, doesn’t mean it’s right or even a good and desirable thing.

I’d argue that most people “in favour” are actually people that “don’t object to” the DNA database, which is a very different stance. I’d also argue that most people haven’t thought through the implications yet. Just as with ID cards “most people” were in favour, until they started learning about all the implications, now most people aren’t in favour. Also ID cards looked certain a couple of years ago, they don’t anymore.

According to the metro the other day 1 in 500 people in this country are being detained “At Her Majesty’s Pleasure” for criminal, mental or immigration reasons. He have the highest per-capita prisoner population in Europe (2nd only to the US in the western world, if I recall correctly). Do you think this DNA database will decrease this number?

The DNA database presumes that everyone is a criminal, they just haven’t committed their crime yet, so we’ll store their DNA for the day when they do. Why don’t we just lock everyone up straight away after birth and be done with it?

As to fault, it’s the fault of a population that’s letting itself be more and more controlled and monitored by the government because of a climate of fear inspired by a media that (quite understandably) dwells on the most awful and horrible and frightening stories; giving the impression those are the norm, not the exception. We need to help people better understand risk assessment and consequently allow people to realise that a 1 in 1000 chance of being “whatevered” also means a 99.9% chance of not being “whatevered”.