NEWS > 06 September 2007

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Telegraph.co.uk - United Kingd
06 September 2007

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Millions of reasons not to wid

The threat of crime, whether from an individual rapist or a terrorist group, appears to be pushing this country ineluctably towards the presumption of guilt.

An outstanding example of this trend is yesterday's proposal by an Appeal Court judge that the DNA profiles of the entire population be kept on the national criminal database.

In a BBC interview, Sir Stephen Sedley went even further, suggesting that foreign visitors to Britain should be included as well.

Thus, from the latest figures, the police might have DNA records of more than 90 million people on their files (a resident population of 60 million and 32.7 million tourist visitors in 2006).

Sir Stephen may well believe in the logic of his proposal, though he admitted that its implications were "very serious".

Whatever the case, he has undoubtedly flushed out public opinion on the issue.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights organisation Liberty, rightly described universality as "a chilling proposal, ripe for indignity, error and abuse".

Tony McNulty, a Home Office minister, struck an ambivalent note, saying he was "broadly sympathetic" to the idea but thought that it "probably" underestimated "the practicalities, logistics and huge civil liberties and ethics issue around that".

Such a casual batting away of difficulties is typical of a government notoriously unconcerned about notions of liberty. And in Mr McNulty it has a minister who famously told the BBC that members of the public, rather than intervening directly, should "jump up and down" to draw attention to a crime being committed before their eyes.

DNA samples have a vital role to play in crime detection, which is why their collection merits the widest possible debate as the Home Office continues its review of the 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act.

The goal should be to remove from the database the more than one million people - around a third of the four million samples held - who were suspected of criminal activity but not convicted.

The present, arbitrary process, in which the suspect's consent is generally not required, is simply a move towards universality by stealth.

According to the Home Office, 5.2 per cent of the population are now on the national DNA database, making it the largest in the world.

Extending it beyond those convicted of crimes is, first and foremost, a breach of individual liberty. Given Whitehall's record on managing large-scale computerised schemes, it also has an alarming potential for error.

Sir Stephen's proposal is morally flawed and impractical. But it has the merit of alerting us to the Government's dangerous flirtation with a further retreat from the presumption of innocence.

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Article sourced from

Telegraph.co.uk - United Kingd06 September 2007

Millions of reasons not to wid

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Telegraph.co.uk - United Kingd
06 September 2007