"The logic of the government's position would be to take every man, woman and child in the country and put them on the database just in case. . The bigger the database the greater the risk for accident error and abuse." Shami Chakrabarti, head of Liberty, on the BBC's Today programme May 7th, 2009
All those who are worried about the slow destruction of fundamental freedoms would do well to listen to last Thursday's Today programme debate on the government's DNA database. The debate goes to the root of the Westminster government's thinking (caught from the EU, no doubt) that if it could only know more and more about us and have greater control over our lives then it could make life safer for us all. I reject that mind set out of hand as incredibly dangerous and naïve. The interviews will be available for a few more days at The BBC Radio 4 Podcast site. Listen and understand the yawning gap. Gasp at the lack of understanding of the problem, and the anti-freedom agenda that is totally misunderstood by this government's ministers. Note also the distortion of the facts, so ably brought into clear focus by Shami Chakrabarti when she points out .....
[Photo: Empty Justice]
that this can affect all of us, very easily. This time the problem rests with the Home Office, but the sister ministry, the Ministry of Justice seems to be riddled with the same disease.
The national DNA database contains the DNA of people who are innocent. The European Court of Human Rights, last year, ruled that this situation must change and that the Westminster government must remove the entries for innocent people, thought to be about 850,000 in England.
Home Office minister Vernon Coaker said that people accused of violent crimes, rape or terrorism will have their details removed, but not for 12 years. I have typed out most, but not all, of the interviews below.
Vernon Coaker. For serious and violent offences, keeping the DNA of those people, the profile will help us solve crimes, and as I say what we are about is protecting the public but also the respecting the privacy of the individual and that's the balance that we are trying to strike.
BBC interviewer, John Humphrys. But if somebody is innocent how will keeping their DNA database help you solve crime?
V.C. Because we know that if somebody is arrested say for a serious and violent offence then we will keep it for 12 years and we know that many of those people will go on to re-offend and keeping that [interrupt]
J.H.. Hang on. Go on to re-offend? But, if they haven't offended already, if they are innocent by definition then they haven't offended.
V.C.. No, but what I am saying is that if you keep the DNA of somebody who is arrested of an offence, a serious and violent offence or a more minor offence, if you keep that DNA then you've got that intelligence available to you, and what we've found is that since keeping DNA of people who have been arrested sometime in the future, it's been found that those people do go onto commit further crime or DNA has been found or DNA has been found at another crime scene and we have been able to use the DNA to match that with the DNA you have kept and it's meant [interrupt]
J.H. But again you have used the expression further crime. We're talking here about innocent people and I can only repeat because I am deeply puzzled by this by definition if they are innocent, they haven't committed a crime so they cannot commit a further crime.
V.C. But what has happened since we've kept the DNA of people on arrest, that DNA has been kept on the database it's then in the future at sometimes been kept and we've done the research on it; we've found that DNA has been taken from other crime scenes and when that DNA has been compared to DNA that has been kept on the database of people that are innocent it has lead to people who have committed murder, people who have committed rape, people who have committed serious violent offences being matched against that on the database and people have therefore been able to be identified because you have a DNA match.
J.H. Right, so we're actually then, we're making the assumption aren't we that the presumption of innocence doesn't actually hold. What we are saying is "yea, you were nicked: you went through the process: you were found not guilty but actually the system regards you as being a potential criminal, rapist, terrorist, whatever it happens to be because you've been arrested in the first place. It doesn't sound like justice.
V.C. Well, what it does is to say that the intelligence that you can gather from people who are arrested means that you have a database with which you can compare DNA samples which are taken from crime scenes; match them and what that then does is enable you to bring to justice people who would've otherwise have got away with a crime and indeed given victims of crimes, the justice that they seek.
J.H. I see that, but actually what you are doing is you are saying "we've got two groups of people here, we've created two groups of people, we've got the innocent and we've got the really innocent."
V.C. What we've got is intelligence we can use in order to detect crime.
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Shami Chakrabarti, head of Liberty . I think the minister has given the game away. This isn't necessarily a complete two fingers to the Court of Human Rights but it comes pretty close because, as you've heard, he makes no distinction between people currently arrested and under suspicion, people who were arrested but let go by the police, perhaps on a demonstration, 5 minutes after arrest.
J.H. We are talking about serious offences remember.S.C. Well, actually we are talking about 2 things. The government's going to keep DNA, we're told, DNA for people not even for sexual or violent offences but for all offences, for six years, regardless of whether they are even charged let alone convicted and then if they were arrested for what they're loosely calling a sexual or violent offence, I wonder what that means in practice, then it will be 12 years. Six years is a very long time for Damian Green, I would argue.
V.C. Did go onto to point out that all of this is still at the consultation phase, despite the Court's ruling.
From the BBC Today Website:
Up to 850,000 innocent people on a national DNA database will have their profiles wiped. Home Office minister Vernon Coaker and Shami Chakrabarti, head of Liberty, discuss if DNA evidence should be retained for up to 12 years.