Anthony Barnett (London, OK): I have now found the link to the original Stephen Sedley January 2005 article in the London Review of Books, in which the Judge set out his full case for a national database of everyone's DNA. I must say I am bewildered by his calm assumption of the State's competence, here are some quotes, but see also the great Spyblog which points to the poor press coverage and, something I'd not heard of, family DNA trawling, "Even with today's technology it is not necessary to have every person in the UK on the DNA database for it to be a hugely powerful tool of oppression and discrimination and harassment".
"It needs to be a strong premise of the discussion that the DNA data on the police national computer is to be used solely – as it now is by law – for the purposes of preventing, detecting, investigating and prosecuting crime. Cross-referral for medical purposes raises other issues – for example, discriminatory insurance practices – which do not have to cloud the present question. There is a parallel case to be made for a separate national register maintained for benign purposes, such as identifying disaster victims without the distressing procedure of taking samples from their close relatives, or tracing lost or abducted children, and perhaps one day for making medical prognoses. If this were to be the sole authorised national database – and it is much harder to find civil liberties objections to it than to a police database – provision would have to be made for a restricted, and perhaps judicially authorised, linkage to the police national computer where a need could be proved."
He accepts that "There remains the concern about possible abuse, that the police might in future use the data not merely for detection but for personality profiling – especially since one of the purposes already sanctioned by law is crime prevention. I think this concern is real....[But] we ought also perhaps to have something larger in mind: that the perennial risk of future abuse is a sound argument against needed present reform only if it is a risk which cannot be adequately guarded against. He concludes,
"I readily accept that a national police DNA database will not be the end of the road. Not only will the growing range of information obtainable from DNA profiles put pressure on Parliament in future years to enlarge the uses to which the database may be put; there will be calls for separate and parallel databases dedicated to other purposes. Few if any will be able to achieve legislative backing, but a number may start to operate by a form of take-it-or-leave-it coercion: in other words, the price of securing a benefit – insurance, for example – may be that you provide a DNA sample and consent to any analytical use the holder wishes to make of it. To the extent that the adoption of a universal statutory police register of DNA profiles may help to make such moves seem acceptable, I accept that it is undesirable. But the answer for a modern society has to be tight controls, of the sort that the data protection legislation is already accustoming us to, on the misuse of information.
There is, in other words, no gain without risk; but in a society disturbed not only by serious crime but by the possibility of people being mistakenly acquitted or convicted of it, the potential gain represented by a comprehensive national DNA register is considerable; and the risks, so long as they are confronted, are controllable. I make no case for or against the introduction of compulsory identity cards; but a society which feels able, as ours does, to give serious consideration to such a step ought not to turn its face away from the case for a universal DNA register as part of a modern criminal justice system."
