[Gllug] Data protection/police powers/DNA database: survey

[Nix]

On 3 Nov 2006, tethys at gmail.com uttered the following:

> On 11/2/06, Alain Williams <addw at phcomp.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> What do you think of the police collecting everyone's DNA in a big database ?
>>
>> It won't be abused or will it ?
>
> Stupid question. Of course it will be abused.

I'm obviously stupid, but how can you abuse DNA? If everyone or nearly
everyone ends up on this database, their mere presence on the database
won't suffice as evidence of anything: and if you really *were* in a
bank shortly before it was robbed, it may very well be in the public
interest for the coppers to have a word: not because you're a suspect
but because you're a potential witness. The police already *have*
fairly good mechanisms for identifying potential witnesses: I can't
really see anything wrong with them getting another one.

The dangers are elsewhere. It's not abuse that's the problem, or,
rather, it's not only abuse. I fear much worse miscarriages of justice
from other sources.

 - twins aren't a problem, but the current `DNA fingerprinting' schemes
   just snaffle the state of a few dozen SNPs. A database that contains
   entire genome sequences isn't going to be practical for some time,
   and until then it's not just twins who can be falsely believed
   identical: it's any close relative. (And even if it does contain
   entire genome sequences, the comparison algorithm needs to contain
   fuzz anyway: our cells aren't all genetically *identical*, after
   all.)

 - the data is untrustworthy. Serious criminals will doubtless be able
   to have their data swapped with someone else with a suitable bribe to
   the right person: a strange sort of identity theft leading to the
   wrong person getting suspected. If the government is really stupid
   and the ID card db actually works (P(0.000005) if you ask me) the DNA
   stuff will be cross- correlated with name and current address,
   allowing criminals to swap their records with people in the same
   geographic area, who aren't going to be so easily eliminated (`this
   DNA belongs to a four-year-old child in Stratford: I don't think he
   was likely to be the twentysomething man who held up the HSBC in
   Bedford last week').

   I expect this to be the downfall of the scheme, in the end: the
   police won't use it if it keeps on fingering innocents. Even corrupt
   police chasing quotas won't keep on using it if it keeps on fingering
   people who are blatantly obviously innocent so their cases get thrown
   out of court instantly. (See the effect on the FBI of the `evidence'
   acquired from a certain tortured madman in the US in 2003. Lots of
   plots, all entirely confabulated. See also what the FBI ended up
   doing with the `leads' from the massive wiretapping project: the
   closest thing they could politically do to binning them as soon as
   they came in the door.)

-- 
`When we are born we have plenty of Hydrogen but as we age our
 Hydrogen pool becomes depleted.'
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