A Nation Of Suspects?
Do you think your details should be stored on the national DNA database? That is the question being put to the public.
A consultation has been launched on whether laws allowing police to take, store and analyse DNA from suspects, witnesses and victims should be revised.
The Nuffield Council on Bioethics says that in England and Wales, police have powers, “unrivalled internationally”, to take DNA from an arrested person without consent.
His or her DNA profile is stored on the National DNA Database indefinitely, irrespective of whether or not charges are brought.
“We want to hear the public’s views on whether storing the DNA profiles of victims and suspects who are later not charged, or acquitted, is justified by the need to fight crime,” said Professor Bob Hepple QC, chairman of the Council.
The Council will examine whether it would be fairer to include everyone on the database, a process that Prof Hepple said would take a couple of generations to complete and involve enormous costs.
He said this raised the issue of whether people wanted “to become instead of a nation of citizens, a nation of suspects?”
The UK’s National DNA Database was set up in 1995 and is the largest per capita in the world, with profiles of more than three million people.
In Scotland, those who are not charged, or are acquitted, may have their samples removed.
Meanwhile, The Guardian claims that millions of personal medical records are to be uploaded to a central database, regardless of patients’ wishes.
It says that details of mental illnesses, abortions, pregnancy, HIV status, drug-taking or alcoholism may also be included, while there are no laws to prevent DNA details from being added.
A Guardian inquiry found a lack of safeguards against access to the records once they have been uploaded.
The move is part of the Government’s plans to computerise the entire health service.
Should we all have our data in a national DNA bank ?
Why ?
Why not ?
