DNA samples from everyone?
The Home Office website states that " Maintaining and developing the database is one of the government’s top priorities..........However, there are no plans to introduce a universal compulsory or voluntary, DNA database.". However recent consultation proposals to extend the database would achieve much of this by the back door.
At the moment only people arrested for "recordable" offences (in effect imprisonable offences) are liable to have their DNA samples taken. Once taken, they remain upon the DNA database even if they are acquitted.
What is now proposed is that this be extended to all offences. This would include the ability for the police to take DNA samples at the scene of the alleged crime. The likely method would be by mouth swab. This would mean that if you were stopped for speeding you will go on the DNA database (even if acquitted). It is not clear whether in practice they would seek to take routine samples from everyone subject to prosecution through being logged on a speed camera.
The police and the CPS are all in favour of such an extension of the database. They point to the usefulness of having DNA samples on the database to be checked against scene of crime finds.
Whilst it is true that DNA samples taken for one crime can often be of great assistance in respect of another (someone arrested for a petty theft may prove to have been a rapist long sought for) there are strong privacy reasons for not extending the database. It is already a matter of concern that those who are acquitted find their details left on the database. Extending the database in the way proposed would lead to massive numbers of people having their details upon it.
Nor is it a sufficient objection that "the innocent have nothing to fear". DNA is the recipe for making that particular human being. There are many ways already in which analysis of that DNA could tell you a considerable amount about that person. This is only going to increase over time. People who have not committed a crime, once they are cleared, should not have such personal and private details kept upon a public database. Nor is it acceptable or appropriate that those charged with trivial offences (still less those acquitted of them) should have their details kept.
There are even more serious concerns. There are many instances of police (only a tiny minority but no less significant for that) abusing their position. Only in the last week Nottingham gangster Colin Gunn was convicted at Birmingham Crown Court of two charges of conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office. This he did by corruptly using two police officers to search the police national computer and provide information to him in connection with murder investigations. Police officers abusing their position through working with gangsters is at the top end of the scale, but others might do it for commercial organisations. In any event it cannot be assumed that DNA kept on the database would be immune from improper access or use.
The Home Office seems to have accepted the principle (for cogent reasons of privacy) that the DNA database should not be extended to everyone. A similar effect should not be sought by this proposed massive extension.