The DNA database has scored a notable win in the Ipswich murders and the murder of another woman. Predictably the imagined glories of holding everyone’s DNA have been raised again. (BBC, DNA database debate urged.) More fodder for the ongoing project of turning us all into good 1984 citizens – purely selfish, totally conforming, great at spending money, fearful of each other and afraid to open our mouths.

The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) has added its voice to calls for a debate on the database issue.
The Chief Constable of Lincolnshire, Tony Lake, speaks for the association on DNA.
He said: “If there was a national database of everybody then we would solve more crime, of that there is absolutely no doubt.

A few instances don’t make the case for the huge attack on civil liberties.

The Ipswich murders appear to have had plenty of other evidence besides just DNA. CCTV footage, for a start. Eye-witnesses. And lots more. The DNA itself would have been pretty shaky without the rest of the evidence.

This shows the uselessness of CCTV footage at preventing crime, although it might help to catch criminals. That goes double for DNA. It has no preventative effect whatsoever.

Unsurprisingly, my priority is NOT to be murdered, rather than to be sure that anyone who murdered me was caught. So, I can’t really think it’s a fair trade for my civil liberties to know that anyone who murders me will do time.

Murderers like the Ipswich killer, who kill for reasons deep in their bizarre psychology, tend to plan out their crimes. They pick on vulnerable people who probably won’t be missed, for example. They are pretty capable of becoming too careful to leave DNA. So, catching serial killers through DNA identification is a one-shot deal. As soon as they understand that leaving DNA is a sure route to being caught, they will just stop leaving it.

That throws us back on standard police work, which is liable to get more and more inept, if relying on technology goes much further.

One obvious flaw with relying too heavily on DNA is how easily it can be faked. An enterprising attacker with half a brain could gather a few hairs, a bit of spittle from a cigarette butt or a discarded cup, the fingernail clippings from a manicurists, the sweat left on a bus seat on a hot day, even……

To all those people who parrot the “if you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear” line, are you willing to bet your liberty and good name on the belief that all criminals are stupid?

Why not just blame the Internet for everything? Well everything wrong with people under 20, anyway. (Everyone over 20 is obviously already incapable of error.) Bullying, teenage suicide, gang warfare? All the fault of the Internet.

Hence, UK ministers plan to restrict children’s access to computer games. According to the Guardian, recommendations likely to be adopted by the Department of Children and Families include a compulsory new licensing system for games, with prosecution for stores who supply games to the wrong age group.

If teenagers were getting killed by well-aimed consoles, then computer games might indeed bear responsibility for youth violence. Otherwise, this is quite a difficult case to make.

The government’s advisors have allegedly reviewed “the literature” to come up with this plan. Maybe, I am just not up with the latest research but I refuse to believe that any evidence to support these policies either exists or could exist.

This project could be a boon for computer games salespeople, of course. The fastest way to cult status amongst teenagers is the tantalising whiff of the forbidden that an over 18 cert would bring. In fact, any of all the political parties’ crackpot suggestions about pin numbers and certification could be overcome for a whole neighbourhood by one reasonably tech-savvy kid. (On the bright side, it might give a few nerds a short-term rise in popularity. Every cloud etc..)

Ministers are also expected to advise parents to keep computers and games consoles away from children’s bedrooms as much as possible, and ask them to play games in living rooms or kitchens facing outward so carers can see what is being played.
Ministers are also expected to recommend blocking mechanisms to protect children from seeing unsuitable games, emails or internet sites. Discussions have already been held with internet service providers to see if an agreement on a standardised filter can be reached.

Translation – make sure your kids are fully adjusted to the ongoing surveillance society by monitoring their every communication.

In fact, why not set up blanket cctv coverage of their conversations with their friends? You don’t want them to reach adulthood unprepared for the realities of life in a modern western democracy.

Just ban whatever you decide they shouldn’t be aware of. You will save years of effort that might otherwise be wasted in discussion and debate and trusting their judgement and accepting their mistakes – all the stuff involved in becoming autonomous and confident adults.

The Independent says today that the Afghan senate withdrew its confirmation of the death sentence on a blogger, after a fair amount of heavy-duty international pressure. (Hat tip to Discernible Chaos for his/her/its report that gives lots of details about the case. The blogger was daring to claim that oppression of women wasn’t ordered by the Koran…...) The blogger’s not been released, of course.

Don’t get all misty-eyed about triumphs for freedom of speech yet.

Also in today’s UK press, the Guardian reports the arrest of a Chinese dissident who used a blog and video diaries to communicate.

Every day there is a fresh news story in the UK, involving yet another distribution of government-held personal data. It’s getting to be too banal to even merit anyone’s attention any more.

Here’s a good comment by “Anonymous Coward” on one of the many Register posts about the UK government’s apparent capacity to randomly distribute its citizens’ personal information like so many drops of water from a lawn sprinkler.

“why they can’t spend some money on a centralised database to which their users can gain access from anywhere, like we in the real world do, is beyond me.”
Prime your irony glands.
Having spent a number of years around central government IT, I imagine it’s because any IT project which involves accessing sensitive data from the big, scary internet (regardless of VPNs etc) becomes so tied up in security accreditation and arse-covering that it never gets anywhere.
So people work around the bureaucracy by copying data to laptops.

The ring of truth there, I suspect.

On the bright side, these incidents are making even the generally gullible UK public pay a bit more attention to the security issues of a national ID database. (Ironically, the whole data vacuuming-up scheme is supposed to be there to improve national security. ROTFL, LOL, 😀 🙂 – insert irritating net smileys here, at will.) If public concern for civil liberties hasn’t raised much successful opposition, even the Daily mail readers’ sense of self-preservation might work.

The government’s accursed ID card project seems to be getting deferred ever further into the future and, with luck, let’s hope it will get quietly dropped.