Tag Archives: DNA-database

Busybodies in the UK

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Today’s Guardian had an interview with a senior police officer who was predicting a summer of rage. This seems a little like a step in a “police bargaining with the government for more resources” strategy, rather than a realistic prediction. (In any case, surely there must be few powers left that the government haven’t already given them.) But, following a link on the page, I found an old story that seems worth a full-blown rant despite it being a year old

A man was arrested by armed police for being armed with an i-pod.

Armed police arrested a man listening to his MP3 player and took a sample of his DNA after a fellow commuter mistook the music player for a gun. (from the Guardian)

His big mistakes were to have a black mp3 player and to get it out of his pocket at a bus stop. Obviously he also stuck the headphones in his ears and listened to it. That bit must have somehow passed right by the eagle-eyed paranoid person who called the police to say that he’d pointed and aimed a gun.

I’ve only ever seen a pistol in movies and on TV but I am still pretty confident that I could distinguish one from an mp3 player.

But, then, I’ve had a good few mp3 players and that might count as specialist knowledge that was denied to the person who phoned this incident in. So maybe it’s an easy mistake to make.

This morning there was a neutron bomb at my bus stop, but, luckily, someone threw an empty packet into it and I realised that it was just a rubbish bin before I’d called in a surgical strike.

This man (fortunately for him, not apparently Brazilian-looking, I assume) was soon surrounded by police, aiming weapons (real ones, not portable dvd players). He was held in a cell and had photographs, fingerprints and – you’ve already guessed it – DNA taken. (It’s probably still there, unless our government plans to follow the European court’s ruling.)

He now has a record on the police national database that says he was arrested on suspicion of carrying an illegal gun. Try and get a job that needs Criminal Records Bureau clearance (i.e. almost any job nowadays) with that on your informal record. (“No smoke without fire”…)

The DNA etc aspects of this case are just par for the course, by our increasingly authoritarian standards, and you can’t blame the police for taking seriously a report that a man was wielding a gun on a bus.

The most distressing thing about the incident was the way that some members of have public have taken the idea of the state-compliant-sneak-on-every-street-corner from the Big Book of How to Live Under Totalitarianism and have run with it. For instance, you might remember the steel band members who had to leave their flight and spend the night in a bus shelter, because of a false report from a fellow passenger.

These eagerly-reporting fellow passengers seem like ballistic weapons themselves – primed by having their heads filled with such constant fear that their perceptions get distorted to fit.

If I’m ever on a public transport service vehicle and someone pulls a gun, I hope that somebody has the presence of mind to act. But, I also really hope that – when I’m carrying a rucksack and listening to my mp3 player – that no paranoid lunatics get me taken awy at the point of an assault rifle.

The UK is turning into a “nation of narks and bullies”, as Marina Hyde said in the Guardian, a couple of months ago, discussing the XFactor-style plans for rating doctors:

…. we become a vast, swarming tribe of people constantly judging one another – a nation of narks too stupid to realise that we are being usefully distracted; a baying, bullying society of people laughing at the incompetent, sneaking on our neighbours, and undermining anyone with the temerity to work themselves into a position of expertise with a press of our red buttons.

European court 1 UK Home Office 0

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The European Court of Human Rights (made up of 17 senior judges – 17, count them- from all over Europe) has ruled that the UK’s determination to keep hold of any DNA it can get its hands on is a breach of human rights.

The whole judgement is magisterially sweet, as reported by the BBC. It’s not on the EC Court of Human Rights’ site yet but you can see some of the details of the case there.

Otimo. Bravo. Wunderbar. Bellissimo. (I’ve run out of pan-European superlatives and have already stretched linguistic capacity too far for these to be exactly right. You get the idea anyway)

It’s a bit embarrassing that the UK has to rely on the House of Lords to throw out 42 detention plans or the European human rights court to challenge creeping authoritarian. But, as a country, we have become so pathetic that we need any help we can get.

More Minority Reports

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(A hat tip to Shefaly for the reference) Phew. Proof that the whole world isn’t going gladly into that dark totalitarian night discussed in the last post.

There’s a page of comments, on the Register article about ACPO’s proposal to extend the DNA database to infants, most of which gladden my heart.

Some are really enraged – in a good way. Some are really witty. Only a few are by fools.

There’s more on the subject at frethink where you can see the text of a Guardian interview with Frankenpugh.

Blood and spit

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What is it with this desire to store the bodily fluids of the entire UK population. Some of us have seen enough sci-fi and Hammer horror films to know when there’s something shady going on. It’s got to be an evil insect overlord or an attempt to create a patchwork new life-form. I am going with the latter. I am almost sure I spotted an Igor outside Scotland Yard.

The “new DNA spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers” clearly thinks the parameters of his job are a bit on the narrow side. Having a huge swathe of the adult UK population’s DNA (almost ten per cent) isn’t enough to satisfy this chap’s crazed thirst for human genetic material.

Gather the pitchforks and burning torches, fellow peasant villagers. Now, they’re baying for the blood of innocents.

Last week it emerged that the number of 10 to 18-year-olds placed on the DNA database after being arrested will have reached around 1.5 million this time next year. Since 2004 police have had the power to take DNA samples from anyone over the age of 10 who is arrested, regardless of whether they are later charged, convicted, or found to be innocent.”

Not enough for the Baron, sadly. Under-ten year-olds are escaping. What, how dare they?

Primary school children should be eligible for the DNA database if they exhibit behaviour indicating they may become criminals in later life, according to Britain’s most senior police forensics expert.

Hmm, profiling? So, kids below the age at which they can actually be held criminally responsible are criminalised. Not being formally accused – they’re junior school kids, remember -they are without access to the normal set of checks and balances that exist to protect adults from unfair accusation – access to a solicitor, and so on.

I agree that there are some truly damaged feral-style kids. Would this do anything to help them or the people they might victimise? No. Would it classify a whole collection of kids as potential criminals? Obviously, yes. And this is a good thing, because?

Obviously Baron Frankenpugh isn’t going to get his wish granted immediately. No, this report is just going to add to a general culture of Stasification. One more insane bit of background noise contributing to what passes for “thought processes” in the mass of fools who say “It’s inevitable” “If you haven’t got anything to hide, you have nothing to fear” and so on.