'Keep DNA of innocent and guilty alike'

http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=680402005

Originally Posted by :
SCOTTISH ministers are considering controversial new powers to permanently store fingerprint and DNA samples taken from anyone arrested for an imprisonable offence - even if they are found not guilty or not taken to court.

I wonder when they will start demanding CCTV in our own homes.

For our own protection of course.

[Rep]

Not that I want to depress you, but we've had this in England since a law change in April 2004.

Basically, everyone gets dabbed and gob swabbed as soon as they walk in the door (even for non criminal matters)

Don't shoot the messenger, i am no fan of this and have a hard time trying to explain it to people. Its difficult to defend something that you don't actually support in your own heart.

I can see all the pros for it though, it just makes me a little uneasy.

[Rep]

They have to burn it if you are not convicted though don't they?

[Rep]

No, not in England and Wales.

In Scotland they have to dispose of it if you are not convicted, but it looks like that may well change after this 3 month 'neutral' period. Neutrality being effortlessly displayed on Newsnight Scotland last night by some totalitarian Labour excuse for a spokesman, quite clearly advocating the proposed change as 'protection for victims of crime'.

Pity the poor ****** whos 17 year old kid brother gets picked up by the police for no reason and ends up having his DNA on permanant record. 50 years in the future, who can say who will have access to this information, and possibly genetics will advance to a point where they can pick out a 'dissenter' or 'subversive' gene, rightly or wrongly, allowing them to harass people like in the movie, 'Minority Report'.

[Rep]

Maybe in the future, but a DNA test at the moment sends off a mouth swab (or clutch of hairs, guess which one most people volunteer for) off the Birmingham where it is subject to chemical tests and basically a big barcode is produced. The sample itself doesn't survive the testing.
Is not a full blown genetic profile to the point of a full genome (I admit it, I'm a science buff). If it were then I presume they could in theory contact me and say that the sample i took from Joe Bloggs two weeks earlier indicate he has MS or cyctic fibrosis or Huntingtons and we could contact them and let them know.

(Good, bad? would you want to know without asking? - I can't answer that one).

If the samples were kept there would have to be some huge repository full of hair and gob (and a few other things too!) Don't shake hands with the librarian.

In the future though, who knows, they are getting DNA from less and less material (eg dandruff) to the point that it becomes self defeating. After all, what does it prove if one flake of your dandruff ends up near a crime scene in Virginia gardens, or Lake Windemere, both popular tourist spots. There are probably bits of every one of us trailed throughout the general routes we travel, on our cash, buses, trains, beaches, flushed INTO phpbb_the waste system, to the point that if you looked hard enough there would be a bit of me over much of London, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk (with a quick stopover in the Isle of Wight in 1994).

That's the reason that just finding DNA at a crime scene doesn't mean that much, its the context it got there that shows it as relevent.

[Rep]