The funny old thing about Nanny is that if she can't achieve her objectives openly, she then carries on in secret.You see, she is no lover of democracy; she firmly believes that she is right in all matters, and that those who disagree with her are wrong.
Now it seems that she has been up to naughty business again. This time she has been collecting the DNA profiles of 24,000 juveniles who have never been cautioned, charged or convicted of an offence.
Some 7% of the population are expected to be stored on her DNA register by 2008.
Grant Shapps MP, who represents Welwyn Hatfield, will launch a campaign this week to get the juveniles' details erased from records.
Quote:
"This is just a question of building a database by stealth, by the back door. "
As Nanny's Home Office spokesman helpfully observed, there are no rules governing the minimum age for taking a DNA sample from someone who has been arrested.
In other words, Nanny can do what she bloody well likes!
In April 2004 the law was changed so that samples could be kept from people who had been acquitted of any crime, or who had been arrested for a recordable offence but never charged.
Grant Shapps obtained the Home Office figures, after a constituent's son was wrongly arrested in a case of mistaken identity and DNA taken.
He said:
"What they (the Government) are trying to do is build a database by stealth.
I challenge the Government to come forward and come clean on this."
He added:
"If the Government wants to build a DNA database of the entire population, starting with kids
bring forward proposals, pass it through parliament and have a debate.
I don't think it is right to bring it through the back door, by stealth."
After protests about his constituency case, the local chief constable agreed to remove the teenager's details; that's very nice of him!
Doesn't it strike you as highly unpleasant, and worrying, that the chief constable needed to be persuaded to remove the details?
However, Mr Shapps subsequently discovered that 750,000 children were in the system.
Further investigation revealed that some 24,000 youngsters aged 10 to 18 were on the database, "and shouldn't be".
He said:
"They are certainly all cases of kids picked up and never charged or even cautioned for anything
So it is hard to see why the details should be kept on the database.
They are innocent children, basically."
The reason is simple, Nanny wants to build a national database of everyone. She knows that we, the people, would never trust her to use the database wisely, so she is building it by stealth.
You can be sure that the NHS is also providing DNA samples for Nanny to store.
Mr Shapps will launch a campaign this week - Children Off the National DNA Database - to get details erased from records.
He said a change in the law, in April 2004, means police can take information without asking permission from parents.
Other changes mean samples can be kept from people who have been acquitted of any crime, or who have been arrested for a recordable offence but never charged.
As Shami Chakrabarti, director of human rights group Liberty, said
"This is the Prime Minister's vision of criminal justice
- which is guilt determined by police officers, rather than the courts."
One thing that we, as a nation, should be "proud" of; Britain now has the world's largest DNA database with over 3 million people (5% - if you believe Nanny's figures) on it, Austria (the second largest) only covers 1% of its population.
Proud of that?
It is deeply disturbing that Blair, Clarke et al should even consider that this sort of database should be kept. I agree it is slightly hard to argue if the details are kept for convicted criminals, but the fact that it would appear the real reason is to build up a database of the population just shows why we should be more scared of Blair and his chums than we are of any terrorists!!!
ReplyDeleteIt also shows just how obvious New Labour's tactics are because Blair's chum Falconer is now stating that the insidious idea of ID cards should become "compulsory". What sort of a country are we creating here? Certainly not one I feel comfortable with.
For at least the past ten years the U.S. Defense Department has been collecting DNA on every active duty and reserve member, ostensibly for the purpose of identifying human remains that have been so badly mutilated as to be unidentifiable otherwise.
ReplyDeleteCuriously, however (or perhaps not if you know how the USG operates), this data is not destroyed or removed from the database once a member separates from active service. DoD has also refused in the past to comment on its DNA data retention policies, specifically whether or not or to what degree it shares this data with domestic law enforcement agencies (I asked this very question several times while I was still on active duty and, not surprisingly, was stonewalled each time).
Clearly there are an infinite number of pretexts for DNA collection and ways in which to do it without the individual's knowledge or consent. Just the world we live in....
IF Nanny's computer systems are working, could be a big IF that one, then the concpet of deleting a record from a database is nice but hardly instant - perhaps not instant at all. Unless of course Nanny's IT chums have not implemented a sensible backup procedure, in which case a single delete command might indeed be effective.
ReplyDeleteAs for the Austrians, presumably they have enough data about their citizens stored by other methods that they only need 1% DNA. Not many records really, given the population is not huge.
Grant (not an MP ...)
Sterling
ReplyDeleteThe issues here are:
1 The database is being put together in secret
2 Innocent people are being put on the DB
If there is to be a DB, then it should be discussed openly; and approved in the normal way, via parliament
So far, Nanny has failed to do this.
Ken