Pieces of me.

[a_stone_angel]

Mark Thomas thinks he's got his DNA and fingerprints deleted from the national database.There are wider issues here about the collecting and linking of (accurate?) information. And leaving datasticks etc. on trains

Comments

[buddleia]

The police understandably want to hang onto this stuff. Understandably, because it makes their jobs easier. Unfortunately, neither principled legislation nor human rights make the job of policing easier and that's just tough for them.

You're not being paranoid. The only justification for this kind of practice is "If you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to fear." Yeah, try telling that to Jean Charles de Menezes. OH, WAIT.

[a_stone_angel]

I'm not even sure it does necessarily make the police's job easier. Frinstance, people stealing cars have been known to pick up cigarette butts from the street and drop them in the footwells. If there's already someone on that database who matches...

So that's probably what concerns me most about all of this - mistakes, and misinformation at the input stage.
No database can be foolproof - even if it could, I'd be concerned at what they could want with that information - keeping it to use against people at a later date? Innocent until we inevitably catch you out, sucker...

I'm sure I heard something about taking kids' DNA. I'm also sure there were mumblings about predictors of future behaviour and likelihood of offending. Terrifying. (Or scaremongering...) Massively unfair, in any case.