Should Everyone Be On The DNA Database?
The reaction from (I think) almost everyone who contributes to the Blindside project would be no. However, after hearing our impassioned arguments, many in Government still believe it is in the UK’s best interests to order everyone in the UK to submit DNA to government for inclusion in a national database.
Instead of starting off with my reasons why I think this is a seriously flawed idea, I want to focus on the reasons why some think it is good–or at least necessary. I don’t believe that all who support a comprehensive DNA database are either evil or fools, and some clearly have given thought to this.
A national registry of DNA would help government perform some things more efficiently without requiring structural change. Currently, the national media keeps attention focused on certain major issues–crime, and to a lesser extent (this year at least), immigration. Government supporters of a DNA database evidently believe that it would help deal with those issues.
My argument (FWIW) against this is that a DNA database would help in solving crime and identifying current illegal immigrants, but would do much less in preventing crime and future illegal immigration. Similar arguments were advanced regarding CCTV’s potential for deterrence of crime, and these arguments proved invalid. CCTV has not deterred crime, but has helped identify criminals after the fact. I don’t think DNA DB would play out much differently. Hence, to me it seems a major sacrifice of personal liberty for a false hope. If a DNA database proves ineffective in dealing with crime and immigration, they will not throw away the DB in disgust.
But the current structure of police forces, with fewer cops on the beat actually deterring crime, has shifted its focus to high tech resolution of crime instead. A DNA database would allow them to keep the same structure, beefing it up and increasing their powers. A DNA DB would allow the judicial system, currently fighting a backlog at the same time it resists internal technological change, to be (it hopes) more efficient without, again, undergoing structural change.
The persistence of the desire for such a database in the face of all the problems that have been noted in the concept means to me that government feels besieged, not just by crime and immigration (which aren’t nearly as bad as the effects of media coverage of same), but by all the effects of the 20th and 21st centuries, and are searching for a silver bullet that will allow them to do things the way they want to do them.
There has been considerable reorganisation of government departments over the past 5 years, but it’s hard to avoid the impression that much of that has been name changing and seat shuffling. I think the most passionate advocates of a DNA database are really defending their way of life more than anything else.
I do think every discussion of a national DNA registry should include a brief summary of some of the most important objections to it:
1. Data will be entered incorrectly, lost or sold illegally. As the system gets used for more purposes, the effects will be fatal to some. Lives will be lost.
2. People will learn how to defeat the system, reducing its reliability. The most common means will be via corruption of civil servants.
3. The money spent on such a system, if redirected towards a more visible police presence in city centres on Saturday nights and at the principle points of entry into the UK, would actually reduce crime and illegal immigration to the extent that the DNA registry would not be necessary.
4. As currently constituted, the UK government is incapable of holding this information securely. It will be stolen. It will be sold.
5. Maintaining border security by identifying ‘legitimate’ citizens and assuming anyone not on the list is illegitimate will result in wide-scale violations of human rights and crimes against those who do not appear on the list.
I almost got through that list without mentioning human rights, and I didn’t talk about liberty either. They evidently are not a major consideration in this argument, so why beat a dead horse?
Let me just mention what I would support. A database for the NHS with voluntary contributions of DNA to assist in patient care. Mandatory DNA sampling of criminals convicted of a serious crime. That’s it.
And by the way, it should be obvious that arguments against a national DNA registry transfer without much modification to a National Identity Card Programme. As with a DNA registry, it is being proposed to benefit government, and the burden of proof needs to be placed squarely on the shoulders of its proponents.
September 10th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
The part of the proposal that struck me as most ludicrous is, of course, the idea that *visitors* should submit DNA samples. I can’t even imagine the mess that would create at airports and border crossings, nor how much that would alienate travelers from coming to the UK. (Although, if you carry the energy argument to its logical conclusion, anything that deters people from traveling is a good thing, so you want the airports to be as clogged and unpleasant as possible, and long lines at immigration and invasive procedures are just another deterrence device.)
To your list, I’d add a science question. There must be a false-match rate; how does that play out over large populations?
Last week, Craig Venter published his genome. I thought that was really cool, and that I would love to be able to do that. But has he just created the ideal circumstances for someone to steal his identity some time in the future?
If the DNA database becomes the “authority”, will we all have to go around in plastic suits to keep ourselves from shedding DNA samples that can be planted and used against us?
Personally, I think these guys have been watching too many forensic science shows on TV.
wg
September 10th, 2007 at 9:33 pm
FYI, there already *is* a DNA database for medical research - UK Biobank (http://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk/) - that aims over the next 4 years to accumulate 500,000 volunteers’ DNA and blood samples.
Interestingly it appears that just ONE IN TEN people, when asked, are happy to take part. Given the high levels of support for a compulsory national DNA database being quoted in certain quarters at present, you have to wonder (a) how many people would *actually* be content for their DNA to be taken, and (b) whether some of those would change their minds when they realised the uses to which their DNA could - and almost inevitably WOULD, especially given the incredible expense of such a system - be put.
Some of the research already being done on the police National DNA Database (NDNAD) is only tenuously related to criminal investigation, e.g. the attempt to determine ethnicity/racial group from DNA.
Lord Justice Sedley’s ridiculously naive notion that a super-NDNAD database could be limited to ‘just’ crime prevention and detection (though this definition itself would be almost infinitely and - given lifelong retention - retrospectively flexible, given that ‘crime’ is pretty much anything the government doesn’t like) just doesn’t fit with this government’s repeated attempts to profile potential offenders and ‘intervene’ earlier and earlier. ‘Criminal’ genes, anyone? Or what if ADD/ADHD could be genetically ‘diagnosed’ - couldn’t this be painted as ‘essential’ information for the police/courts/probation service?
Any coincidence of genetic determinism and criminal justice to my mind fundamentally undermines the presumption of innocence. Once you start down the route of permitting statements like “so-and-so has a 40% propensity towards aggressive behaviour”, you forever lose the principle. In that world, some people - through no fault OR ACTION of their own - will always be ‘less innocent’ than others.
September 12th, 2007 at 7:18 am
There was one non-privacy-related argument you missed:
That is that the combinatorics mean that the dtatbase would lead to false matches. I notice that the BBC say “some scientists have warned that as the database grows the chances of two very similar profiles from two different people emerging increases” which is an understatment along the lines of large nail bombs are slightly more likely to kill people they are not specifically aimed at than sniper rifles are.
I have worked with systems where the probability of a clash was 1 in 4 billion and we had regular clashes due to the way large numbers combine. The moment we put large numbers of profiles in a DNA database we have to assume we will be sending a fair number of innocent people to jail. Despite this even the BBC are downplaying the danger.
Just like people do not understand the probabilities of risk they have no reason to understand the dangers of combinatorics. I do not blame anyone for this, but do feel that someone needs to make the government understand that by making the database too large they are undermining its usefulness in even identifying criminals after the fact.
Rufus Evison
For more details see my blog at ReasonedRants.BlogSpot.Com
September 21st, 2007 at 2:57 pm
My main concern isn’t to do with the police using DNA to detect criminals. It’s to do with not defining, from the start, what the scope of the project will be. Parliament agreeing to one ’small’ DNA program of CONVICTED CRIMINALS, has turned in to, held prisoners, then anyone ’suspicious’, now ANYONE the police stop (for any reason eg parking on a zigzag!). What’s the next step? Oh… it seems to be EVERYONE IN THE UK. SOmthing that would have been thrownout by parliament if that had been the original objective (for personal rights reasons), this is ‘project creep’ in action.
Also do you want insurance companies getting that data on you and your family? for example deciding to insure you for health/driving/critical illness etc, but not your wife because she carries a genetic marker for a predisposition to a rare genetic disease (and thus all your kids too), the problem is we don’t know about all illnesses and genetic problems enough to say having markers for abc means you are definitely going to get a disease. That wouldn’t be something you could ‘dispute’ and it wouldn’t disappear after 3 years like points on your licence.
There are serious concerns about who should have access to this sort of information. In most cases our genes don’t predict that we will definitely suffer from a disease, simply that we may be more likely to get it.
If insurance companies have access to people’s DNA profiles they might refuse to give some people life insurance, or demand huge premiums.
I think there has to be some limits.
Yes it would make police’s life ‘easier’ but i’m not sure that is enough of a reason to introduce a DNA database of every person in the UK, that could/would be used by other agencies/companies also.
VERY IMPORTANTLY: Mistakes have been made also. Here is an article about Mr Easton, a diabled man (with Parkinsons) who was arrested for a burgulary that occurred 200 miles from his home because his DNA was found at the scene.
http://archive.thisiswiltshire.co.uk/2000/8/15/238098.html
Note: the police were happy to arrest even though it was ludicrous (he is very disabled), and also note that: this man’s solicitor was the one who demanded a new DNA test to be done, not the police. As far as they were concerned - case closed.
Admittedly this should occur infrequently but that doesn’t make it OK.
I also agree with Rufus (above post), people bound about probabilities without knowing what they mean. 1 in 10,000,000 sounds good, until you do lots of tests. then you start getting ‘your sample’ compared to every test done on the database. If this number reaches, for example, 1,000,000 tests a year then your sample (1 in 10,000,000) tested against the million tests makes a 1 in 10 chance of finding a match. It’s not that simple i know, but the point is that apparently very high improbabilities come done very quickly when large numbers of tests and subjects are involved.