They keep on coming on, like a sort of rank of killer insects in one of those terrible B-movies. Here is the latest shaft of wisdom from the judiciary:
The entire population of Britain – and every visitor – should be added to the national DNA database, a senior judge has argued.
Marvellous. None of that “presumed innocent” namby-pamby nonsense.
Appeal Court judge, Lord Justice Stephen Sedley, said the database, which holds the DNA from millions of suspects and crime scenes, should be extended to all residents and even tourists, in the interests of fairness and crime prevention.
Fairness? What about the state and its officials leaving the innocent alone and not demanding every greater controls over our lives? Has this judge read his Blackstone lately?
“Where we are at the moment is indefensible,” Sedley told BBC radio.
I agree. It is indefensible that such a person holds such office. Cleaning toilets might be more his line:
“Everybody, guilty or innocent, should expect their DNA to be on file for the absolutely rigorously restricted purpose of crime detection and prevention — and no other purpose.”
“For no other purpose”. Why, are there other purposes that the judge knows about?
Check the history of Judge Sedley. Eg. He ruled in favour of London Critical Mass, a monthly bike ride that has been going for 12 years (sadly the Met police appealed and won). He’s written several articles defending the right to privacy and civil liberties- search google eg. this one.
So I’m inclined to think his words have been taken out of context. Perhaps he was making the point that the DNA database at the moment is unfair, since it includes suspects who turned out to be innocent?
I hadn’t heard the every visitor bit. What a way to boost the tourist trade!
The word that really sent the shivers for me was “prevention”. Does that potentially mean that in some not-to-distant future they’ll be watching folk with “criminal DNA”. The era of the genetic ASBO is just around the corner.
Oh, and it goes without saying that this will be a massive UKGov IT project and we all know what that means. JP, you’ll be identified as the “Jack the Ripper”*, Paul Marks will be revealed as the head of an Al Queda cell and me…
I’m curious what Sunfish thinks about all of this.
*And Jonathan, please don’t give me any of that old pony about how you weren’t in Whitechapel in 1888 because the computer says “Yes”.
More here(Link)
On the statistics behind it see here(Link).
The context is here(Link), this judge clearly advocates authoritarianism in this case and admits as much in so many words.
Sas, the judge is right to say that people’s DNA can be held in a database even if they are innocent; good point, but – he wants to put the DNA of everyone on the system, guilty or not.
Er, how is this an improvement, exactly?
Another stupid old sod who should have been pickled years ago.
I dont care how convenient it would be to have my details on the database, I have no desire to be considered a suspect in ANY AND ALL crimes commited in this country, until my innocence is ‘proved’ by your marvellous data base.
The body in question belongs to ME, not you or your putrid fascist government.
Fuck.Right.Off
Another stupid old sod who should have been pickled years ago.
I dont care how convenient it would be to have my details on the database, I have no desire to be considered a suspect in ANY AND ALL crimes commited in this country, until my innocence is ‘proved’ by your marvellous data base.
The body in question belongs to ME, not you or your putrid fascist government.
Fuck.Right.Off
This is a sad and deeply dangerous case. Stephen Sedleyis a fully-paid up member of the Human Rights & Discrimination Establishment. Here’s what I can glean from a quick Google, about his career.
“Graduated from Cambridge University, where he was an entrance scholar, in 1961 and practised at the Bar for 28 years, principally in the fields of civil liberties and discrimination law, until 1992 when he was appointed a judge of the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court. He became a Lord Justice of Appeal in January 1999, has sat as an ad hoc judge of the European Court of Human Rights.
“He is an honorary professor of law at Warwick and Cardiff Universities, chaired the Judicial Studies Board’s working party on the Human Rights Act 1998, and has since 2000 been president of the British Institute of Human Rights. He lectures occasionally and writes in legal periodicals and for the London Review of Books.”
When he was made an honorary graduand of Essex University – (at the same time as that doubty fighter for freedom and rationality George Monbiot) – he was described as ‘renowned as a strong supporter of human rights and civil liberties.’
So what’s going on? First, he wasn’t misquoted – indeed, his position has been consistently and publicly held since at least January 2005, to judge from his article on just this topic in the London Review of Books, that oh-so-liberal publication with the strange blindspot about Israel (or possibly Jews).
Here’s the tag for his full-throated and considered argument in that publication. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n02/sedl01_.html. I strongly suggest you read this rather long piece, if only to realize that he is absolutely deadly serious.
On my reading of his piece, Lord Sedley seems to have been maddened by a career of watching crime and its cousin judicial failure at close quarters for too long. That maddening has in this case allied with a liberal horror of “discrimination”, and a sharp rationalism (with a laudable horror of contradiction and its near-cousin partial argument), to set free the incipiently authoritarian nature of 21st century “liberalism”. And, given the run of the paddock, this has turned into something recognizable as totalitarianism.
For what it’s worth, it’s probably the decades of public service which have taken their toll. A sharp brain, an intolerant rationalism and the persistent judicial excercise “liberalism”, has rendered him ultimately a danger to society – or at least to the society of which he was once a member. At the same time, he does us a favour precisely by showing us where rationally you end up once you take on certain assumptions.
Ie, He’s not stupid, but he is dangerous.
In general I agree with libertarian views put forward on Samizdata. But on this privacy (and related ID cards) topic I struggle. If policing is one of the few things I am actually happy to delegate to the state, then surely I want this policing, that I am paying for, to operate in a efficient and effective manner. Technological progress has led to the technique of DNA matching. Total coverage of the population in a DNA database would undoubtably help in proving guilt or innocence – so why not have it ?
So my DNA details would on a database.. who cares? Unless you’re a full-time hermit-troglodyte lots of other information about you is already on a million different databases anyway. It is rarely a problem, in fact sometimes it’s even useful to me.
Yes, the argument that the database could be misused is plausible – but also defeatist. A database of DNA is not in itself intruding on your privacy. It is not monitoring your movements. The mere fact your DNA is on record has no effect on your life. It is only how the data is used that can be good or bad, helpful or intrusive. So for sure I’d argue for strict safeguards over it’s use. But, maybe I’m naively optimistic, perhaps a DNA database could even do some good ?
Jon B;
You do not nor ever should, have to prove your INNOCENCE.
I, for one, would not trust this government nor its mendacious politicised police service as far as I could throw them.
Keep tabs on the criminals by all means, but leave the rest of us alone, AND LEARN TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE.
(wanders off, out of breath)
Yes.
It is folly to think of the Judges (or the rest of “they system”) as defenders of life, liberty and property.
Perhaps in the Victorian period and before (although not always) and perhaps even in the early and mid 20th century – Chief Justice Hewart’s “The New Despotism” (1929) is at least as good as anything in Dicey. Even Lord Denning (a man who admitted that he did not fully understand the principles of jurisprudence and tried to get the legal outcome he FELT was right) had a good heart.
But these days the Judges (and the rest of system) are as likely to be interested in “social justice” as they are in justice. And think of liberty in terms of European and world conventions and charters – not the right of an Englishman to not to have his goods or body violated.
The idea of having nonelected judges is supposed to be that they represent certain traditions – however those traditions are not supported in modern university law departments (having lawyers trained in universities was, perhaps, the first great mistake) and they have been in decline in the Inns of Court and in most Chambers for many (many) years. As indeed these traditions have been in decline in all other institutions in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
It is time to see modern minded judges for what they are – enemies.
If policing is one of the few things I am actually happy to delegate to the state, then surely I want this policing, that I am paying for, to operate in a efficient and effective manner.
In which case, then surely you object on grounds of vast unnecessary public expense, if not liberty, to this ludicrous scheme. Sedley LJ appears to want every tourist DNA-profiled. Is it really an efficient and effective method of looking for needles to build new haystacks?
Universal DNA coverage might help in proving guilt or innocence; but then so might tracking all the movements of the entire population (which also appears to be an ambition of some) – would that make it desirable or worthwhile? It also might not help, and in the general case will not be anything more than confirmatory.
Cleaning toilets might be more his line.
Well it would be one way to get the necessary DNA. Perhaps offer him the choice, he can have his database if HE collects the data in just this manner. No blase’ bureaucrats swabbing every check in the land.
—————————————————————-
Jon B,
Call libertarians paranoid, but it’s rarely the stated case for more Statism that is to feared most, it is the other uses over time, the ones clearly stated it would NEVER be used for, that people worry about. For example, once the State has taken on itself to be the master of your body, and make itself the supra-insurer for all, the temptation to examine all the DNA for genetic imperfections will be too much. Geneticists will likely be given research rights to the massive set of data (your privacy will be strictly assured of course). I’m sure the list goes on and on.
Just like Social Security Numbers in the US were supposed to be just for claims involved with the State enforced “annuity” and nothing else. Now it stands as about the only way every Statist level interacts with me and how I am tracked on “the grid”. Take something as simple as seat belt laws in the State where I live. When they were enacted we were assured that our privacy was important and that we couldn’t be pulled over simply for not having a buckled seat belt, a charge for such could only be added on after some other cause precipitated being pulled over. Now it is a prime cause itself, allowing the police to gain access to your vehicle and whatever is found, oh well.
The long and the short of it is wishing for efficiency and effectiveness, especially for security, is a deal with the devil. Those who want to remain off the DNA grid will, solving very little, and every innocent will be on the grid. Your trade for security will likely to very little by way of real protection, and now your DNA is available for whatever the State eventually desires to do with it.
Judge Sedley may well have done us all a massive service in ensuring,by his remarks, that any proposed extension of the said national DNA database never occurs. Perhaps that was his intention?
Paul,
…the point of having nonelected judges is supposed to be that they represent certain traditions
I thought it was that they were learned in the law, and were trusted to make their decisions following the letter of statute and the principles of previously decided cases, rather than courting popularity as elected ones might. A test that Denning notably failed.
Paul,
Absolutely, a goblin who half inches my laptop is merely directly redistributing wealth. Thanks BTW for what you said about recycling in Kettering. Any refs?
Jon B,
Samizdata is open to the public. Why not post your bank details here? I am sure no one will abuse them. But that isn’t even half the point… John Locke suggested government should be like a “secretary”. It would appear that the typing-pool has taken over the asylum.
This is getting nucking futz. By 2015 if you chuck too many wine bottles into the appointed chipped recycle wheelie bin* you will get a letter requesting your presence at a compulsory “Alcohol Awareness” course otherwise your benefits will be suspended. Of course we shall all be on benefits because pay will be something you get back from the government (and are grateful for).
You think that’s far-fetched? We’ve already got the whole “Is your journey really necessary?” schtick aimed at airplanes and cars** because OUR PLANET IS DYING!!! Add satellite road-metering and…
Yet, you want these fuckers to have your DNA? Buddha on a bouncy castle, in Versace!
*All cash will be illegal so they will know at point of sale anyway.
**”So you visited your second cousin more than once this year… Please report for re-education, your car ignition has been remotely locked.”
This of course is what we use our courts for these days.
I for one will rest easier in my bed knowing that Ms Jennings, 19, that dreadful threat to western civilization is on the DNA database.
Curly,
The circumstances of this story do not favour that theory. It has the fingerprints of the Home Office all over it.
More plausible would be the supposition that the extreme position has been solicited now, so that the Home Office’s own proposals arising out of the PACE review consultation, “Modernising police powers”, which will inevitably propose extending the circumstances in which DNA samples can be taken, can be presented as balancing “the needs of society” against “human rights”. The argument from balance is always an argument for a move from whatever is the status quo being in their direction.
Nick M,
By 2015 if you chuck too many wine bottles into the appointed chipped recycle wheelie bin*…
And if you chuck them in someone else’s your fingerprints might be on the bottles.
In theory, I don’t believe in a right to privacy in the same way I do a right to property or life. The government knowing things about you doesn’t actually prevent you from doing anything, or compel you to do anything (unless, like here, they’re asking everyone to fork over some tissue). In and of itself, it doesn’t affect you one way or the other. DNA seems particularly harmless on top of that, because it’s not like the government can tell anything about your actual life from it.
In practice, there’s the expense associated with it (using money taken by force), the fact that a lot of information just isn’t going to help with criminal investigations, and the sort of thing Nick M mentions. If today’s governments kept themselves to a reasonable size and scope, that last wouldn’t be a problem, but they stick their noses into everything, and the British government seems particularly bad about that. (Give them a database of everyone’s genome, and they’ll probably start combing through it for people with propensities for certain diseases.) And in this case, with DNA, there’s the matter of how they’re actually going to collect it. There’s no non-invasive way to demand everyone give you a tissue sample.
Without a right to privacy, Americans would not have the right to abortion or even birth control, because the various supreme court decisions granting these rignts explicitly depend on a presumed privacy right.
You might also want to consider the recent proposal by the head of UK’s national health service that dead people’s organs should belong to the NHS unless the dead had the foresight to put their names on a list, public no doubt to enable harassment.
And then there is John Edwards proposal that annual checkups be mandatory. No doubt following a doctors orders will be mandatory, too. And we will need some sort of auditing process and coercion to make sure we obey.
We need another revolution
So then a state run CCTV in every room works for you, does it? If not, why not?
Guy,
I always wear disposable latex gloves when I drink wine and then incinerate them.
Stephanie,
I don’t think you understand how vital privacy is. I do. I delve inside folks’ computers and fix their problems. I never hold data. That’s an absolute. It is an absolute because it’s the right thing not to do and it’s an absolute because my business depends upon people trusting me. Let’s assume the Government (or anyone) had pictures of you in an embarrassing or compromising situation and they just told you, “Don’t worry, we won’t do anything with them…” wouldn’t you be just a mite nervous? Why hold data which you’ll never use?
Cleaning toilets might be more his line.
Well it would be one way to get the necessary DNA.
It would certainly bring a new meaning to the phrase “stool pigeon”.
So then a state run CCTV in every room works for you, does it? If not, why not?
I don’t think it’s desirable, even in a fantasy land where the money for it grew on trees and the government didn’t have (and wouldn’t develop) a million and two nasty and unnecessary laws. I do think privacy is a good thing, but I don’t think it rises up to the same level that, say, the right to life or property or free speech does. Infringements on those actually prevent me from doing something, or compel me to do something, under threat of force. Infringements on privacy aren’t good things, but they at least don’t do that.
Let’s assume the Government (or anyone) had pictures of you in an embarrassing or compromising situation and they just told you, “Don’t worry, we won’t do anything with them…” wouldn’t you be just a mite nervous? Why hold data which you’ll never use?
Of course I’d be nervous. Like I said to Perry, I don’t think infringements on privacy are a good thing (though, to bring things back to the original topic, I don’t think that simply having someone’s DNA is, for the vast majority of people, anywhere near comparable to having compromising photos). But when it comes to the actual snooping (if not its funding), the coercion found in things like taxes and drug laws and smoking laws just isn’t there.
Yes they do Stephanie because privacy is a prerequisite for those other freedoms. And, given the size of the state it’s our only escape from the bastards.
How can you split privacy from free speech? Does everything have to be on record? Privacy is a foundation of individualism and I fail to see why you don’t see that.
Your “undesirable” is my “utterly fucking intolerable”.
That is rather like saying (and yes, I am exaggerating for effect and to test the idea at the extreme):
“I do not think it is desirable for the government to build extermination camps with gas chambers but just as long as the state does not actually bust down people’s doors in the night and drag them off, there are worse things.” … or … “I do think it is desirable for a policeman to follow me around pointing a loaded gun at me in case I do something bad, but…”.
It all comes down to trusting the state to not use a tool to do more that the stated aim when the tool is introduced… and I think history proves eventually every single tool at a state’s disposable will be misused at some point (which is why people like me believe in limited government… the less tools in a government;s hands, the less they can do and the less they do, the easier it is to moderate those things via a political process).
The whole point of the objection to panoptic surveillance is not that being looked at hurts you in the same way as, say, being locked up or getting a cattle prod to the balls because you will not answer a question, but that control systems like surveillance are a pre-requisite and all too often a precursor to a political order that applies cattle prods to people’s balls.
For those who are willing to toss their freedom of privacy out the window, don’t be so secure in your knowledge that “I don’t have anything to worry about, I’m not a law breaker. I want security against Them”. But what if laws change? Our freedoms have eroded subtantially over the last two decades, in the US and the UK. It can only get worse. Harsh economic realities are soon in the offing (unless the State peels back) and that will simply lead to more invasions of privacy and the loss of freedom. What do you do then, when you feel you’ve had enough? You’ve got cameras everywhere, fingerprints and DNA on file, face recognition software in place. Your finances are tracked. You’re completely logged with the State. What if the State, which has never been your friend, becomes your enemy with you not changing an iota as far as your beliefs or behaviors? A tad feverish? It wasn’t more than a few decades ago when people laughed at such a high Statist profile in our lives. Just a century ago people would have revolted en masse at the level of taxation and invasion into our lives.
There is the old axiom that the State that can give you everything can also take it away. It’s been handing out scrip for free services for decades now and contemplates even more. But it has all worked so far because it has only been the giving side of the equation, by and large, the taking is just around the corner. And when you have the vast majority of your labor and equity taken and mealy, rationed government product in return, and not a damn thing you can do about it, then you might be concerned about how much they know about you, down to your sub-cellular level.
Insight into the darkest fears of many libertarians perhaps, but the road we are on is pretty clear. Individual behaviors soon cannot be tolerated as they will be seen as a direct threat on the Public Treasury (concepts of personal equity will be considered quaint). Therefore the values held by individuals that lead to behaviors won’t be tolerated either. And they’ll know everything about you. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that I feel like I live in a dystopia as is. Anymore State controlled knowledge simply delivers the kill shot to freedom. This isn’t the beginning of encroachments, it’s the endgame.
Stephanie,
…the coercion found in things like taxes and drug laws and smoking laws just isn’t there.
Once something can be surveilled, the likelihood that it will remain coercion-free for very long is small.
Privacy is a necessity for freedom. It is no historical coincidence that liberal institutions arise where private discourse is possible and dissenting opinions or new lifestyles can spread without official approval.
Stephanie
But all you are doing is delaying your response. In effect you don’t object to me knowing your bank account number, only when I use the information to withdraw money does it become a problem. After all what is so personal about 8 digits? I would rather you didn’t have the number in the first place. I’m quite sure that I could post that number here and no Samizdatista would use it to steal from me, but better safe than sorry.
I also have fears about government efficiency; can I be totally certain that my sample will be correctly labelled and linked to me only? Could a criminal arrange for labels to be swapped so his DNA is labelled with my name? Could it happen accidentally? Is there another MarkE somewhere who is not the innocent paragon that I am? In any of these cases how can I deny guilt if faced with such DNA evidence?
It is not even the case that DNA evidence proves much. The often quoted statistic is that a DNA match will identify 1:1,000,000 which means there are 59 others who’s DNA matches mine in the UK alone. That means it is accurate to 1:60 (1.67%) only.
I am spending time here defending the right to privacy on utilitarian grounds! Like the right to life itself this should need no defence!
Nick,
How can you split privacy from free speech? Does everything have to be on record? Privacy is a foundation of individualism and I fail to see why you don’t see that.
Violation of free speech: say that and we’ll lock you up.
Violation of privacy: say that and we’ll write it down.
Neither is good, but they’re different.
Perry,
I don’t support letting the government just snoop on everything it wants, particularly the gigantic governments of today. But given that it’s not inherently violently coercive, I don’t think the restrictions it should be placed under should be quite as strict as those for rights like property and free speech and not getting zapped with cattle prods. I am — to use a couple terms I’ll probably mangle — pretty much a deontologist about property, free speech, lack of cattle prods, etc., but I’m willing to be a consequentialist for privacy issues.
Of course, given that US cities can’t even keep themselves from abusing red light cameras, I’m probably underestimating the consequences of privacy violations.
“I’m sick of all this proving and judging; it’s too difficult, I want it all to become automatic.
I don’t like judging.
I’m tired and it’s dark.
I don’t want a job any more.”
MarkE,
Thanks for copying my bank details comment!
You raise an interesting question. If DNA becomes pretty much the only standard for criminal conviction then that will be a huge incentive for the criminals to engage in jiggery-pokery with the database. I’m not talking about some hood who knocks over a Granny for her pension but serious well-funded organized outfits like the Snakeheads or Organatsiya. And hey, they might not just swap one MarkE for another but screw the whole system…
A complete national DNA database would be hideously expensive, hideously fucked-up (all praise to Crapita!) and would encourage laziness within the criminal justice system (we’ve got his DNA – let’s grab a pint).
But that’s not really why I object to it. I object because it’s none of their fucking business.
Guy,
And if you chuck them in someone else’s your fingerprints might be on the bottles.
They already do pretty much that. I read about some poor sod who got prosecuted for dumping domestic trash in a high-street bin. He’d picked up the mail, looked through it on his way to work and trashed the junk mail at the bus stop. Alas, the council employed garbologists and they clocked his name and address…
I forget the reference but it happened.
Guy Herbert
If you had bothered to read my comment (rather than rushing to slag me off), you would have seen that I made a similar comment to you about Lord Denning.
“learned in the law….”
What do you think I meant by “certain traditions”.
It is the old point from the “A dialogue between a philospher and a student of the common laws of England”.
Where “the philosopher” (Thomas Hobbes) is in the wrong and his straw man “student” is in the right.
Most law was common law – where (as in ancient times with Roman magistrates under the Republic – the 12 tablets and so on where not what broad “Roman law” was really about) the Praetor would seek decide individual cases justly (with the adivice and learning of the various schools of legal thought to aid him).
As Hale and Selden and others were fond of pointing out it is often useful to look at previous judgements – for the store of wisdom in any indivdual man is small compared to all men over time.
However, it may (of course) be necessary (in order to do justice in the case) to overturn previous judgements. Following precidents without regard to their justice (especially given all the demented precedents of recent decades) is the road to the madhouse.
This is why a judge needs to understand the principles of justice (these supposedly “abstract” things that Denning admitted he was weak on). He must understand what “to each what is his own, to each what he is owing to him” means in the circumstances of time and place (the facts of the case).
The purpose of law is to get the principle of justice (the non violance of people’s bodies and goods) and make it concrete and specific in actual cases.
As for statutes (the judgements of the High Court of the Queen in Parliament) it is the duty of a Judge to interpret them strictly (i.e. restrict them) when the statute expands the power of the State, and to interpret them liberally when the statute protects subjects from state functionaries. For the liberty of the subject is the prime concern of the court.
This is because it the purpose of the court to do justice – if it can. Or, if it is compelled to be unjust (i.e. to violate the principles of justice) to violate them as little as possible.
Of course Justice Coke might well say that court should toss out a Statute that violated the basic principles of justice – but since Blackstone (so hated by the American Founding Fathers) this has not been the mainstream position in English law.
If a Statute says “all Jews must be gassed to death” the modern view is that this IS law (although it be unjust).
The older view (found in the American Constitution – for example in the Ninth Amendment) is that this is not so.
Still all the above is by-the-by.
As modern minded Judges (and other such) could not give a toss about the traditions of law.
They would not know what the nonaggression principle of the common law was if they fell over it.
MarkE, guy,
You have good points (though I’m not sure if a DNA database would make screwups that much more likely), and I think I’ve said my bit as best I can, so I’ll just repeat what I said to Perry (misused philosophical terms and all) and then let things rest: I’m basically a deontologist for most things (life, property, putting whatever you want in your body), but I’m more of a consequentialist for privacy issues.
One of the joys of this national DNA database is that an army of checkers and filers and managers will need to be appointed to maintain all this. The cost to the public purse, met by taxation, will be no small matter.
Plus there will be data and files lost or misplaced and boards of inquiry will have to be set up, reports issued and butts lower down the food chain kicked. All in all it promises to be fun…
A perfectly sensible idea. Just arrange for all (illegal) immigrants to register their DNA at the port of entry and make a statement of any future criminal intent. That is fair after all. And of course I trust good old Mr Brown not to misuse the data. He has stolen most of my stuff already to cover up for his retarded partners in crime (i.e. Cabinet).
Wasn’t it nice of good old Mr Blair to retire early to look after his poor old demented wife.
Stephanie,
Now why would they want to write it down?
Let’s assume I wanted a transcript of everything you said, a list of all the places you have been, an inventory of all your purchases…
You’d correctly conclude I was stalking you and probably didn’t have good intentions. You’d be right.
So what makes it OK for the State to do that to you instead?
Privacy is an inalienable aspect of freedom. Privacy is necessary to be an individual. Zoroaster on a neon nanotube bungee-line! Do you not get that?
Freedom is an absolute.
Watcher,
I once temped at the Inland Revenue (NICO) and I worked in the “errored input” department. The shocking thing wasn’t that they made mistakes (who doesn’t) but the time-lapse for them to fix errors… One document I dealt with was over ten years old.
The complex I worked in was the second largest office complex on the planet (The Pentagon is larger) and it was true anarchy in paper form. They used buggies like the ones for luggage at airports to transport the stacks of bumf around. Once one broke open and they had hundreds of staff chasing up NI documents right across the car park.
These are the same people we’re expected to trust our DNA with! I wouldn’t trust them to run a seaside whelk stall in the off-season.
Nick M,
I don’t think the state should get to just write down everything people say, everywhere they’ve been, everything they’ve bought, and everything else. But if the government did decide to do this, it would not automatically compel me to — or prevent me from — doing something. A list of what I’ve been doing is not coercive per se, and so I don’t count privacy among rights like property and life, violations of which I wouldn’t support even if they spontaneously filled the world with rainbows and puppies. (With one exception: I do support a minimal state over no state, as I worry that anarchy would quickly leave you with something even worse than a minarchist state.)
Do I think such a list should be made? No. The consequences — including the general suckiness of having compromising information get out, and the coercive taxes required to fund it — are generally too high, and the benefits too small. (And if you think there’s a contradiction between my taxes comment in this paragraph and my property rights comment above, there sort of is, but see my comments on supporting a minarchist state.) A program with good consequences and limited bad ones, though, would be something I’d consider supporting — as opposed to the blanket “no, that’s not okay” that I give to the welfare state or the drug war or censorship.
All that said, I’m sure I haven’t convinced you of anything, just like I’m not convinced by the people who support a small safety net on the basis that it would actually work.
The trouble with these people is that they think they’re the government.
Paul Marks,
I was not concerned to ‘slag you off’. I was quite keen to get at Lord Denning, whom I don’t hold to have been good-hearted. I think we agree on common law.
I’m going to find where Stephen Sedley has his coffee break, nick his mug when he’s finished and then rent some time on a PCR machine. Afterwards I shall visit some crime scenes / brothels / etc.
Have just taken part in a discussion programme on the World Service. Some extraordinary views expressed by callers.
Most baffling was a man who runs a charity that identifies the bodies of genocide victims. He seemed unable to comprehend why I thought a national database, with its convenient list of names and addresses, would be at least as useful to the perpetrators of genocide as to his tidying up afterwards.
My apologies for misinterpreting you Guy.
For other people who (unlike Guy) think that being a Judge is a simple matter of “following the precedents” (i.e. trying to find a similar case and ruling the same way).
Which precedents do you follow?
As lawyers on both sides will produce prior judgements that favour their side.
“You follow the most recent precedents of course – as long as they have been upheld by the higher courts”.
There is a Justice on the United States Supreme Court who thinks like that (I believe he comes from New Hampshire), he can be relied upon to normally vote the wrong way – on just about anything.
When things have been going wrong for a long time “following recent precedents” is a really bad move.
“So what do you do”.
You go back to principle and try and work out (with the aid of all the prior thinkers you can) how to apply the principles of justice to the specfic case – i.e. it is law time.
Oddly enough U.S. Constitutional law is best understood (by us nasty reactionary folk) as a branch of contract law.
Although it has been undermined a bit, contract law is still hated by the university law departments as it shows evil “common law individualistic thinking”, i.e. you get the contract (the words on the page) and try and work out what it means in the specific situation of the case (the dispute) before you.
The Scots law way of doing this (owning quite a bit to Roman law) is to try and work out the intentions of the author or authors of the contract.
The English Common Law way holds that this is a bit uncertain – so you stick to actual words on the page and work out what THEY meant at the time of writing (via old authorities on language and other such).
And the “liberal” way (for example shown in the two cases in 1935 that upheld the government’s gold stealing, or the Second Greenback case back in the 19th century)?
Well, fuck knows what they are doing.
There is of course one factor that the state ALWAYS fail to take into consideration … where the criminal gets someone else to be swabbed instead of him. Just to refresh the memory of those who I am sure are all aware of when DNA testing was first used, it all began in 1985 with Sir Alec Jeffreys at the University of Leicester. The chief suspect, Colin Pitchfork, persuaded a sub-normal friend of his, Ian Kelly, to give a DNA test in his place and thus continued to evade the police for some time.
One might say that rapists NOT giving their blood samples to the police, or inveigling a friend to do it for them would be a job qualification for their chosen career. Its rather like passing anti-gun laws and then expecting armed robbers to obey the law and not carry firearms.
Funny you should mention that. There is a convenience store near my house that has a picture of a gun with a red circle and slash over it. I keep wondering to myself what kind of armed robber would walk up to the door with the intention of committing armed robbery only to have a sudden change of heart after seeing this sign. The only effect it has for me is that I go to a store with more sensible policies.
More to the main topic. It is customary to present evidence in court. If you stab someone, you can rest assured that the knife you used will probably be there in a plastic baggie with a letter assigned to it.
My question is, what about DNA evidence? If the state controls the database and all the samples what is to prevent abuse? Why couldn’t some prosecutor say “Bob committed this crime. We already have all the evidence. No, you can’t see it, it’s all in ones and zeros. Even if you could see it you would have to be a molecular biologist to understand it.”
After all, just look at the case linked to above. There isn’t much recourse if you are accidentally charged for a crime, so I can imagine how easy it would be to intentionally send the wrong people up the river.
Julian,
The idea of getting someone else to provide the sample would prove problematic if everyone was on the database. But I don’t see why anyone is worried. Since the bureaucracy is going to be so inefficient and incompetent, there will be plenty of gaps in the system to slip through, and a thriving market in “DNA disguises”.
“The right to privacy is absolute.” You mean the right to privacy from the government is absolute, surely?
If the government were smart, they wouldn’t set this thing up under police control, they’d just sell the technology to the banks. The banks, ever keen to reduce credit card fraud, would soon include your DNA fingerprint with your bank details (along with all the other personal details of your financial life, not to mention all your money…) and then the government can simply subpoena it if they ever need it, (like they do with the personal details of your financial life, or even your money…) The brilliant thing is, they wouldn’t even have to pay for the running of it that way.
Say, aren’t you glad the government isn’t as smart as me…?
I’m quite glad I have Samizdata in my RSS reader — I just need to get my one time “because I’ve never been” trip to London done, and then avoid the island forever. Good grief — a DNA sample from every tourist and citizen? Next up will be RFID tracking. If you’re not up to something, you have nothing to fear, after all.
Unbelievable. Ironic that I have to read non-US blogs to reinforce my own joy that I live in California. Good luck, folks!
I guess the string of recent tidbits that this idea connects with in my mind goes something like this—
Everyone should be covered by state provided medical insurance and services;
Then, everyone’s health and lifestyle are the subject of community concern, as they impose costs on society;
A recent article from Britain concerned a woman whose yet unborn child was the subject of an attempt by child welfare authorities to gain custody of it upon its birth because a pediatrician who had never met the woman wrote a letter questioning her fitness as a parent;
A recent suggestion by Presidential candidate John Edwards that people enrolled in a publically funded health system should be required to have regularly scheduled physicals and mental health evaluations;
Several debates over the past few years as to the ethical considerations involved in prescreening embryos for genetic flaws and aborting any who show damage;
Several cases over the last few years involving pregnant women who were placed under court supervision or even incarcerated because their personal habits were deemed “unhealthy” or dangerous to their unborn children.
I’m afraid the trend here is using the medical and genetic information of individuals to control their reproductive and lifestyle choices.
The appeal to criminal apprehension or prevention as a rationale for expanding genetic databases seems to me to be a smokescreen.
The logical result seems to be that society would have the capability to analyze anyone’s DNA profile and locate dangerous or medically expensive genetic patterns, and prevent those individuals from having children who would impose significant social costs on the public health system, not to mention other social structures—education, criminal and penal systems, etc.
It may be impossible to prevent one’s DNA profile from ending up in some medical database, but given the increasing intermingling of political and medical issues as just more grist for the state’s mill, I hesitate to allow the state formally approved access to the info without a court order or some other form of barrier to prevent wanton abuse.
Is it just me or does each and every attempt to address crime and wrongdoing in the UK now seem to involve the monitoring of the innocent?
It’s becoming a palpably creepy country.
Stephanie:
I’m from the government.
This is for official business.
How much is in your checking account, and what’s that number again?
And what kind of underwear are you wearing?
And what, exactly, were you doing in the basement stacks of the library ten minutes before closing time with whatsisface?
After all, gathering information isn’t inherent coercive. You said so yourself.
They are just waiting for us to commit what they regard as crime-we all will eventually- so that they can chortle indulgently, forgive us and prove that they are nothing to be afraid of after all.
And perhaps we will now put aside notions of innocence and individuality and join in and play the game?
Actually I think each and every attempt by the government to address just about anything ends up aggravating any situation and making it far worse.
Basic human psychology dictates that a policeman having a bad day will obviously prefer to arrest an innocent man for smoking a cigarette in a bus shelter (yes, it is an offence) than he would to arrest some anti-social, David Cameron-loving hoody who might have a knife. As far as his bosses are concerned he achieves the same performance statistics as if he had arrested the hoody and the state can happily say that crime is now at an all-time low, with fewer violent criminals being arrested. Its generally referred to as the ‘Path of Least Resistance Theory’.
There’s a Terry Pratchett quote that is quite apt, and no its not from Nightwatch:
I cannot help making a side observation that one of the things going on here is the bedazzlement many crimie-fighters get over technology and science. Call it the “CSI Effect”; people watch TV shows where the science geeks get to crack a case, while the old grunts in uniform are there to make arrests, drive in car chases and get shot at, etc. I think the same thing is happening to some extent in Britain – old fashioned policing is out, whizz-kid tech is in. Do not get me wrong; if modern forensic science can nail the guilty, excellent, but some people out there need to be reminded of some of the basics of crime fighting.
The solution is NOT to simply act like Luddites and scream and wave your hands around and generally act like idiots or imbeciles (in the old sense of the words).
The solution is to be eternally vigilant. LET the Government have their national database. THEN crucify them on each and every possible data point. Collection. Validation. Error correction. Securing the data. Encryption. Access controls. Usage restrictions. Transparency. Speed. And a few hundred other ways in which this can work (NOT).
Eh, maybe the correct way to do this is to have them make all these safeguards FIRST. Tell them they can have it IF and WHEN they can in real life settle all of these issues. Hmm. Forget I said anything.
It may not be today, but the deadly nazi spectre of “eugenics” is on the radar-position-plots of statists like this judge. (Anybody know anything about him? His Oxbridge college, facebook, that sort of stuff?)
The degree of code-resolution of stored DNA may soon become good enough for the holders of it, that is to say, the State, to be able to “pro-actively-manage the health and reproductive success of the population”.
I would take that phrase to mean (and I bet you 50p someone in the bureaucazis will one day come up with something similar) that you will be prevented from breeding with whom you wish, or at all, on account of “errors”, in your DNA.
Another issue is raised: that of copyright. If it is illegal for you to take say Microsoft’s or anybody’s code and reverse-engineer it for your purposes, or even to read it, then since “your” DNA code is the most individually characteristic thing you possess and could fairly be described as “your inalienable property”, then it is illegal for the State or anybody else to “take” it, or to “reverse-engineer” it, for any purpose, without your express sovereign permission.
Refusal of the State to comply will once and for all highlight what it truly thinks is its relationship with us. Then, we will know where we are.
Sunfish,
After all, gathering information isn’t inherent coercive. You said so yourself.
And it’s not (though coming by and forcing me to answer questions is). Should the government just be able to take that information whenever it wants? No. But because it’s not coercive, I’m willing to look at the consequences of privacy violations and judge based on those, instead of giving it the blanket “no” I do to censorship, etc.
Jon B – The communists would have called you a ‘useful idiot’ behind your back.
Stephanie In and of itself, it doesn’t affect you one way or the other. DNA seems particularly harmless on top of that, because it’s not like the government can tell anything about your actual life from it.
Are you kidding. They will be using it to profile you – and your propensity to crime, fitting in, etc. within 20 years.
Lord Justice Stephen Sedley is dangerous, he should be sacked.
The thing to note as well is that although governments are generally staffed by bungling yet power-hungry idiots, the UK seems particularly plagued by this. Post-war nationalization, the NHS, child services, law and order … the list of evidence is very, very long.
So why people would be perfectly happy to hand our DNA over to these fools for Gods knows what mischief, well, that is a puzzle.
As has often been said before we clearly need the electronic chip in the brain.
Not just to track us, but to prevent us having unprogressive thoughts (for example thoughts contrary to “social justice”).
Of course there will most likely be a “I.T. mess up” meaning that electronic chip will either kill us or lead us to go mad and rip each others throats out.
But one can not allow such considerations to stand in the way of “progress”.
As usual, Mr. Pearce, you knocked that one right out into the cheap seats.
Seriously, though, you’re right. And we’re probably less than 20 years behind you on that slide. It’s gotten to the point where prosecutors need to give the “CSI lecture” during arguments: that DNA is limited in what it can show, etc.
When you hire a bunch of brilliant people who hide in their offices and play with technology, you get red light cameras and “Of course I arrested him for burglary. His prints were on the doorknob!”
In that specific case, the suspect’s prints were on the doorknob because he was once the victim’s live-in boyfriend. However, the moron who ran that case was a moron and didn’t ask. It never occurred to him that he should probably have tried to find out “Have you ever been inside the apartment?” Better yet, one might have asked him where he was during the 6-hour window in which the crime took place.
Not this clown, though: he thought the fingerprints, and the suspect pawning a stereo of the same model as was stolen, was all he needed.[1] So then he arrested the guy: now, warrantless arrest for a non-violent burglary a week after the fact is legal, but not preferable. Very much not preferable. But that’s next week’s rant.
Not sure what DNA would have done here: proven that Sammy the Suspect was in Vicky the Victim’s apartment? We already knew that. Actually, proving rape over an identity defense is about the one place where DNA really, really shines.[2]
The point is, much grief could have been saved had Our Hero not been so dependent on toys that he forgot a very important principle: policing is about interacting with people, getting information from them, and then putting the information together and doing something useful with it. If you don’t talk to suspects and witnesses and victims, ask them questions, and observe their behavior, then all of the neat computerized-DNA-sampling-laser-powered coffee machines[3] won’t make you worth a damn as a cop.
[1] It’s a little iffy as probable cause goes. It probably doesn’t help that the victim was unable to produce a serial number or receipt for the stereo, so that it was not trivial to prove that the pawned one was hers. Informal polling put that about 50-50.
[2] Is stranger rape common in the UK? I would very much doubt it.
[3] I have no idea what that even is, but I want one.
I suspect that you’re more right than you know.
I went to replace a broken cellular last month. While I was looking for the cheapest option (I get a free phone with a two-year contract, but the allowance was only a hundred bucks or so) I couldn’t help but notice a few that were beyond four hundred dollars.
I suspect that $100 was for the phone itself and possibly the MP3 player, and the other $300 was for the mind-control device.
That being said, if a mind-control chip in my brain could do something about having “Terrapin Station” by the Grateful Dead stuck in my head for the last day or so, I would forgive the inventor.
I suspect that you and I associate with different policemen, then. Most of the guys I work with would rather have a good tangle with an honest-to-goodness bad guy than bust some guy’s b*lls over unauthorized smoking.
Give me a ten-minute phone call from The Former Mrs. Sunfish and I’d REALLY want to tangle with a real bad guy in preference to writing a BS “indoor clean air act” ticket on some guy who hasn’t done anything else wrong.
Obviously, I wouldn’t actually use any force on the hoody that wasn’t fully-compliant with relevant Federal and state law. I’m just saying that, given a choice of who to mess with, most of us would prefer to have noise and static with actual criminals than people who can’t read “no smoking” signs.
(Did I just post three separate followups in a row? Sorry.)
But Sunfish, you are a Yank. If you want to see a bunch of form fillers in Hi-Vis waistcoats masquerading as a police force/service, come to Britain. Only do it before you have to give them your DNA for the dubious privilege of coming here.
They aren’t interested in the guilty.
They are interested in the innocent, because they think we are the ones they can still rule.
Could this ever happen in America?
I particularly like the “…claimed as State property…” line from this.
Paul,
My apologies for misinterpreting you Guy.
Likewise. It is a good thing our sainted editors find us both intelligible.
There was a discussion on Radio 5 this morning. Someone (ex-police, I think) was supporting this judge and in favour of taking everyone’s DNA. A representative of “Liberty” was opposing him.
When the Liberty representative pointed out that even if the government don’t misuse the data, it would still be prone to unauthorised access form ‘bent’ staff, the police person po-pooed this and said that it was unlikely and after all it had never happened up to now. Imagine his surprise when the Liberty representative then supplied details of just such a case where a policeman had been convicted of illegally filching data from the DNA database.
Quite apart from all the civil liberty considerations, does it never occur to these public sector types to consider a cost:benefit analyss of schemes like th ID card and the DNA database. Or are they afraid of the likely result?
Your first link is very interesting Pa Annoyed.
(I couldnt open the second one)
If I was a devious Government I would automatically take DNA from the newborn as a surrupticious but standard norm, and tell no one about it.
They have form already. Organs from the dead that have been whipped out without the relatives consent or even knowledge.
A.N Wilson’s article in the Mail is interesting.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=480219&in_page_id=1770
HERE’S something else to worry about, bouys and ghouls. Here in Australia we have a science show called Catalyst, all about scientific discoveries. One show was devoted to DNA, and they showed how that ubiquitous criminal mastermind could use a DNA replicator, found in most good labs, to frame someone by copying and spraying their DNA on the crime scene. The actual DNA of the real criminal was overlaid by all the fake stuff!
With everyone on a DNA profile, you could incriminate anyone! Perfect crimes, here we come!
I agree Guy.
Clearly it does not, and why should it? They get all the “benefit”, the cost is passed on to the taxpayers. That’s the beauty of the scam we call government.
“For no other purpose”. Why, are there other purposes that the judge knows about?
Well, for a start, Britain is already famous for collecting information and then, in a fit of economy, “privatising” it — releasing it to private companies to play with as they like.
It should come as no surprise that Lord Justice Sir Stephen “Swabemall” Sedley ,the man who wants us all on the DNA register,was a communist..
A number of technical issues:
Smart Crims pick up lint (mainly human skin flakes and hair) from bus and train seats. They leave this scattered about, thereby adding several hundred pieces of random human DNA about the crime scene. Enough to cause “reasonable doubt” even if their own isn’t lost in the shuffle.
Some people are mosaics or chimerae. The database must allow for the fact that some people have multiple DNA lines in their bodily makeup. Similarly, identical twins have identical DNA.