Friday 5 December 2008

Give Me Back My Double Helix

Hurrah! The European Court of Human Rights agrees with me! Not for us the keeping of DNA on file for no good reason!

This is doubly cheering, partially because it's the right decision, and partially because of the number of irritating people who will doubtlessly be wound up by this. I look forward to the inevitable Daily Mail whining about how statistically this means the DNA of up to umpteen paedophiles will no longer be on file and that means your child will die!!!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Um, not to rain on your parade or anything, but the Daily Mail agrees with you on this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1092056/MAIL-COMMENT-The-nation-created-Magna-Carta-look-European-Court-safeguard-civil-rights.html.

Dan Edmunds said...

See I have no problem with a DNA database, mainly because I can't think of anything untoward that the government could possibly do with it. As far as I'm concerned they can have my DNA profile and stick it in the database and do what they like with it as it would actually be of small benefit to me (if for example I was an unidentifiable body I could actually be identified thanks to the database and thus provide closure to my family), and no negatives (well I suppose they could go and create a clone of me or something equally sci-fi but even then I'm not actually seeing how this would be at all negative to me, unless they get the clone to rob a bank or something).

I'm probably just missing what the negative actually is, but given the choice of having a DNA database or handing over information that actually could potentially have a negative impact on me (bank details, religious beliefs, political party affiliations etc) I really don't have an issue with DNA. And if it helps law enforcement + body identification it kind of seems like benefits without much in the way of negatives.

But open mind and all, would be interested in hearing your reasons why the government having your DNA is a bad thing?

Anonymous said...

I with Dan, I've never really seen why people see the database as such an infringement of liberties. I really do struggle to see how it could be abused, and the current issues of how it works and is structured I actually think would be better addressed if the thing was opened up to the whole population.

Somelike the detention without charge is much an attack on liberty than the DNA database is.

After no-one is going to get convicted on the strength of DNA evidence alone. It's a useful tool not an excuse to bang people at a random as some seem to believe.

Anonymous said...

Also the court agrees with you on two specific cases and hasn't passed a ruling on the database as whole (although the judge's comments would imply a similiar verdict)

SpaceSquid said...

"Um, not to rain on your parade or anything, but the Daily Mail agrees with you on this:"

Hah! I should feel really bad about the Mail agreeing with me, but actually I'm just incredibly amused that they've had to take the side that they have. It must make them sick, all those cheese-eating surrender monkeys telling us how to safeguard civil liberties.

I'll address some of the other comments here in another post.