Where's the debate on the DNA database?

It contains the profiles of a million innocent people and lacks basic safeguards – but it has no legislative foundation

• 
• • Diane Abbott
  • guardian.co.uk,
  • Wednesday July 30 2008
  • Article history

A government-funded inquiry is calling for the DNA profile of people, who have not actually been convicted of a crime, to be removed from the national DNA database.

Britain has the largest DNA database in the world. There are over 4.2 million people on it. But a million of those people have never been convicted of anything. And 50,000 of them are children. Millions of these profiles are given to private companies without the consent of individuals. Yet the DNA database has mushroomed with no basis in legislation. And members of parliament have never been given the opportunity to vote on it.

Perhaps, if the database did have some legislative foundation, there would have been a chance to put in place the safeguards which are lamentably lacking from the current system.

Forty per cent of black men are on it, but only 9% of white men.

This bears no correlation to relative arrest or conviction rates. And the police seem determined to hold on to their power to put people on the database in a completely arbitrary way.

I saw this when a friend had her 14-year-old daughter's DNA sample taken because she happened to get a lift home in a car which was stopped by the police. No one was charged, no offence had been committed, but the police took it upon themselves to take a DNA sample from her. They tried to suggest to the parents subsequently that it was mandatory for them to do this. It was only when I took up the case with government ministers that they admitted that it was at their own discretion.

Six hundred and forty five rapists have been caught using the DNA database.

But I doubt that many of them were 14-year-old girls. Yet the police had the power to criminalise my friend's daughter with no appeal and no safeguards.

Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys, the man who actually invented DNA fingerprinting, is concerned. He says:

The national DNA database is a very powerful tool in the fight against crime, but recent developments such as the retention of innocent people's DNA raises significant ethical and social issues. The real concern I have in the UK is what I see as a sort of 'mission creep'. When the DNA database was initially established, it was to database DNA from criminals so if they re-offended, they could be picked up. Now hundreds of thousands of entirely innocent people are populating that database.

Professor Stephen Bain, a member of the Human Genetics Commission, said much greater consideration had gone into databases put together for research purposes than for the national DNA database used for forensic purposes.

Lord Justice Sedley has said that the police are engaging in crude ethnic profiling. He says this is indefensible and it would be fairer to include everyone, innocent or guilty. This would be a huge step.

But there is no doubt that a proper debate on the uses and abuses of the DNA database is long overdue.

Selected Comments All comments (62)

• MoveAnyMountain

  Jul 31 08, 10:04am (about 13 hours ago)

  May I once again point out that this database which "has not legislative basis" does in fact have so - under the Criminal and Police Justice Act 2001.

  Which Diane Abbott voted for on not just one occasion but at least three that I can see.

  So we have an article here from someone who voted for this database, decrying it and claiming that it is not legal. Despite the fact she approved the legislation that gave the police the powers she thinks they should not have.

  Priceless.

  I think that needed to be said again in case anyone missed it the first time.

DNA database - Unequal record

All comments (2)

• Editorial
• The Guardian,
• Wednesday July 30 2008
• Article history

Just after 9am on Monday September 10 1984, Sir Alec Jeffreys, a professor of genetics, triggered a revolution. He compared a DNA sample from one of his colleagues with that of the man's wider family and found a pattern. The discovery made DNA fingerprinting possible. The benefits are undeniable. No one would wish the invention undone.

But the process, and the British database it has generated, the most extensive in the world, has blurred the divide between private and public, innocent and guilty - a state intrusion into the genetic makeup of individuals that, until now, has been little monitored and could be easily abused.

The dilemmas are more ethical than scientific. It would be possible, if costly and illiberal, to record information from everyone legally resident in the UK. Sir Alec, who in an interview in the Engineer magazine this week rightly described a universal database as "wholly inappropriate", is not the only one to object to that idea - yesterday a citizen's jury set up by the Human Genetics Commission opposed it too. But if only some people are to be included, then it is all the more important that the rules are fair and people have a right of appeal.

The current situation, in which data from some 4.5 million people is held by chance, either because (innocent or guilty) they were arrested for a recordable offence or because they volunteered their DNA to help an investigation, is a bad compromise.

The risk is that the register ceases to be treated as an impartial forensic tool and becomes a list of the usual suspects - with the simple fact of inclusion implying possible guilt.

The recent DNA expansion programme, which sought to include all "active offenders", made the database more useful - but may also have exacerbated its bias. The fact that people who come into contact with the police are the most likely to be included has produced a distorted record, weighted towards certain sections of the population - especially young black men, up to three-quarters of whom may now be included, out of proportion to their actual involvement in crime.

The government admits that this is a problem. But

it has been reluctant to limit the sprawl on the grounds that the bigger the database, the more likely criminals are to be caught in its net.

But that is a recipe for a universal record by stealth. In April, the Home Office's advisory DNA Ethics Group urged a limit on the use of information provided by innocent volunteers. Yesterday the citizens' jury suggested people who are acquitted should have their names removed, among other ideas to prevent uncontrolled expansion.

Used badly, a database will harm the society it is supposed to protect.

Cameron considers Davis's future

Mr Cameron said Mr Davis had made his point on civil liberties

Tory leader David Cameron has praised David Davis for his by-election victory but is refusing to say whether he will offer him another frontline role.

He called the former shadow home secretary a "very strong" figure who could "contribute in the future".

But Mr Cameron added that he already had a "very strong shadow cabinet".

Mr Davis won Haltemprice and Howden on a civil liberties platform, with a majority of 15,355. Labour and the Lib Dems did not put up candidates.

'Made his point'

And Home Office minister Tony McNulty reacted to the result by accusing Mr Davis of "vanity" and comparing him to the hapless cartoon character Homer Simpson.

Mr Davis quit as an MP in June over the government's plans to detain terror suspects for up to 42 days without charge.

At the time, Mr Cameron stressed it was his personal decision - and swiftly moved to replace him as shadow home secretary with shadow attorney general Dominic Grieve.

We have fired a shot across the bows of Gordon Brown's arrogant, arbitrary and authoritarian government David Davis MP Davis cruises to by-election win By-election: Full results Analysis: Did he keep his dignity?

Mr Davis, who will return to the Commons as a backbencher, said he did not plan to become a "single-issue campaigner" on civil liberties.

Asked if the Haltemprice and Howden MP will be given another shadow cabinet role, Mr Cameron said: "He can contribute in the future... I think he's made his point in the way that he wanted to.

"What matters is what's right and standing up and saying what's right as the Conservative Party, throughout this whole argument, has done."

'Authoritarian government'

Mr Cameron added: "I will obviously talk to him about what the future holds, but I've got a very strong shadow cabinet. David is a very strong Conservative figure.

"I'm sure there will be many ways he can contribute in the future."

Mr Davis, who was beaten by Mr Cameron in the contest to become party leader in 2005, said: "We have fired a shot across the bows of Gordon Brown's arrogant, arbitrary and authoritarian government."

He said he would return to Westminster on Monday with a mandate "to fight Gordon Brown's vision of Big Brother Britain tooth and nail, to stop 42 days in its tracks, to prevent the disaster of ID cards before it happens, to protect our personal privacy from being ransacked by the ever-intrusive state".

Mr Davis is expected to discuss his future role, if any, with Mr Cameron after he returns but he admitted it was unlikely the Tory leader would invite him back onto the party's front bench.

'Cowardice'

"I took on board that I would lose my shadow cabinet post and probably my shadow cabinet future," he said. "I accept that."

Mr Davis promised to "put a lot of effort" into opposing 42 days' detention on his return to Parliament.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "The trouble with this is, from the beginning, the Westminster village hasn't really understood that someone wants to take a stand on a matter of principle that may have some effect on themselves."

Mr Davis also accused the government of "spectacular cowardice" for not fielding a candidate.

But Mr McNulty accused Mr Davis of "vanity" for prompting a by-election, saying: "It doesn't need David Davis to give the country his permission to have a debate on the issue (of 42 days' detention)."

'Lonely stand'

He added that Mr David should have remained an MP to "make the arguments" in Parliament.

In light of Gordon Brown's recent admission that it was "absolutely correct" to compare himself to Heathcliff, the romantic hero of the novel Wuthering Heights, Mr McNulty was asked who Mr Davis reminded him of.

He replied: "David Davis? Probably Homer Simpson."

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said: "The Conservatives are a long way from being defenders of liberty.

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What has the David Davis by-election result achieved? Absolutely nothing!

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"David Davis' lonely stand only highlights the big questions that still remain over whether the Conservatives really are committed to protecting our freedom."

Turnout in Haltemprice and Howden was 34%, with the Green Party coming second on 1,758 votes and the English Democrats third on 1,714.

Out of a record 26 by-election candidates, 23 lost their deposits after failing to attract 5% of the vote.

At the last general election Mr Davis won the seat with a 5,116 majority.

However, the 17,113 votes he polled were fewer than the 22,792 he achieved at the 2005 election, and turnout was also down from 70.2%.

The Lib Dems - who came second in 2005 - chose not to run because they also opposed the government's plans to extend the time limit on holding terrorism suspects.

Labour refused to stand, describing the by-election as a farce and a waste of more than £80,000 of public money.

Eliza Manningham-Buller, former MI5 chief, savages 42-day plan

By James Kirkup, Political Correspondent

Last Updated: 7:05PM BST 08/07/2008 | Comments 52 | Have Your Say

Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, today dealt a huge blow to Gordon Brown’s plans to extend the detention of terrorist suspects to 42 days.

Making her first speech as a member of the House of Lords, the former security chief said the Government’s plans were wrong in principle and in practice.

She spoke as the Government’s controversial Counter-Terrorism Bill, narrowly approved by the Commons last month, reached the House of Lords.

The Bill would extend the period of time the police can hold terror suspects without charge to six weeks, up from the current limit of 28 days.

Ministers and some police chiefs say the new powers are needed to keep Britain safe from terrorist attack.

But Baroness Manningham-Buller, who retired last year as director-general of the Security Service after a 35-year career in British intelligence, forcefully rejected that argument.

“In deciding what I believe on these matters, I have weighed up the balance between the right to life, the most import civil liberty, the fact that there is no such thing as complete security and the importance of our hard won civil liberties,” she said. "And therefore on a matter of principle, I cannot support the 42-days pre-charge detention in this bill."

She went on to say that measures in the bill giving MPs oversight of long detention cases would be likely to prejudice any trial of a suspect that followed.

She said: "I don't see on a practical basis, as well as a principled one, that these proposals are in any way workable."

David Davis, the former Tory shadow home secretary who resigned to campaign on civil liberties issues, seized on Baroness Mannnigham-Buller's comments.

He said: "This new law would actually harm the counter-terrorism effort rather than assisting it, and this demonstrates only too clearly that it is an action motivated by politics rather than the nation's security."

Lady Manningham-Buller is the latest in a string of high-profile figures from the security and legal establishment to come out against the 42-day plan, following former lord chancellor Lord Falconer, former attorney general Lord Goldsmith and Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Ken Macdonald.

But senior police chiefs including Sir Ian Blair, the Met Commissioner, and Peter Clarke, the former head of counter-terrorism at Scotland Yard, have said the new powers are needed.

Would you feel safer with a 42-day limit? Leave your comments below

The 42-day plan is dead, but its assassin may surprise you

It wasn't David Davis or East Riding voters who holed the government's plans. It was a new arrival in the House of Lords

All comments (10)

• 
• • Martin Kettle
  • The Guardian,
  • Friday July 11, 2008
  • Article history

David Davis and Ken Livingstone may not seem to have a lot in common - apart, that is, from their frustrated ambitions to lead their respective parties. Yet they share an unusual distinction among prominent modern politicians. Both of them have resigned to fight byelections on what they saw as issues of principle, only to find that the byelection, although striking and daring in its way, was actually the easy bit.

I write this in advance of last night's result in Haltemprice and Howden, so it is just possible that Davis is waking up this morning to the realisation that he has carried out the most politically suicidal move by a senior British politician since the Labour minister John Stonehouse faked his own drowning off a Miami beach in 1974. In which case, you may have better things to do today than to read much further.

However, on the assumption that the pundits were right and that Davis has indeed been re-elected to parliament overnight, it is important to remember the lesson from Livingstone's now widely forgotten byelection. In 1984, Livingstone resigned his Paddington seat on the Greater London Council in the hope of creating a defining single-issue contest against Margaret Thatcher in which he would be swept back to County Hall on a Save the GLC tide. Yet things did not go as Livingstone hoped. The Conservatives dismissed the contest as a stunt and refused to run a candidate. When the election took place, turnout was embarrassingly low. Livingstone was re-elected with ease, but there was no shot-in-the-arm for the wider campaign to save the GLC, and the council was soon abolished.

I don't think Davis paid enough attention to the lesson from Livingstone's ploy. Yes, Davis caught some people's attention. Yes, it was heartening to see some public re-engagement with the political process. And, yes, it is increasingly likely that the government's 42-day pre-charge detention plan will not now end up on the statute book at all. These are all good things. But this byelection was by most standards a damp squib like Livingstone's.

Perceptions of the Haltemprice and Howden byelection have churned dramatically in the four weeks since Davis stood outside the Commons in the June night and announced he was quitting. Phase one was dominated by the widespread view at Westminster that this was a quixotic act of vanity whose main immediate consequence was to turn the spotlight off Gordon Brown's humiliatingly narrow win in the 42-day vote and on to Davis's enduring rivalry with David Cameron. That was quickly followed by a backlash, disproportionately from the blogosphere, which celebrated both Davis's independence and his cause, and which purported, without much objective evidence and in defiance of most opinion polls, to speak for the mass of ordinary people against the Westminster elite.

That gave way to a dawning awareness that things were a bit more complicated.

The contest in the Hull dormitory zone did not become the political equivalent of a Wimbledon Centre Court final that Davis had hoped for. Labour's refusal to be drawn in - which anyone who knew the Livingstone case might have anticipated - deprived the former shadow home secretary of the setpiece confrontation he needed.

The entry of 25 fringe candidates drastically reduced the election's credibility. Instead of a fight to defend ancient liberties, Haltemprice and Howden turned into a battle to make sure that a decent number of people bothered to vote.

This byelection has been both oversold and undersold. Low turnout, if it has happened, will reinforce that scepticism. Right now, though, the positives also need to be accentuated. From my own brief visit this week I would say these are as follows.

First, the Haltemprice contest undoubtedly encouraged a reasoned debate, in but not confined to the constituency, about the place of civil liberties in the age of al-Qaida.

Second, it gave a small push, which should not be exaggerated, to the public mood on proposals like ID cards, where there has been a clear shift in views over the years, and on 42 days, where Davis is making exaggerated claims about changes in attitudes that are better explained by the kind of questions that the pollsters have asked.

Third, it provided a very practical form of public political engagement (almost certainly more practical than the green paper on this subject that the justice ministry quietly published this week).

Fourth, it made the government's attempt to get the counter-terrorism bill (including the 42-day power) on to the statute book a little bit harder.

It was undeniably impressive to stand in the Hull suburb of Willerby this week and listen to Davis, flanked by the Labour rebel Bob Marshall-Andrews, Liberty's Shami Chakrabarti and the eloquent 7/7 survivor Rachel North, calling on voters to take a stand and make some history. They may not be as big an alliance as they like to make out, but they have real achievements to their name.

But don't let's kid ourselves. It wasn't Davis or a few thousand East Riding voters who delivered the most important blow to the government's plans this week. It was Lady Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, in her devastatingly succinct maiden speech in the House of Lords. When the recently retired head of the security services declared that the 42-day power is not justified on grounds of either practicality or principle, the plans were holed below the water line.

Where, by the way, does her speech - and the similar speeches of so many former police, prosecutors and judges - leave those who always claim that "the state" is a sleepless and hegemonic conspiracy against the innocent downtrodden? The truth is far more nuanced than the conspiracy theorists can ever admit.

The 42-day plan is now all but dead. It is clear that the Lords will throw it out when they vote in October.

The larger the majority in the Lords the more difficult it will be for the government - which only won by nine last time - to reinstate the deletion in the Commons in November or to use the Parliament Act to flatten its opponents in the upper house a year from now. With a general election beginning to loom and the economy increasingly at the heart of the political battle, there will soon be neither space nor heart for this fight.

The question is increasingly not when the 42-day plan will fall, but how. David Davis can take some credit for this. But I think it is Lady Manningham-Buller who has fired the fatal shot.

ID cards are the most pernicious threat to our freedom

Rafael Behr: What liberty means to me: Unlike the citizens of Russia, we do not need the state's permission to walk the streets

All comments (117)

• 
• • Rafael Behr
  • guardian.co.uk,
  • Monday July 7, 2008
  • Article history

I learned the meaning of civil liberty when I was a correspondent (for a different paper) in Moscow. Reporting on Russia had its unique charms: the merry scorn which officials showed to the very idea of telling journalists, especially foreign ones, anything other than big, fat, Soviet-scale lies; the dispiriting submission of most of the population to constant low-level oppression, as if that was the only way power could be exercised; the disgusting cynicism of the cover-ups that, were they not so appalling, would almost be funny. I remember one case of a border police official with a reputation for fighting corruption being reported as having "accidentally shot himself several times in the head while drunk".

But of the petty indignities suffered by Moscow residents who look a bit foreign, the most common is the arbitrary identity check. You are walking down the street and a Kalashnikov-toting policeman pulls you to one side and mutters a single word: "Dokumenty!" Show me your papers. You hand over your passport (no one is fool enough to walk around without it). The bullet-head stares incredulously at it for a while and then thrusts it back at you with a gesture that says, "OK, Brit. Walk on. You were lucky this time."

If you are not British, if you are a Chechen or an Uzbek, or a Russian without the correct stamp indicating your right of residence in the capital, being lucky would mean getting away with paying a bribe. Being unlucky would mean a beating in the back of the police van. And a bribe.

Being stopped for ID, even when your papers are in order, is an intimidating experience. For a second, you shrink dramatically in scale. You are an ant and the boot of arbitrary state power hovers over you. Then you scurry on and gradually resume your stature as an autonomous individual, but not a free one.

The essence of the identity check is to reinforce a false idea of permission. The street belongs to the state and you need to prove your right to walk down it. In Russia, that relationship is hardly questioned by citizens. Of course you depend on the Kremlin for its indulgence in allowing you to move around the country.

But in a democratic society, permission should work the other way round. We, as free citizens, give our consent to a small group of people, chosen from among us, to wield power for a fixed term and on the condition that they don't abuse it. If we get up to no good, we give them licence to intervene – to use force if necessary – to stop us. But the rest of the time, we do not need permission. That is why, of all the various erosions of civil liberties introduced by New Labour, I find the idea of compulsory ID cards the most pernicious. I do not need leave from the government to walk the streets. They need permission from me to police the streets – my streets, our streets.

Fortunately, Britain is immeasurably freer than Russia. The police generally do not wander around harassing people for ID to remind them who owns the place. Let's keep it that way.

Our paternalistic state makes this debate necessary

AC Grayling is an important contemporary philosopher. His book "Towards the Light" discusses history of 'Liberty'.

What liberty means to me: no one has the right to dictate to others how they should live, except if it threatens harm to others

All comments (74)

• 
• • AC Grayling
  • guardian.co.uk,
  • Saturday July 5, 2008
  • Article history

It seems odd to be asked to explain why liberty matters, after 400 years of often bitter effort to wrest it from the hands of the privileged and powerful few; but, alas, here we are. The powers that be have fallen prey to the false belief that if a technology is available – say, that allows it to spy on the populace – it should be used. A nannying, interfering, paternalistic state cannot trust people to make their own decisions, take their own risks, and accept responsibility for the consequences.

Liberty – individual liberty, the autonomy of the human – matters because no one has the right to dictate to others how they should live, what they should choose, whom they should love, or what goals they should pursue, except if any of these things threaten harm to others, where harm includes limiting others' freedoms to choose.

Civil liberties protecting individual autonomy, privacy, free speech and enquiry, and due legal process that protects the possession of them all, guard individuals against the collective and the overweening use of power.

Entrenching civil liberties matters, because it is always in the interests of authorities to make it easier for themselves to exercise their authority and to impose their will, so there is always a tendency towards limitation of freedom in the name of efficiency, security, the majority, or some greater good such as public health.

As governments try social engineering schemes – at the outset always with the best intentions – so the mission creep of directing, controlling and improving by force, occurs: and with it the loss of the physical and psychological space around each individual that makes life worth living.

John Stuart Mill observed that one of the important things about liberty is that is allows many and various experiments in living to occur. That is true; but it is even more pointful to observe that humans are various. Only in a pluralistic dispensation can all that variety express itself, and pluralism needs liberty because it is impossible without it.

No one should be the property of another, or of a system. We should each be volunteers in society, and should choose our place in it. Of course this means signing up to a common purpose and agreeing with others how we should organise ourselves; that is what democracy is about, and if we are responsible we accept that this will sometimes inconvenience us. But the inconvenience has to be well motivated indeed, and ultimately justified by the harm principle on good grounds. There are no other grounds – and certainly not grounds of efficiency and security – on which we can be obliged to yield our liberties to a government that thinks only in large, round numbers.

Note, by the way, that this is not a "libertarian" view, which is that we should have license to trample over others in the pursuit of self-interest. The harm principle constrains that alternative. Nor is this a view that says we should not care about those among us who are less able to care for themselves: a humane community is one that is tender to the young, old, ill and hurt, and that seeks to equalise opportunities and make life equitable thereafter. Courtesy, the true moral foundation, takes care of much of the rest.

But it is part of moral courtesy that we should respect the freedom of others, as we wish our own to be respected. And then we can all find our way to our chosen destinations as autonomous individuals in chosen relationships, with responsibility and possibility as our own possession.