DNA Database
Apologies if all my posts lately have started off with links, but I could not work out how to embed the videos from BBC News.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8611323.stm
If you can't be bothered to watch, it is Gordon Brown talking about how the DNA database was used to catch the killer of a child. I don't remember the kid in question being in the news, but she probably was.
In this case the guy was arrested for some bar fight apparently, and not charged (Why he was not charged is a completely different question).
I don't like the DNA database. I don't like any database really, but the DNA is one of my least favourite. I don't like the idea that if I am mistakenly arrested my DNA remains forever on some big government database. Now in this case it probably did some good, but that does not make it right for such a thing to exist.
If it is okay to keep the DNA of every person who have been arrested then surely it is okay to keep the DNA of every person in the country? Our legal justice system is such that being arrested means absolutely nothing until you have been tried and convicted by a jury of your peers. I am sure keeping the DNA of every person in the UK would solve many many more crimes, but how many mistakes would be made? how many civil liberties would be destroyed?
You may say that if you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to worry about.
If you have done nothing wrong why object to putting your DNA on file, just to rule you out.
If you do nothing wrong why not have all of your conversations recorded and stored for future reference, just to rule you out of any investigation in future?
If you do nothing wrong why not have your movements constantly tracked and stores, just to rule you out of any future investigation?
Then there is the Future Government argument. This government may be benevolent for the most part and believe in civil liberties and so on, but what about future governments. What if the BNP gain power in a decade's time and decide that everyone who is not of UK heritage should be shot. What if Hitler had such a database in 1940, or any other leader that developed a desire for racial purges.
It is a very dangerous precedent, and I really don't care how much good it does I still don't like it. I want to be free. there are already far to many ways of tracking you throughout your life and I don't think we should be adding another one to that list.
Freedoms are not free. This one, just like any other, has a cost. And that cost is sometimes murders are unsolved where they would have been if such a database existed. I don't like the cost, but I feel the benefits outweigh it.