National DNA Database Compulsary?

[scooterscot]

And the ones that weren't invited? I'm nearly certain those are the ones causing the problems...

[Peoplesoft bloke]

And the ones that weren't invited? I'm nearly certain those are the ones causing the problems...

If that is true, of course, there's no chance of ID cards and/or compulsory DNA testing being any use in combating the problems......

[Sysman]

But what happens when you run foul of some policeman (say in traffic) and he makes a wrong call and you get the best of him.

What is to stop him getting revenge by planting your DNA at some crime scene. Not a lot I suspect.

As an example of policemen abusing their power, sometime back in the 1980s I was chatting up a rather nice lady, and a bloke came up and threatened me that he was a copper, she was his brother's gf, and if I didn't leave her alone, I'd get harassed by the local squad.

As simple as that, no legal offence involved. Needless to say, I cleared off.

[OwlHoot]

It may sound slightly corny by now, but there's yet another angle to this: just because something can be done doesn't mean it should be done.

Aside from the Government's fascist tendencies, and no doubt also those of the EU and the US egging them on officially or otherwise, I think there's a naive impulse at work here simply to adopt a new technology to its utmost just because it's there and new (and God knows, Liebore are novelty hounds if nothing else).

As IT contractors we must all have seen at some time (or written - I've been guilty now and then in self-training mode!), way over-engineered software using all kinds of bells and whistles that may be ideal in some situations but are beyond what is required for a typical application.

The same thing happens with most new technologies - take castles for example. The oldest surviving Norman castle is the Keep at Montmacon in France, completed in about 1000, which was about the time they started using stone in place of wood.

And with these new stone castles a bizarre fashion started - walling people up and leaving them to starve and/or suffocate to death in a sealed room. They even had a phrase for it: "mewing up" (presumably from the pitiful noise a starving prisoner made, assuming they could be heard).

This went on for two or three hundred years - For example, Bad King John had several dozen French knights starved to death in the dungeons of Corfe Castle (although in fairness the Frogs were doing the same to a comparable number of English soldiers and refused an exchange).

It was quite a while before people twigged that bricking people up in rooms wasn't such a good idea, because with half the rooms inaccessible and occupied by skeletons there was (a) less room for the living, (b) more irate ghosts wandering the corridors, and (c) maybe a bit more cruel than necessary and inviting similar retialiation.

Hopefully this grim example doesn't sound too offbeat and irrelevant to the problem of DNA databases. But if nothing else it shows how enthusiastic control freaks can misuse a new technology even where one might least expect that was possible!

[Sysman]

No, because that is a null argument.

You could make that argument about any procedure and to justify any procedure. For example, CCTV cameras in everyone's house and all citizens to wear locator tags at all times. After all, it would stop your children from being killed by a serial killer right?

Wrong.

On the Yorkshire Ripper case, I lived in West Yorkshire when he was still on the loose. There were tons of late night roadblocks where you had to give your name, address, car number, but this was in the days before cheap computing came along, so they were analysing the information with a paperwork system. It turned out that the Ripper had owned half a dozen cars during a critical period of the investigation, and that threw them (I would make the guess here that the paperwork system was indexed by car number). In other words, they had the data to make him a suspect, but not the technology to process it effectively.

In fact they did take him in for questioning at least once, but let him go. Just a simple database instead of that paperwork system would have probably supplied enough evidence to hold him for longer.

[MarillionFan]

Last edited by Sysman as 21:22.

Mmmmm. What are you hiding Jack?????!!!!!!!

[Peoplesoft bloke]

On the Yorkshire Ripper case, I lived in West Yorkshire when he was still on the loose. There were tons of late night roadblocks where you had to give your name, address, car number, but this was in the days before cheap computing came along, so they were analysing the information with a paperwork system. It turned out that the Ripper had owned half a dozen cars during a critical period of the investigation, and that threw them (I would make the guess here that the paperwork system was indexed by car number). In other words, they had the data to make him a suspect, but not the technology to process it effectively.

In fact they did take him in for questioning at least once, but let him go. Just a simple database instead of that paperwork system would have probably supplied enough evidence to hold him for longer.

Do you have any detailed knowledge of how they conducted this investigation or are you just supposing they were hampered by lack of a database rather than other factors?

How exactly do you think a database would have delivered evidence allowing them to hold the ripper for longer?

[DimPrawn]

Surely if New Labour had a DNA database of everyone in the UK, and CCTV cameras on every street and electronic tagging with GPS of every citizen and every home were bugged and spy satellites tracked every living being, and every telephone conversation were recorded, we'd live in a crime free utopia?

Can't wait.

[AtW]

Good idea - should be enforced by all chat boards to prevent multiple IDs as well

[Sysman]

Mmmmm. What are you hiding Jack?????!!!!!!!

Nowt. Just added the last sentence.