Britain: Police State?

[lupinwick]

And to bring us back on topic

LONDON (Reuters) - A pioneer of Britain's DNA database said on Wednesday it may have grown so far beyond its original purpose that it now risks undermining civil rights.

Professor Alec Jeffreys told BBC radio that hundreds of thousands of innocent people's DNA was now held on the database, a disproportionate number of them young black men.

The database, set up in 1995, has expanded to 3.6 million profiles, making it the largest in the world.

Everyone who has ever been arrested by the police, even if not charged, is obliged to provide a DNA sample for the database, which also includes victims of crime and others who have volunteered a sample to help a criminal investigation.

"The real concern I have in the UK is what I see as a sort of 'mission creep,'" said Jeffreys, who developed the techniques for DNA fingerprinting and profiling.

When the database was initially established, it was meant to hold DNA from criminals, he added.

"Now hundreds of thousands of entirely innocent people are populating that database, people who have come to the police's attention for example by being charged with a crime and subsequently released."

The samples were "skewed socio-economically and ethnically", he said. "In my view that is discriminatory."

Soure

Even the inventor of the technique is worried. Hope for us all? Or will the government steam-roller it in and start DNA sampling at birth?

 

[Anonymous]

They would have the means of identifying a physical person - but not their behaviour patterns and they would not be able to alter them or prevent such children being born.

From what I have read, they need an RNA database as well, not just DNA.

Even then, so what? Nature or nuture folks?

 

[lupinwick]

Rigorous control over who is allowed to have children. Hasn't Blair already mentioned something similar or at least detecting problem families.

 

[Degrizzzz]

But that means that all parties in the UK are aiming to make sure that a totalitarian state is the aim in some point in the future. After all, TB won't be in power for ever, let alone the Labour party, and I very much doubt that they're somehow co-operating with all of the other parties behind the scenes. I really can't see them all getting to gether planning ahead that so that, whoever is in charge at some point in the future, they all make sure that a totalitarian state is in place. All of this suggests that they all have one common consensus, which seems very unlikely.

Im not always so sure, look at how Blair wholeheartedly continued the Thatcherite agenda...In my darker moments I have to admit I cant help but see politics as a nasty little sideshow to keep the proles in line..

 

[ted_bloody_maul]

Crime database 'is six months behind'

Investigations are being hampered by computer delays — and Scotland Yard is the worst offender

CRIMINAL investigations and job vetting procedures are being hampered because police are taking up to six months to record convictions and acquittals on the Police National Computer (PNC), the national crime database. The target for the 43 forces in England and Wales is ten days.
Two years after the Bichard report urged police to improve computer files as a result of the Soham murders, Scotland Yard is still taking so long that the delay is skewing national performance times.

The PNC network is a vital tool for officers checking suspects during investigations or after someone has been stopped by patrols. It is also used by the Criminal Records Bureau, Special Branch and MI5 to vet individuals applying for sensitive posts in schools, dealing with the vulnerable or working in government departments or for the Royal Family.

At one point this summer the situation at Scotland Yard was so bad that it took 185 days to input 75 per cent of court results. The Metropolitan Police performance has been so poor, despite extra staff, that government inspectors wrote: “If the Metropolitan Police performance is removed from the national average it improves from 39 days to 17.”

A new baseline assessment of the force for 2005-06 issued by Home Office inspectors of constabulary gives warning to Sir Ian Blair, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, that Scotland Yard has “an ongoing and unacceptable performance . . . below the required standard”.

There have been repeated warnings to all forces to improve their performance and many are still struggling, but the London force has a key role because the Metropolitan Police deals with a fifth of the recorded crime across England and Wales.

National standards agreed between the PNC staff, chief constables and the Home Office include a requirement that 90 per cent of all arrests or summonses should be keyed into the PNC within 24 hours.

Concerns about Scotland Yard’s performance were registered in January 2005 in a report on performance using data from the unit that oversees the PNC.

This showed that at one point in 2004 the force took 250 days to get 90 per cent of court results on to the computer. By January last year it was 90 days but the overall performance was considered “poor”.

In March it was still taking 181 days to record incidents, the worst result of any force.

Scotland Yard increased the 132 staff in the unit that records the results to almost 160, and more are on the way. But an internal report in September showed that 75 per cent of July results were taking 185 days to resgister and August results were taking 129.

Scotland Yard officers admit that they are struggling but lay part of the blame on an incomplete IT system within the London courts. Half the courts use a computerised system called Porteus to register results with the Metropolitan Police’s PNC unit. The other half alert police manually.

Officers say that records of arrests or summonses should sound a warning bell to police making checks and they can follow up references to an arrest by phone. They also say the Home Office accepts that police are doing work which should be done by the courts.

Steve House, the assistant commissioner overseeing Scotland Yard’s PNC work, said yesterday that force figures on logging arrests were above the national average at 81 per cent in 24 hours but he admitted: “We recognise the problem. We don’t think it is acceptable.”

Trevor Phillips, the head of Britain’s race watchdog, is to investigate the high proportion of young black men on the national DNA database.
More than a third of black males in England and Wales are on the database and there are fears that up to three quarters will soon have their profile stored. Home Office figures show that by April next year the database will hold 3.7 million files, including three million white-skinned Europeans and 257,099 Afro-Caribbeans.

An estimated 135,000 black men aged 15-34 will be on the database by April, equivalent to 77 per cent of the young male black population of England and Wales. Mr Phillips said: “This is tantamount to criminalising a generation of young black men.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 44,00.html

(more on that race row...)

Three in four young black men on the DNA database

Race watchdogs are to investigate the national DNA database over revelations that up to three quarters of young black men will soon have their profiles stored.

Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), vowed to examine whether the database breached race relations laws following the findings by The Sunday Telegraph. "This is tantamount to criminalising a generation of young black men," he said.

An estimated 135,000 black males aged 15 to 34 will be entered in the crime-fighting- database by April, equivalent to as many as 77 per cent of the young black male population in England and Wales. By contrast, only 22 per cent of young white males, and six per cent of the general population, will be on the database.

continues

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... race05.xml

 

[lupinwick]

Ah humm...

Drivers who get stopped by the police could have their fingerprints taken at the roadside, under a new plan to help officers check people's identities.

A hand-held device being tested by 10 forces in England and Wales is linked to a database of 6.5m prints.

Police say they will save time because people will no longer have to go to the station to prove their identity.

Officers promise prints will not be kept on file but concerns have been raised about civil liberties.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6170070.stm

and

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6172768.stm

Make of it what you will, but it could very easily used to capture the prints of a high proportion of the adult population. The scam would go:

Officer Your Name
You Joe Blogs
Office Put finger here
You Puts finger there

waits 2 minutes

Officer You're not on the database so good chance you are Joe Bloggs
You Oh good
Government Provisional fingerprints for Joe Bloggs.



Just a guess tho'

 

[techybloke666]

Of course its only voluntary to accept to have your prints taken isn't it ?

It can't be compulsory to take peoples fingerprints at the roadside without first arresting them !!!!!

 

[lupinwick]

In theory its voluntary. But once its there - then who knows....

 

[escargot]

As I understand it, it is 'voluntary', in that it is not compulsory.
However, anyone who refuses to give the fingerprint is likely to be arrested on sus of criminal activity, so it is not voluntary after all.

I am a peacable law-abiding motorist but if I am stopped I will certainly refuse to give fingerprints, on the grounds of a potential infringement of my civil rights. They'll have to arrest me, after which I will hotfoot to the press.

Of course, I won't be stopped and asked for fingerprints. As a female Rover driver d'un certain age I fall lamentably short of the criminal stereotypes most lusted after by the police - 20s, male, white/chav, white/non-English-speaking, non-white/English-speaking/non English-speaking...

Pity, that.

 

[JurekB]

Apparently it doesn't retain the fingerprints, simply scans them, checks them and discards them so it isn't an attempt to get everybody in the country on a fingerprint database (yet).

It's also not about fingerprinting speeding motorists as the Daily Mail claimed instead it is about nicking actual bad guys, probably to be used in conjunction with automatic number plate recognition.

ANPR

 

[escargot]

I know all that, and none of it washes with me! :lol:

It's not about why the police would fingerprint me at the roadside, or how I'd know what would happen to the prints I gave. I would be objecting to being treated as a criminal when I haven't actually broken the law.

As I understand it, the police will be applying this policy to drivers with a tail light out. That has never before been an arrestable offence, certainly not one requiring fingerprinting, but it is now.

Many law-abiding citizens (like me) see fingerprinting as about as serious, in humiliation terms, as being handcuffed, and having it done in public by the roadside will feel acutely embarrassing and oppressive.

Of course, as I have made clear, although I would refuse to be fingerprinted at the roadside and take the consequences, I don't actually EXPECT to be stopped in this way. I don't resemble a stereotypical 'target' enough.

 

[Mythopoeika]

Just doing something the police consider to be slightly suspicious is enough for them to pull you over.
Some years ago, when I had first learned to drive, I got lost in Peterborough late at night - I was looking for a way to get onto the A1 southbound.
All I did was go round a roundabout in order to go back the way I came.
Perfectly legitimate move etc.
Straight away, a police car came up behind me with lights flashing.
I didn't stop immediately, because I didn't think I'd done anything wrong (I hadn't).
Once I'd stopped, they asked to search my car (it was clean).
I asked why they'd stopped me, and they just told me that it looked like a suspicious move. I think they thought I was a crim who'd seen them and decided to do a runner.

 

[ted_bloody_maul]

I know all that, and none of it washes with me! :lol:

It's not about why the police would fingerprint me at the roadside, or how I'd know what would happen to the prints I gave. I would be objecting to being treated as a criminal when I haven't actually broken the law.

but wouldn't being told to pull over to the side of road and being quizzed by the police be equivalent to being treated like a criminal anyway? or being asked to take a breath test?

 

[techybloke666]

At the moment suspects have to consent to fingerprinting but legislation was already in the pipeline which would force people to submit to the test, said Mr Taylor.

"We have legislation in waiting for fingerprints to be taken without consent," he said.

http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100...objectid=18142642&siteid=50082-name_page.html

This in many ways is ID cards through the backdoor - a way of building a national database that will necessitate a national fingerprint database.

No longer are we innocent until proven guilty - that is something I find objectionable.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6172768.stm

and there we have it folks

more Draconian laws to be passed to enable the police to treat us like criminals whenever the fancy takes them.

and of course if your just an innocent at the end of the day they will delete those two forefinger prints now won't they

Just like they delete your DNA samples when they are taken and your proven to be an innocent.

happy happy days to be sure.

 

[jefflovestone]

Bit by bit and drip by drip...

 

[Analogue Boy]

One of the interesting points made in Henry Porter's Suspect Nation programme was the potential chipping of every child in Britain on the grounds of security and safety reasons....except for the children of politicians and celebrities. As a great man once said - 'What's that all about then?'

 

[ted_bloody_maul]

One of the interesting points made in Henry Porter's Suspect Nation programme was the potential chipping of every child in Britain on the grounds of security and safety reasons....except for the children of politicians and celebrities. As a great man once said - 'What's that all about then?'

i'd have thought the reason behind that was that those children are more likely to be targeted on the basis of their identity.

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

...

i'd have thought the reason behind that was that those children are more likely to be targeted on the basis of their identity.

In what way?

 

[Traprain]

Bit by bit and drip by drip...

Exactly, I think the thread might need to be renamed.
There's not much need for the question mark.

 

[ted_bloody_maul]

...

i'd have thought the reason behind that was that those children are more likely to be targeted on the basis of their identity.

In what way?

in that they are more profitable as ransom. also the fact that their parents are public figures makes them more likely to be the children of people who incite strong emotions and therefore are more likely to be attacked or used by people who have a grudge, say, or who stalk.

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

...

i'd have thought the reason behind that was that those children are more likely to be targeted on the basis of their identity.

In what way?

in that they are more profitable as ransom. also the fact that their parents are public figures makes them more likely to be the children of people who incite strong emotions and therefore are more likely to be attacked or used by people who have a grudge, say, or who stalk.

So, what's that got to do with not chipping them?

Are the chips that easy to read?

 

[escargot]

I know all that, and none of it washes with me! :lol:

It's not about why the police would fingerprint me at the roadside, or how I'd know what would happen to the prints I gave. I would be objecting to being treated as a criminal when I haven't actually broken the law.

but wouldn't being told to pull over to the side of road and being quizzed by the police be equivalent to being treated like a criminal anyway? or being asked to take a breath test?

Nope. I have been pulled over and spoken to (courteously) by the police several times over the years. This was for 'routine' tyre/tax checks, a tail-light problem, driving down a back lane which drink-drivers often use, and so on. No action was taken against me, as I had not broken the law.

But now, in those same circumstances, I could be 'asked' to give a fingerprint, and if I refused, I could be arrested. For driving along the road.

A criminological term for this is 'net-widening', where the definition of criminality is extended to include formerly non-criminal individuals and activities.

Foucault would see the roadside fingerprinting as evidence of the carceral archipelago.

 

[ted_bloody_maul]

...

i'd have thought the reason behind that was that those children are more likely to be targeted on the basis of their identity.

In what way?

in that they are more profitable as ransom. also the fact that their parents are public figures makes them more likely to be the children of people who incite strong emotions and therefore are more likely to be attacked or used by people who have a grudge, say, or who stalk.

So, what's that got to do with not chipping them?

Are the chips that easy to read?

you'd have to ask an it expert. the kind of expertise and resources neccessary for an abduction may be unrewarding except in the case of the children of the rich and famous.

 

[ted_bloody_maul]

Nope. I have been pulled over and spoken to (courteously) by the police several times over the years. This was for 'routine' tyre/tax checks, a tail-light problem, driving down a back lane which drink-drivers often use, and so on. No action was taken against me, as I had not broken the law.

But now, in those same circumstances, I could be 'asked' to give a fingerprint, and if I refused, I could be arrested. For driving along the road.

A criminological term for this is 'net-widening', where the definition of criminality is extended to include formerly non-criminal individuals and activities.

Foucault would see the roadside fingerprinting as evidence of the carceral archipelago.

so you weren't asked to take a breathalyser test then?

 

[Analogue Boy]

One of the interesting points made in Henry Porter's Suspect Nation programme was the potential chipping of every child in Britain on the grounds of security and safety reasons....except for the children of politicians and celebrities. As a great man once said - 'What's that all about then?'

i'd have thought the reason behind that was that those children are more likely to be targeted on the basis of their identity.

I would have thought it makes MORE sense in terms of security to chip the children of politicians and celebs so why is it being proposed they can opt out? Could it be in case some unscrupulous person gets hold of their data and has the means to track them (and therefore their parents) down?

 

[jefflovestone]

One of the interesting points made in Henry Porter's Suspect Nation programme was the potential chipping of every child in Britain on the grounds of security and safety reasons....except for the children of politicians and celebrities. As a great man once said - 'What's that all about then?'

I didn't see the programme, but I'm intrigued by this, or at least how these people are defined. Whilst politicians are easier to define - although obviously some are more known than others - what warrants celebrity status, and how famous would someone have to be? Also, I would have thought the children of fairly anonymous big business men would stand in this category then? Also, what chances are there, given the way even dead family members have been targeted by animal rights protestors, that the chances of these family members are also given the chance to opt out?

I think, given the possible breadth of those that could opt out, this creates a two tier tracking society or rather a genuine us and them scenario.

I'm also interested in the idea as to what age the chipped children could remove their chip? Or would be like other data collection/retention and once you're chipped that's it? Maybe some new law will passed to prevent removal?

 

[crunchy5]

A population that let their govt chip their children deserve everything they get, if this law even looked like it was going through I would sell up and emigrate.

 

[jefflovestone]

A population that let their govt chip their children deserve everything they get, if this law even looked like it was going through I would sell up and emigrate.

In my most uncharitable hours, I'd agree with you. However, I think given the right whistle even the most unlikely of sheep will be herded through the gate.

 

[ghostdog19]

Is this is the same standard of chipping as you get with dogs? because those chips usually work their own way out of their own according.

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

...

i'd have thought the reason behind that was that those children are more likely to be targeted on the basis of their identity.

In what way?

in that they are more profitable as ransom. also the fact that their parents are public figures makes them more likely to be the children of people who incite strong emotions and therefore are more likely to be attacked or used by people who have a grudge, say, or who stalk.

So, what's that got to do with not chipping them?

Are the chips that easy to read?

you'd have to ask an it expert. the kind of expertise and resources neccessary for an abduction may be unrewarding except in the case of the children of the rich and famous.

So, then you would presumably have to know if someone was worth kidnapping, before going to all the expense and trouble of reading their chip?

A two tier society. The chipped and the unchipped elite.

Instead of chips for the common herd, why not just use those bright yellow ear tags they use on the rest of the cattle?