If the guy who invented DNA fingerprinting is worried,
How much information does the State need to have about me that I have not freely volunteered? I’d say it already knows a lot more than it needs to. But then so does Tesco.
I have been photographed, fingerprinted and asked all sorts of odd questions without ever having been arrested – though it’s come close.
I have been CRB-checked by my child’s school. My blood was routinely tested for HIV and rubella when I was pregnant. The one little bit of me that they don’t have is my DNA. But surely it’s only a matter of time.



Why should I, an innocent citizen, object to the State having my precious DNA on its database? What have I to fear? Am I ‘against justice’, as Harriet Harman ludicrously accused anyone with doubts about a centralised DNA database of being?
If the police take a DNA sample, even if one is not charged, it can be kept up to 12 years. This doesn’t happen in other countries, not even Scotland. There, DNA can be taken only if you are arrested.
If you are cleared, the profile is immediately destroyed unless you have been cleared of a violent or sexual offence – in which case the sample can be kept for up to five years. What Harman is arguing for already contravenes EU legislation and we will simply end up with more test cases in the European courts.
This, alongside the unfeasibly daft voluntary ID card scheme being pushed on the poor people of Manchester by Jacqui Smith, is yet more evidence that Government increasingly regards most of us as potential criminals rather than citizens who need serving.
It certainly shows there is a lot of money to be made by IT firms from keeping us under surveillance from birth till death – and probably beyond. ID cards may cost £5.3billion and I’ve yet to meet a sentient being who wants one.
DNA, though, because the very mention of it sends people into some CSI or Jeremy Kyle world of absolute proof, is mistakenly seen as the answer to unsolvable crimes. It has been of use, of course.
Last year the Home Office claimed it helped in the cases of 83 killings and 184 rapes. Yet seasoned campaigners will tell you that our appallingly low rate of conviction for rape is not due simply to lack of DNA evidence but also to a need to change jurors’ attitudes to the crime itself.
Meanwhile, the European Court of Human Rights says that some 850,000 DNA profiles of innocent people should be removed from our database.
Part of the problem is that most of us don’t actually understand much about DNA or databases. We know when public-sector ones go wrong, such as when a copy of the details of the entire child benefit system was lost.
So maybe we should listen to Sir Alec Jeffreys, the guy who invented DNA fingerprinting. He is now concerned that this system is being used to cast a shadow of criminality over people who have committed no crime.
The Rowntree Trust, which has published a report on the ‘Database State’, concluded, controversially, that a quarter of the 46 public-sector databases it studied were actually illegal.
The level of intrusion breaks all kinds of rulings yet still most of us remain in the dark until information is leaked or stolen. As the man who set up the NHS database said: ‘You cannot stop the wicked doing wicked things.’
David Shutt, one of the authors of the Rowntree report, asks what kind of intrusion is acceptable ‘proportionate and necessary in a democratic society’. And that is the issue. The public sector spends £16billion a year on IT. We have a right to ask if these databases are effective, private, legal and worth it. Apparently, only 30 per cent of these projects succeed.
It is strange that while we don’t trust the Government to get much right, they are purchasing more information systems that will treat us as suspects rather than citizens. It is as if the very DNA of this Government is to invade every part of our lives. Anyone would think they are afraid of us.