Lynda

1984 comes to England, are we next?

Lynda
----- Original Message -----
Subject: [ndn-aim] Roadside DNA tests


> ISSUE 2025 Sunday 10 December 2000
>
> Roadside DNA tests planned
> By David Cracknell, Deputy Political Editor
>
>
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=003100565149417&rtmo=QwQQSxkR&atmo=HHHHHH8L
&pg=/et/00/12/10/nkit10.html
>
> DRIVERS or other people stopped by police could be asked to supply
> on-the-spot hair or saliva samples to identify whether they are wanted
> criminals.
> Government scientists have developed a hand-held DNA testing kit to be
> carried and operated by police officers during regular patrols. The
> device would be electronically linked to the national DNA database,
> which Tony Blair has hailed as an essential tool in the fight against
> crime.
>
> The Forensic Science Service will disclose to Parliament this week that
> the equipment could be ready for standard use within a couple of years.
> The testing kit, which could become as common as the breathalyser or
> police baton, will dramatically cut the time it takes to match DNA
> evidence from crime scenes to suspects. It will raise fresh fears among
> civil liberties campaigners who believe that the pendulum has swung too
> far in the police's direction.
>
> Forensic scientists already expect that soon they will be able to use a
> single hair sample to discover a suspect's eye colour, facial
> characteristics, height and weight. They say that the next step will be
> portable testing kits that need little technical ability to operate. The
> FSS will give evidence to the House of Lords science and technology
> committee this week, telling peers that research on the kits is well
> advanced.
>
> It currently takes at least 48 hours to profile biological material
> collected from a crime scene, but the new kits could give police an
> instant lead if they were made standard issue. They would allow such
> tests to be carried out outside the laboratory for the first time. A
> spokesman for the FSS, which is a Government agency, said: "We feel that
> we have gone as far down the line as we can in terms of what a DNA
> profile can tell us about an individual and the next area we are looking
> at is speeding up the process."
>
> The Telegraph has seen written evidence to the Lords committee from one
> of the organisation's chief scientists, Dr Bob Bramley, and research
> documents. The committee began its inquiry after becoming concerned
> about the dramatic increase in the scale of DNA samples collected by the
> police.
>
> Earlier this year, the Prime Minister announced an extra £109 million
> for the expansion of the police's DNA database in Birmingham to include
> samples from "the entire active criminal population" - estimated to be
> around three million.
>
> The police have already collected nearly a million samples from those
> convicted of an offence that carries a prison sentence. Senior officers
> are now lobbying for changes in the law to allow further expansion of
> the database to include innocent people who volunteer to take part in
> mass screenings.
>
> Civil liberties campaigners are opposing any extension of the police's
> authority to to collect samples. They cite an official report which
> found that thousands of samples are being illegally held on the database
> because forces are failing to remove the records of acquitted suspects.
> John Wadham, the director of the human rights group Liberty, said: "The
> law already allows the unjustified collection of samples and we know
> that there are at least 50,000 being illegally held at the FSS database.
> This is not the time to relax the law."