DNA Data Bank

The UK Forensic Science Service (FSS) established the world’s first DNA database in April 1995.

It is allegedly the largest in the world. It contains samples from more than 7% of the population. The database grows by 30,000 samples each month.

Police forces in the UK (excluding Scotland) can take DNA and fingerprints from anybody arrested on suspicion of a recordable offense and hold the samples indefinitely whether people are charged or not.

The privacy of samples stored in these data banks has become a major legal, political, ethical, and moral issue.

The potential for error and privacy violations become greater each day, and yet, many are quick to assume that the only people who have reason for concern are the guilty.

On 4th December 2008, 17 judges at The European Court of Human Rights unanimously ruled that keeping DNA samples of innocent people was unlawful. As a consequence, thousands of DNA samples on the UK DNA database may have to be destroyed.

The UK government has responded by saying, “The existing law will remain in place while we carefully consider the judgement."

In early 2007, five employees of Britain's national DNA database agency were arrested on charges of industrial espionage for allegedly stealing DNA information from the database and using it to set up a rival firm.

Civil rights activist Shami Chakrabarti said the alleged theft from the database, which houses DNA samples from nearly 4 million people, was cause for concern.

"This is hugely significant and should make every law-abiding person seriously worried. People are looking after these databases who have less and less of a public-service ethic,"

Civil rights groups have long been critical of the controversial database, arguing there are no real safeguards to prevent misuse.

Are you worried?

Surveillance is an 'inescapable' part of life in modern Britain

Today when I visit the UK I see cameras almost everywhere. In restaurants, traffic lights, street corners, offices, hospitals, stations and even in public rest rooms. The government also has satellites orbiting the world capturing, among other things, information about us.

Then there are the commercials on TV, in which they say that no matter where you go the police will find you and give you a ticket for not wearing a seat belt.

Do you feel as if you are watched? Chances are your 100% correct. It is the pretence that you are unobserved that is an act of self-delusion in modern Britain.

In the UK people can expect a camera to record them up to 300 times a day.

UK privacy campaigners claim that Britain has the most cameras per head of any population in the world. In 2004 the European Commission found 40,000 cameras monitored public areas in 500 British towns and cities, compared to fewer than 100 cameras in 15 German cities and no open street CCTV in Denmark.

Click here to check out photos of surveillance cameras in London.

Primary schools are using surveillance cameras to track down and punish children behind childish classroom pranks.

Lynch Hill Primary in Slough, Berkshire disclosed how it used the sophisticated equipment to identify an eight-year-old girl who hid her friend's shoes during a lesson.

The school has cameras in 12 classrooms, three corridors, the school reception area, the music room and the canteen.

As a parent, I fully understand concern over protecting our children from danger. But is this really how we want the cameras used?

What do you think?

Erosion of Privacy

I enjoyed 1984 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley immensely when I was a young teenager. But then of course it was all science fiction. The world these books described would never happen.

How wrong I was.

Today with the way the world is changing, the realities of these two books is becoming closer at an astonishing speed.

In particular the United States and the United Kingdom are the leaders in this encroaching Orwellian nightmare.

"War is peace; Freedom is slavery; Ignorance is strength," wrote George Orwell in his book 1984.

In recent years in the name of peace wars have been fought and entire populations controlled all in the name of freedom. While government spin and an acquiescent media help to keep people ignorant of their leader’s real motivations.

Technology today has altered many lives for the better. Several of these advances have made day-to-day life more pleasurable. But at the same time not everyone is aware of the sinister dangers that lie behind many of these technological advances.

Slowly our privacy is eroding without us realizing to what extent. Governments use technology to snoop on us and it is becoming more and more invasive. It distracts us with inaccurate subjects; misrepresents history in order to “protect” us from various multiple threats.

We are being schooled to fear asylum seekers, climate change, deranged terrorists and even one another.

Western governments, I believe, are perfecting the politics of fear because fearful citizens will do their bidding without question and voluntarily subject themselves to control.

And Great Britain has become the expert of this technique in the western world.

The British House of Lords has reported this month (April 2009) that Britain has constructed one of the most extensive and technologically advanced surveillance systems in the world in the name of combating terrorism and crime and improving administrative efficiency.

What do you think?