European court rules DNA database breaches human rights

[muriel_volestrangler]

Source: The Guardian

The European court of human rights in Strasbourg said that keeping innocent people's DNA records on a criminal register breached article eight of the Human Rights Convention, covering the right to respect for private and family life.

Keeping DNA material from those who were "entitled to the presumption of innocence" as they had never been convicted of an offence carried "the risk of stigmatisation", the ruling said.

Attacking the "blanket and indiscriminate nature" of the power to retain data, the judges said protections offered by article eight "would be unacceptably weakened if the use of modern scientific techniques in the criminal justice system were allowed at any cost and without carefully balancing the potential benefits of the extensive use of such techniques against important private-life interests".

The decision could oblige the government to order the destruction of DNA data belonging to those without criminal convictions among the approximately 4.5m records on the England, Wales and Northern Ireland database.

Scotland already destroys DNA samples taken during criminal investigations from people, who are eventually not charged or who are later acquitted.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/dec/04/law-genetics

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One victory against the British surveillance state.

[judasdisney]

1. Human Rights vs Market Appetite? This question would never be asked in the U.S.

even by Democrats.

"Human rights are the invention of the Marxists" -- General Augusto Pinochet, mass-murderer and Right-Winger.

[dipsydoodle]

2. BBC link to subject

Two British men should not have had their DNA and fingerprints retained by police, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled.
>
The judges said keeping the information "could not be regarded as necessary in a democratic society".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7764069.stm

[JJ]

3. How is a DNA database different than a fingerprint database?

DNA can clear as well as convict. Just my personal opinion, but I have no problem as long as it's not used by say private entities like insurance companies to discriminate.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Here'swhat Liberty says (British equivalent of the ACLU) about the court's judgement:

The Court expressed a particular concern at the risk of stigmitisation, stemming from the fact that persons in the position of the applicants, who had not been convicted of any offence and were entitled to the presumption of innocence, were treated in the same way as convicted persons. It was true that the retention of the applicants’ private data could not be equated with the voicing of suspicions. Nonetheless, their perception that they were not being treated as innocent was heightened by the fact that their data were retained indefinitely in the same way as the data of convicted persons, while the data of those who had never been suspected of an offence were required to be destroyed.
...
In the Court’s view, the capacity of DNA profiles to provide a means of identifying genetic relationships between individuals was in itself sufficient to conclude that their retention interfered with the right to the private life of those individuals. The possibility created by DNA profiles for drawing inferences about ethnic origin made their retention all the more sensitive and susceptible of affecting the right to private life. The Court concluded that the retention of both cellular samples and DNA profiles amounted to an interference with the applicants’ right to respect for their private lives, within the meaning of Article 8.1 of the Convention.

http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/news-and-events/1-press-releases/2008/04-12-2008-retaining-dna-samples-of-innocents-breaches-human-rights.shtml

People have been arrested when a close, but not precise, match with the DNA of a relative has been found.

And yes, DNA can clear - but in that case, the innocent person can say "take a DNA sample from me, it'll prove I didn't do this" - and then the sample and profile should be thrown away. If the state announced it was going to sample everyone in the country, and keep them all, it'd have more of a leg to stand on. But they say "oh no, that'd cost too much" - so their attitude goes against "innocent until proven guilty".