Whilst nobody would deny that the retention of DNA information on a national DMA database has a legitimate role in the prevention of crime, it is a question of where the balance is drawn so as to minimize the loss of fundamental rights in protecting personal data, and once again the Government is found to be acting, not proportionately, but using ‘blanket and indiscriminate’ powers according to the ECHR. The decision announced today by the Home Office to retain for 6 years the DNA profiles of innocent people arrested but not convicted of minor offences is surely excessive and unreasonable. Equally, to retain for 12 years the DNA data of innocent people suspected of more serious violent or sexual crime, but not convicted, contrasts sharply with decisions taken in other EU countries, and in Scotland it is 5 years. The decision smells of overkill,

The objection of the ECHR in its judgement on 4 December 2008 was that the legal powers to take and keep DNA samples from anyone arrested in the UK had resulted in the intimate details (including health and race data) of 850,000 innocent people being held on the national DNA database. Rather than these profiles, samples and fingerprints being removed and destroyed, the police are now being required to go through all these profiles (i.e. the numerical digital code which records the individual’s DNA) to check if any of these innocent people havea criminal record for any other offence. But that still leaves the crucial question of proportionality and just how far basic human rights to privacy can be impugned against the very small, perhaps even miniscule, possibility that it may yield relevant evidence in future.
The case often cited to justify withholding this data is that of Mark Dixie who was jailed for the murder of Sally Anne Bowman last year, having been caught 9 months after the killing when he was arrested and DNA-tested following a minor scuffle at a football match. But that is a very different issue from whether DNA should be retained of people who have not been convicted of any offence, unless one takes the view that Tony Blair stated in 2006 that every citizen, irrespective, should be included on the database.
Short of such an extreme view, the issue comes back to how far the authorities should be allowed to intrude into fundamental personal rights in order to increase the likelihood of catching criminals. Even the police have now accepted that the indiscriminate use of stop and search powers which has resulted (according to Liberty) in just 6 arrests out of every 10,000 stops – an arrest rate of only 0.06% following quite an intrusive invasion of rights to personal freedom – cannot be justified. Other forms too of interfering with legitimate activities have recently been reported – arresting more than 100 environmental campaigners on suspicion of their planning a protest at a power station and then later releasing them without charge, offering bribes to members of environmental groups to get them to inform on their plans, and government officials monitoring environmental campaign groups and then passing on intelligence to the police.
This Orwellian State and undermining of basic civil liberties have gone far too far. Reversing this and restoring a much more reasonable measure of proportionality has now become a key issue in Britain today.

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