Childcatcher

From the Daily Telegraph -Profiles of 40,000 innocent children on DNA database.

Sorry? Was that innocent you said?

Meg Hillier, junior Home Office minister, said the database contained profiles of 39,095 children aged 10 to 17 who 'had not been convicted, cautioned, received a final warning/reprimand and had no charge pending against them'.

Yep, sounds like innocent to me. Grudgingly I have to give some credit to the Tories for bringing the issue up and for the LibDems for making waves as well. Let's not mince words here, it's a fucking disgrace that the government is happy to collect DNA records of innocent children - children - in this way. Yes, going by the law of averages some of them undoubtably will be complete shits, but remember they have not been... what was it again? Oh yeah:

'...not been convicted, cautioned, received a final warning/reprimand and had no charge pending against them.'

Thanks Meg Hillier, junior Home Office minister. Just who the fuck are you incidentally? Actually never mind, don't bother. It's not as if your chances of being in Parliament much less government for more than another couple of years are that flash, so you might as well keep it to yourself. For now I'll assume that you're one of the drones that senior ministers wheel out to regurgitate inconvenient answers to opposition MPs when they don't want the flak, ok? The fact that the DNA profiles of 40,000 children who haven't even been cautioned for any offense let alone been convicted in court have been kept by the state and it's not considered worthy of a cabinet member - picking someone at random, Jacqui Smith for example, since she's the bloody Home Secretary - responding is another fucking insult in itself, but I don't blame Meg for that.

Oh, but it's ok really:

A Home Office spokesman said...

Hang on, what happened to Meg? First 40,000 innocent people, children at that, on the DNA database isn't important enough for Jacqui Smith to comment on, and now Home Office junior minisdrone Meg Hillier has vanished to be replaced by an anonymous Home Office spokesman. Christ! Anyway...

A Home Office spokesman said: 'Inclusion on the DNA Database does not signify a criminal record and there is no personal cost or material disadvantage to the individual simply by being on it.'

Then there's no reason not to take them off either, you twat.

'The Government has no plans to introduce a universal database.'

Again, there's no reason to keep the records if that's true.

'The National DNA Database is a key intelligence tool which has revolutionised the way the police can protect the public through identifying offenders and securing more convictions. It provides critical investigative leads for police investigations, providing on average around 45,000 matches per year.'

Oh please do us a fucking favour. You're justifying this on the basis of annual convictions that are little more than the number of innocent people's details you're holding on the fucking thing? Oh, hang on a mo...

Anybody arrested for a serious offence can have their genetic data stored for life on the national DNA database - even if they are later cleared. The DNA profiles of 4.2 million people are on the database – an estimated one million of them are innocent.

So including adults that's the DNA profiles of a million or so innocent people, nearly a quarter of the database. And you reckon you're getting about 45,000 matches a year. I notice you don't say 45,000 extra convictions per year or 45,000 extra crimes solved per year. Just "matches". Is that 45,000 individual matches? One match to 45,000 crimes? What? We don't know because you're not telling us. All we do know is what you've condescendingly acknowledged: that your bastard bloody database has about a million innocent people on it, that nearly 40,000 are children, that the numbers are increasing, and that you expect us to think that you're not gradually building a universal database.

You utter utter bastards.


UPDATE: It's ironic that the number of DNA database matches claimed is the same as the number of people affected by the latest data security balls up. Honestly, if they're going to be authoritarian bastards they could at least try to be efficient authoritarian bastards.