A Question of Breeding

Not here Sedley, sorry.

Today's Telegraph shed's a little light on the ridiculous idea from appeal court judge Stephen Sedley, that every man woman and child should be placed on the national DNA database.

He includes the 32 million or more visitors to the country each year, who in the dreams of Sedley will now have a unique form of welcome to the country, by being swabbed and added to a database of potential criminals. He is apparently unaware that in some of the countries whose citizens choose to visit the UK, the concept of a presumption of innocence still holds the whip hand in determining the relative rights between the individual and the state.

It transpires that:

Unusually - perhaps uniquely for an Appeal Court judge - Lord Justice Sedley is a former member of the Communist Party.

Source: The Daily Telegraph

A little further digging reveals that his father, also in the legal profession, was a lifelong communist who died in 1985.

The understanding that even in the eighties, when the true evil nature of communist regimes was becoming understood, that Sedley was at the least still close to those who were supportive of the aims of the self same regimes that Regan and Thatcher were beginning to fight against, begins to explain his cavalier attitude to individual liberties. It helps us understand why he ruled that a twelve year old, profiled but ruled innocent of any crime, must have his DNA profile held on the national database for the rest of his life; for one of Sedley's background the simple claim of 'necessity' from the state would probably be enough to trump any right to individual dignity.

Supporters of the judge may point to his support for the Human Rights Act. Above and beyond the extra wealth the Act has brought to the legal profession, it should also be remembered that many of the communist states that he probably at one time supported also had similar declarations in their systems of law. The problem was that the simple act of enumerating these rights brought with it the scope to limit and place boundaries round them, and it is clear that in the minds of many from the left that a claim of 'necessity' by the state should carry significantly more weight than I find comfortable in considering the need to abrogate such rights.

On a more practical level, there have been a few back of a fag packet calculations floating around, about the cost of such a scheme, generally coming out at about an initial £10 billion, and then £3 billion per year thereafter. This probably goes some way to explain why our government, which has abandoned any real pretence about caring about our liberties, is only luke warm on another authoratarian measure that would normally be right up it's street.

It should be pointed out that these figures are based on the cost of about £70 to process each test, and would come on top of the already spiralling costs of the ID card and National Identity Register scheme.

As someone with a background in genetics I can't really imagine there would even be any significant scope for the benefit of the scale of Sedley's scheme seeing the £70 figure drop. The processes are already highly automated, and at several key stages rely on natural processes that will only ever happen in their own sweet time, regardless of ministerial exhortations to hit targets for faster processing.

What is more likely is that the cost per sample would increase with the inevitable vast scaling up of the bureaucracy that would certainly be entailed. Furthermore, it is likely that the reliability of, and thereby the confidence in the system would fall off with potentially disastrous results. One only has to look at the well meaning project increasing cancer screening, where the inability to maintain the high quality of those involved in the process, and the delegation of skilled tasks to basic technicians has led to some tragic misdiagnoses.

All in all, this proposal needs killing more firmly, and indeed the campaign to get rid of data on innocent people needs to get underway, now that Sedley has ignited the debate.

Yes, a few guilty people will escape detection, but the number of cases where the DNA of someone previously considered innocent of any crime will be much lower than the already quite small headline total figures on the number of cases solved using any DNA evidence.

This is clearly not a good thing, but the dignity of the individual and the right to live one's life with minimum of interference from the state comes first.

As for Sedley, I could never support McCarthyite purges of those whose political past have shown remarkably bad judgement from the bench, but it important sometimes that we try to understand their past, and concern ourselves with the motivations that may lay behind unacceptable proposals carefully wrapped in a tissue of reasonable sounding words.

Update 1:00AM: Having found broad agreement from the good burghers of the village on Sedley's position, an interesting point was raised over such political interventions by senior judges.

Should, God forbid, another case regarding the retention of DNA evidence ever come before Sedley again, is there any hope whatsoever of a fair trial? He's happy for an innocent 12 year old's DNA to reside on a state database for life, so what hope is there for anyone else?

Any decent, fair minded judge would clearly have to withdraw from such a case having made such a clearly partisan position public.

The big question is whether such concepts as fairness and decency really mean anything to authoritarian scum like Sedley, and perhaps that's the biggest worry of all.

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

Deranged LunaticLord Justice Sedley

It was with deep revulsion I heard the vile ramblings of Lord Justice Sedley on the subject of the DNA database. The attitudes of some whose role place our fundamental freedoms at the heart of their thinking is becoming extremely troubling to say the least, and once again raises questions over how the judiciary can enter into a public debate without the slightest semblance of accountability.

For those who missed the deranged justice's ramblings, a precis of his theory is as follows.

• DNA evidence makes it possible to convict more criminals, which is a good thing, but...


• There are a disproportionate number of black males on the database, which is a bad thing, therefore...


• Every man, woman and child in the country, including those on even the shortest of visits should be recorded, to make it 'fair' and destigmatise being on the database.

His reasoning for recording everyone's DNA is a logical absurdity of course. Pretty much anyone who gets arrested these days has a DNA sample taken and thereupon end up on the database in perpetuity. If proportionately more black males are on the database than white males this must be because more black men proportionately are being arrested; this may represent an unacceptable state of affairs or it may reflect valid police actions, but it matters not when it comes to rubbishing Sedley's perverted ideas.

As for the stigmatising aspect, yes I would agree there is a stigma attached to being on the database. If you have been convicted of a crime you deserve the stigma. If you are an innocent person against whom no case in law has been proved you do not, and you should be removed from the database. Simply making sure that every person in the country is on the database does not remove the stigma of being treated by the state as a potential criminal in the making.

What next? Going to prison stigmatises, so shall we make everyone spend a token day in prison (if we had the space) to remove that stigma so those that have served their time may have a chance for an easier fresh start?

The government has rejected the idea, however not in the most reassuring of manners, the BBC reports:

Home Office Minister Tony McNulty said there were no plans to introduce DNA profiling for everyone in the UK, but "no-one ever says never".

"We're broadly sympathetic to the thrust of what he is saying. [The idea] has logic to it, but I think he's underestimating the practical issues, logistics, civil and ethical issues that surround it," he said.

Source: BBC News

There are 'practical issues, logistics, civil and ethical issues' that surround ID cards and the National Identity Register, and the new NHS IT systems, but this has not dampened this authoritarian governments enthusiasm for treating us all as little more than state property, even if, especially in the case of the former, the benefits of their expensive schemes are limited in the extreme.

There is also an unhelpful contribution from an Association of Black Police Officers spokesman supporting Sedley's brainless position, equally devoid of any serious analysis of the situation he calls 'unacceptable'.

North of the border, the SNP led government, my attitude toward which swings from admiration to disgust on an almost daily basis, is on this subject on the side of the angels, as is often the case when it comes to individual liberties. Again, the BBC reports:

A spokesman for the Scottish Government said: "On 26 June, the justice secretary Kenny MacAskill announced a review of DNA retention in Scotland.

"In announcing the review, Mr MacAskill said that blanket retention was unacceptable in the relationship between the citizen and state.

"The review is expected to begin very shortly."

Source: BBC News

In Scotland, DNA samples taken when people are arrested must be destroyed where no conviction is obtained or no charges laid, with a very limited exception for certain violent crimes. This is a much more satisfactory system, one where people will feel happy to volunteer samples when it may be appropriate in the course of a criminal investigation, knowing that their genetic blueprint will not become state property for ever and all time.

Leaving aside the consideration of whether a true presumption of innocence can exist once a DNA match is made, rightly or wrongly with an individual, does more DNA data mean for a safer society anyway? Have speed cameras made the roads significantly safer? The evidence is equivocal at best. I'm not convinced that having yet more police officers trawling computer databases is the way we want to go, when the day to day crime that blights peoples lives needs more officers on the street to address.

Lord Justice Sedley should take a moment to look at some of the magnificent declaration of his predecessors in defending the rights of the individual against the state, and pause to consider whether he is fit to stand in their shoes. Then, perhaps if he finds himself in an empty room with a shotgun, he could do the decent thing, and make his own personal contribution to the liberty of the British people.

Update 6:00PM: I was surprised nobody had really sunk their teeth into Sedley's suggestion, but it looks like my news feed was just a little delayed, as Thunder Dragon is breathing fire. In his post he highlights the following positive statement from David Davis, the shadow home secretary:

"The erratic nature of this database means that some criminals have escaped having their DNA recorded whilst a third of those people on the database - over a million people - have never been convicted of a crime...

"It is long past time that the Government answered our calls for a Parliamentary debate about this database and to put it on a statutory basis."

Source: The Daily Telegraph

David Davis once again proves that is possible to have a tough attitude to crime, while maintaining a genuine concern for the liberties of the individual.