It’s too late to write anything so I’ll just link-dump. Disturbing.
Britain’s cops have the largest DNA database in the world, and it’s full of innocent people who were arrested but not charged, or charged but not convicted (the EU’s Court of Human Rights have ordered this practice to stop, but the cops refuse to comply with the law — their latest dodge is to keep innocents’ DNA for six years). Now an inquiry that begins today claims that police are “routinely arresting people” that they know they can’t convict of any crime, simply to get their DNA into the database.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/23/british-cops-arrest.html
Tags: biometrics, law, privacy
