UK denies U-turn over vow to trim DNA database

Government last year promised to delete the DNA profiles of up to 1 million innocent people

PTI | July 27, 2011




Britain's government was accused on Tuesday of breaking a promise to stop keeping the DNA records of people arrested for crimes but later found innocent.

Britain's DNA database is one of the largest in the world, containing genetic profiles of more than five million people, or 8 per cent of the population. Samples are taken from everyone arrested for a crime, and the information is usually retained even if the person is acquitted or freed without charge.

Critics of the practice including Alec Jeffreys, the scientist who discovered DNA fingerprinting say it unfairly taints hundreds of thousands of innocent people with the suggestion of guilt.

After an outcry from civil libertarians and a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights, the government last year promised to delete the DNA profiles of up to 1 million innocent people. Legislation outlining how that will be done is currently going through Parliament.

But a government minister has said that while the physical DNA samples of innocent people will be deleted and their electronic profiles removed from the country's central database, some profiles could still be kept by local forensic science labs, albeit with the names removed.

A Home Office spokesman said that is because the profiles of the innocent are stored at the labs alongside those of convicted criminals and it would be "impractical" to sort them out.

Comments

 

Other News

What the nine Indian Nobel winners have in common

A Touch Of Genius: The Wisdom of India’s Nobel Laureates Edited by Rudrangshu Mukherjee Aleph Books, Rs 1499, 848 pages  

Income Tax dept holds Ghatkopar Outreach on new IT Act

The Income Tax Department organised an outreach programme in Ghatkopar, Mumbai, to raise awareness about the key features of the Income Tax Act, 2025, effective April 1, 2026. The initiative is part of a nationwide effort to promote taxpayer awareness, simplify compliance, and strengthen a transparent, eff

Making AI work where governance is closest to people

India’s next governance leap may not solely come from digitisation. It will come from making public systems more intelligent, more adaptive, and more responsive to the dynamics at the grassroots. That opportunity is especially significant at the panchayat level, where governance is not an abstract po

Borrowing troubles: How small loans are quietly trapping youth

A silent crisis is playing out in the pocket of young India, not in stock markets or government treasuries, but in smartphones of college students and first-jobbers who clicked on the Apply Now button without reading the small print.  A decade ago, to take a loan, you had to do some paperwor

A 19th-century pilgrim’s progress

The Travels of a Sadhu in the Himalayas By Jaladhar Sen (Translated by Somdatta Mandal) Speaking Tiger Books, 259 pages, ₹499.00  

India faces critical shortage of skin donors amid rising burn cases

India reports nearly 70 lakh burn injury cases every year, resulting in approximately 1.4 lakh deaths annually. Experts estimate that up to 50% of these lives could be saved with adequate access to skin donations.   A significant concern is that around 70% of burn victims fall wi


Archives

Current Issue

Opinion

Facebook Twitter Google Plus Linkedin Subscribe Newsletter

Twitter