Has he been watching CSI again?

Tony Blair's love of shiny crimefighting technology is creepy. Today, while visiting the Forensic Science Service Headquarters, he lauded the benefits of the DNA database which holds the records of 3.6 million Brits - the police reckon this includes the bulk of the criminal fraternity - who have been convicted or arrested for an imprisonable offence. He couldn't imagine why anyone would regard the State's collection of information on citizens, so the better to imprison them, as disturbing.

I always find it odd that people want to carry around ID cards. I find it even more bizarre that 18,000 people, including the PM, have volunteered to give their DNA to the Database. That is hardly the act of a rational person: why would you want the incompetent prodnoses of the State to have information about you which they will inevitably misuse: can Tony Blair be sure that there isn't a criminal genius out there called Tony Blair, and can he be sure that the data-inputters, gossiping about X-Factor, won't get them confused? And what if TB on retirement fancies a break from public-spiritedness and murder and mayhem takes his fancy? This isn't a cue for anti-war types to fire off a screed to make the obvious joke...

But politicians like all this CSI-stuff and, of course, they like it because they get to spend money on it and look forward-looking and modern. So some £300m has been lavished on an expansion programme for the FSS since 1999. And then there's a Facial Images National Database, and the researchers behind "Automatic Gait Recognition" (apparently, we all walk differently and a clever computer can show us how) want to set up a database (well, they've got the backing of the Ministry of Defence and £500,000) to rival the national earprint database.

But does it work? Does the data-crunching surveillance state make us safer? Ministers will reel off positive stats but that doesn't really answer the question. What if the money and energy was redirected to old-fashioned, bobby-on-the-beat policing that deters crime rather than being spent on schemes that make it easier to find criminals after the event. And what about the science behind DNA testing and the like? Is it that reliable? There are a lot of people with a stake in proving it is effective (well, there are Government contracts at stake) and few scientists with the resources to debunk it.

And if all these databases, cameras and new technologies are so great compared to what went before, why are serious crime levels so stubbornly high? 

Robbie Millen

Comments

[Seasider]

Robbie Millen, it's like this.

Every time I hear on the news about some bastard who raped and abused someone 20, 30 years ago and have now finally been convicted of their terrible crime, I cheer.

Without the DNA database, they would never have been found.

Every time I hear of someone proved innocent because of DNA I cheer.

Without DNA, they would be banged up for a long time for something they didn't do.

I don't give a damn if my, your, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all's DNA is on the bloody database.

It works. That makes me happy. Any responsible man should volunteer a DNA sample - unless they think they might just commit a crime sometime, and be caught for it.

I wonder what's really stopping you?

[David Moss]

Good questions all.

Rightly or wrongly, we all tend to believe in DNA identification, see for example this story from The Times, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,29389-2274299,00.html. The same is true of traditional fingerprinting, where a single mistake can cause worldwide consternation, see for example http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/5312452.stm. DNA and traditional fingerprinting both inspire confidence, we deem them to be reliable. With them, we expect more-or-less-100% accuracy. They are both admissible as evidence in court. They are both biometrics.

The unique selling point of the Home Office’s proposed ID cards scheme is biometrics. So, QED? ID cards will identify us reliably?

No. The Home Office are not offering DNA and/or traditional fingerprinting. While appealing to the respect we have for those two, the Home Office are offering three completely different biometrics, none of them admissible as evidence in court, see http://www.passport.gov.uk/downloads/UKPSBiometrics_Enrolment_Trial_Report-Management_Summary.pdf.

When these ministers, including the prime one, tour laboratories, do you, like me, see naïve tourists waving wads of your tax money and mine in the Casbah? Did the horrible thought occur to you, as you watched Minority Report on the televisual device last night, that perhaps ministers believe this childish nonsense?

(NB In the case of the ID cards scheme and our new biometric passports, what they call “fingerprinting” involves nothing more than a glorified photocopy of your fingers, no ink, and no police expert. It should be called “fingercopying” to distinguish it from the reliable, traditional technology.)

[David Moss]

But does it work, you ask? And if all these databases, cameras and new technologies are so great compared to what went before, why are serious crime levels so stubbornly high?

I have now prepared a list of failures for you, please see http://DematerialisedID.com/Footnotes/Biometrics.html A word of warning before you read it. I hope you weren't joking when you referred to the national database of earprints ...

The two best entries in the list come from the New Scientist magazine. They may seem quite old. Don't worry about that. Nothing has improved in the interim and the same companies are still peddling the same snake oil.

A point we must all remember when the Identity and Passport Service publishes its ID cards action plan, probably at about 4a.m. on Christmas Day.