For Your Information
The new politics of personal information
Did Columbo need DNA?
at 10:16am on Wednesday, 5th September 2007
There's some coverage on the BBC website of the 'DNA database' - the store that since 2004 has held the DNA of anyone arrested for a recordable offence. Apparently it's the biggest in the world - 5.2% of the country is on it.
Part of this revolves around whether taking select samples of DNA (only from those arrested) is an equitable way to compile a database. The issues range from whether it is right that DNA can be kept on record even if the person is not charged (which is what happens at the moment); to whether the resulting database is, in the words of Professor Alec Jeffreys, 'skewed socio-economically and ethnically'. The big story for most of the coverage is that one judge is arguing that any DNA database should, in the name of equality, include everyone.
There are, of course, lots of big problems and questions - for example, what impact does the temptation to base prevention around more detailed profiling have on how we think about, or respond to, inequality? This is not just Big Brother talk - we need a bit more, as a critique, than stories of a malevolent police state to really think about what the reliance on information gathering and use means. The combination of identifying, and discriminatory information and personalising services, both public and private, pose interesting questions.
This all fits very neatly into the work we are doing on personal information. It isn't about DNA specifically, but DNA is part of the broad debate we are looking at. You can contact us about it here.
There's lots more about the DNA database at GeneWatch; or the Home Office; or for a little more background on DNA use check out the Forensis Sciences Service.
Part of this revolves around whether taking select samples of DNA (only from those arrested) is an equitable way to compile a database. The issues range from whether it is right that DNA can be kept on record even if the person is not charged (which is what happens at the moment); to whether the resulting database is, in the words of Professor Alec Jeffreys, 'skewed socio-economically and ethnically'. The big story for most of the coverage is that one judge is arguing that any DNA database should, in the name of equality, include everyone.
There are, of course, lots of big problems and questions - for example, what impact does the temptation to base prevention around more detailed profiling have on how we think about, or respond to, inequality? This is not just Big Brother talk - we need a bit more, as a critique, than stories of a malevolent police state to really think about what the reliance on information gathering and use means. The combination of identifying, and discriminatory information and personalising services, both public and private, pose interesting questions.
This all fits very neatly into the work we are doing on personal information. It isn't about DNA specifically, but DNA is part of the broad debate we are looking at. You can contact us about it here.
There's lots more about the DNA database at GeneWatch; or the Home Office; or for a little more background on DNA use check out the Forensis Sciences Service.
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Comments
Have a look at various things by MIT geneticist Eric Lander. He was an early critic of DNA databases. But seemed to do a U-turn when he was convinced that the technical difficulties had been resolved. Which raises the question of whether its authority grows even more as the problems get ironed out...
Oh, there's just one more thing...
What the new technology introduces is a new politics of forgetting. There is (or should be) no binary opposition between being recorded or unrecorded, but questions over how long things remain recorded for. In an analogue age, rule of law and organic social processes (e.g. police incompetence) ensured that people gradually recovered their privacy over time. If you were arrested but not charged, some sort of record is made, but not the same as if you are charged or sentenced. It might be a scrap of paper that ends up in the bin shortly after. In a digital age, it is less clear whether and how things become forgotten.
Interesting point about forgetting - computers don't really forget unless they break when we don't want them to, or we tell them to forget when we do. So data retention policies, for search engines etc, are interesting problems. That sounds like its one of the issues with the DNA database.
Maybe the question of inequality arises because surveillance is targeted, and because inequality is inescapable. If 'surveillance' in its broadest sense is how more departments and organisations operate - through the gathering of personal data, and the tailoring of services, offers, etc, to their 'needs' - then perhaps there's a difference in how inequality is treated. Especially if the politics of forgetting extends towards the politics of prevention and risk management.
In a slightly broader sense than just DNA, maybe the many different contexts in which people are sorted and profiled through personal information works to rationalise differences in a more fundamental way? And I wonder whether that is a different way to distinguish between people and to determine a response, and what the implications are?
Jack - i'm not sure i fully understand your point about DNA matches and becoming guilty until proven innocent. Presumably this is an argument for using evidence carefully rather than refusing to use it all..?
Recent governments have a poor record of restricting the use of data to its original purpose. The attractiveness of revenue opportunities and simplification of many of today's government problems provide a strong incentive to modify conditions of use at a later date whatever the original (weak) guarantees are ... not to mention any changes made "in the name of National Security".
The invasion of privacy and self made possible through widespread DNA capture is fundamentally different to previous national identification methods such as fingerprints and photographs. DNA is not simply an external identifer as a fingerprint is, but the blueprint of a person's makeup. You cannot underestimate the value of this information as our tools of analysis and understanding of DNA increase.