Wiping of DNA and fingerprint records 'puts public safety at risk'

Not so sure about that as a goal, but at least whatever s happening now in Europe does not appear to involve or condone gas chambers and concentration camps (for now)

What people can do to people

The last four are the chambers and ovens

My smilies at the end of my quote in this post

Wiping of DNA and fingerprint records 'puts public safety at risk'

were inappropriate in light of the subject matter Dave, I apologise.

There is a definite lack of choices in this matter.................
The only choice available would be Hobson's......

Complaining is futile.

Count me in.

I can imagine the time, not too far in the future, when it will be compusory by law to give DNA sample to a Government agency, to share with other nations, in the name of some security or other.

I am in total favour of harvesting DNA from criminals, terrorists and whathave you, but the common law-abiding citizen should be left well alone.
Governments cannot be trusted with such a varied amount of data, which could be easily sold on to interested parties, like they already have been doing with names and addresses for a number of years.
And the DVLA is the worst culprit, and I can prove it. All I need to do is root around the attinc for some junk mail addressed to my peculiarly misspelled surname only present on my old, paper, driving licence.
I can live with CCTV cameras on every corner, although after years of use, this dubious expensive service hasn't helped cut any crime at all as it was heralded, it would do, with great fanfare at the very beginning.

And therein lies the complete failure of your imagination.

Nothing to do with drink Tim and everything to do with the whole point of this thread.

The Philippines already have my DNA, I had to submit to test at the behest of our British government in order to prove the paternity of my daughter.

But anyway I would continue to visit the Philippines, I already know my place in the Philippine hierarchy is somewhere beneath the cat in street and I already forfeit a hell of a lot in order to visit a country that I love. The thing is while the Phils has a lot of bureaucracy they are not very good at doing anything with it, vast numbers of people live under the radar over there.

I would not like such a requirement but at my age I would not object to it.

I would on the other hand object to the harvesting of my children's DNA for a Philippine government database.

Eugenics.

One of the uses of all that information in that little sample of your DNA that your lovely trustworthy government would be collecting.

The notion that any western government is so above reproach that your human rights will be respected now and forever is laughable.

Look, the idea that DNA is just like a fingerprint or an Iris scan is nonsense, it is much more than that, it contains vastly more information than that.

At this point in time sequencing DNA is a relatively slow process but that will not be the case forever, eventually there will be ways to get a rough sequence quickly.

A database of the entire population on the grounds that it would simplify forensics is extremely dangerous because it would encourage lower standards of police investigation, furthermore it will decrease the signal to noise ratio in police investigations making it more likely that miscarriages of justice occur, just to be clear the more samples they have to test the more false positives they will get and the more innocent people will be caught up in investigations that have absolutely nothing to do with them.

It will hinder police work rather than helping them and it will encourage lazy investigation, it already has in many cases around the world.

Calls for mass screening on the grounds that we all have nothing to hide is a simplistic argument with consequences that go far beyond the reasons used to justify it.