Fwd: Roadside DNA Tests On Citizens Planned

[JFA]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/et?ac=003986439041226&rtmo=aCau54uJ&atmo=rrrrrrrq&pg=/et/00/12/10/nkit10.html

Electronic Telegraph, UK, Dec 10 2000


Roadside DNA tests planned
By David Cracknell, Deputy Political Editor

DRIVERS or other people stopped by police could be asked to supply
on-the-spot hair or saliva samples to identify whether they are wanted
criminals.

Government scientists have developed a hand-held DNA testing kit to be
carried and operated by police officers during regular patrols. The device
would be electronically linked to the national DNA database, which Tony
Blair has hailed as an essential tool in the fight against crime.

The Forensic Science Service will disclose to Parliament this week that the
equipment could be ready for standard use within a couple of years. The
testing kit, which could become as common as the breathalyser or police
baton, will dramatically cut the time it takes to match DNA evidence from
crime scenes to suspects. It will raise fresh fears among civil liberties
campaigners who believe that the pendulum has swung too far in the police's
direction.

Forensic scientists already expect that soon they will be able to use a single
hair sample to discover a suspect's eye colour, facial characteristics, height
and weight. They say that the next step will be portable testing kits that need
little technical ability to operate. The FSS will give evidence to the House of
Lords science and technology committee this week, telling peers that research
on the kits is well advanced.

It currently takes at least 48 hours to profile biological material collected from
a crime scene, but the new kits could give police an instant lead if they were
made standard issue. They would allow such tests to be carried out outside
the laboratory for the first time. A spokesman for the FSS, which is a
Government agency, said: "We feel that we have gone as far down the line as
we can in terms of what a DNA profile can tell us about an individual and the
next area we are looking at is speeding up the process."

The Telegraph has seen written evidence to the Lords committee from one of
the organisation's chief scientists, Dr Bob Bramley, and research documents.
The committee began its inquiry after becoming concerned about the dramatic
increase in the scale of DNA samples collected by the police.

Earlier this year, the Prime Minister announced an extra £109 million for the
expansion of the police's DNA database in Birmingham to include samples
from "the entire active criminal population" - estimated to be around three
million. 

The police have already collected nearly a million samples from those
convicted of an offence that carries a prison sentence. Senior officers are now
lobbying for changes in the law to allow further expansion of the database to
include innocent people who volunteer to take part in mass screenings.

Civil liberties campaigners are opposing any extension of the police's authority
to to collect samples. They cite an official report which found that thousands
of samples are being illegally held on the database because forces are failing
to remove the records of acquitted suspects. John Wadham, the director of
the human rights group Liberty, said: "The law already allows the unjustified
collection of samples and we know that there are at least 50,000 being
illegally held at the FSS database. This is not the time to relax the law."

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