CDR: Re: why should it be trusted?

[Ken Brown]

Petro wrote:

> >P.S.   I too would be interested in documented cases where DNA
> >collected by the police was given to insurance companies.
> 
>         It's (apparently) England where there is wide spread DNA
> collection for use in finding certain types of criminals.


The database exists but so far it is supposedly restricted to convicted
criminals (all nearly a million of them), and DNA collection is not
universal in criminal investigation in England. There is a move (which
will possibly fall foul of the new Human Rights laws) by some bits of
the Labour government to make it routine for people who are actually
arrested, but not for a trawl through random members of the public .

The opposition Conservative party says the proposals are too weak - they
want to give the police even more powers. Presumably they want everyone
on the database, convicted or not.

They seem proud of their database (you can even pay them to
"fingerprint" you) 
http://www.forensic.gov.uk/forensic/news/press_releases/10_04_00_2.htm


>         In England both the Police and the Health Care System are run
> by the government, so in a sense the "Insurance Company" already has
> it.
>         They also can't do anything about it since they have to cover everyone.
>         Note: I am not claiming that the Police share the DNA with
> the Health Care Providers, but once the database is there...

If they aren't keeping the DNA but just storing the results of the
"profile" in the database then the data will *not* be generally useful
for medical purposes. You have to know what you are looking for. If you
suspect that a particular allele makes a disease more likely you have to
look for that allele. The kind of stuff that is important here is the
SNP lists coming out of the HGP - which is why annotations to them are
getting bogged down in intellectual property squabbles between academics
& drug companies.

Also, as you pointed out, the UK National Health Service isn't an
insurance system. Of course that doesn't mean that the doctors wouldn't
be interested in DNA evidence for hereditary diseases or whatever. If
anything leaks might be the other way - law enforcement might want to
find confidential patient information from the NHS (which doesn't keep
centralised patient records, yet - there is an interminable thread about
this on the UKcrypto list which a few folks who are here  also read -
Ross Anderson has strong opinions on the competence of the NHS to keep
centralised confidential records)

A recent news item at

http://news6.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid%5F906000/906538.stm

and some background:

http://news6.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid%5F541000/541529.stm
http://news6.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/audio%5Fvideo/programmes/panorama/transcripts/transcript%5F15%5F11%5F99.txt