The government has pledged to remove innocent people from the national DNA database by launching a public consultation "Keeping the right people on DNA database" early this month.
It sets out proposals to introduce "more transparent safeguards" for the individual and aims to provide a proportionate balance between protecting communities and protecting the rights of the individual.
There have been numerous debates about the compulsory DNA database with experts arguing that it is discriminatory because it has 40% of black men's DNA profiled as against just 9% of white men; that it is violation of freedom of expression and that it promotes distrust and so on.
But more than the controversial nature of the information the government holds, the fact that it exists with the government is worrying. Recently, there have been innumerable reports about the plunging public confidence in public sectors. The health care services, the councils, the police, libraries, institutions and other government departments are less trusted by the people following series of high profile sensitive data leak that jeopardised our security.
The government launched the national DNA database in 1995 with an aim to allow police store DNA profiles to help resolve crimes. And today, the UK leads the world in developing a national DNA database (profiling over four million people).
According to the government, the database has played a key role in solving criminal cases such as Sally Ann Bowman murder, convicting Steve Wright in 2008 for the murder of five prostitutes and also for proving innocence such as clearing Sean Hodgson of the death of a young woman nearly 30 years after he was wrongly imprisoned.
While we do not undermine the role of such information to help the police solve criminal cases and would like to do every bit to cooperate, we are worried about the loss of that information to a wrong set of people likely to misuse it, tamper with it and manipulate it. When in the recent past public authorities have failed to observe basis principles of security such as encrypting a disk with employee information or safeguarding anti-terrorism documents.
The issue is not so much about an invasion on right to privacy or human rights, it is in fact about data protection. We now know that privacy is long dead in this digital age. Our fear comes out of our falling confidence in the public sector organisations.
