Big Brother Watch

Setting a bad example on DNA

You have probably seen that Barack Obama is considering a national (rather than State-based) DNA database in the USA.

Which nation is being used as the cautionary tale in that debate?

We are.

By Alex Deane

More fuel to the DNA debate

Big Brother Watch has always been opposed to the retention of the DNA of innocent people on the National Database; click here to see the full list of blogposts we have written on the issue.

The past 24 hours have seen some interesting developments on this topic, all of which add fuel to the argument that anyone who has their DNA taken and is later found to be innocent should be entitled to expect, rather than have to request its removal from the database.

The first story, from the Daily Mail, reveals that just 0.3% of solved crimes are due to the DNA database.

The research shows that - despite the massive expansion in the Government database - only 3,666 crimes are detected every year with links to an existing DNA profile.

That is one in every 1,300 of the 4.9million crimes carried out, and just one in 350, or 0.3 per cent, of the 1.3million crimes solved by police, according to the home affairs select committee.

This research may have influenced the House of Commons' Home Affairs Select Committee, who yesterday said the following about the Government's current policy on DNA

"The current situation of indefinite retention of the DNA profiles of those arrested but not convicted is impossible to defend in light of the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights and unacceptable in principle," the committee says in a report published on 8 March 2010.

Crucially, in their recommendations the Committee stated that "DNA alone is unlikely to result in a conviction for crime." This is particularly significant given the Prime Minister's speech last week, in which he accused opponents of retaining innocent DNA of 'helping rapists'.

Finally, from the Metro this morning, comes the news that the African Caribbean Leukaemia Trust are struggling for organ and blood donations because people fear that their DNA profile will be added to the database.

All three stories are yet further evidence of why the Government's present policy on DNA retention is completely wrong. DNA is rarely crucial in solving crimes. The current length of time we retain profiles is anti-liberty and breaking the ECHR judgement. And the database is causing real and tangible damage to the Afro-Caribbean community because of its prejudice against young black males.

By Dylan Sharpe

Judge, Jury and database searcher

Innocent until proven guilty, or innocent until your DNA partially matches? The Mail on Sunday has revealed that officers regularly trawl the National Database for possible profile matches when they hit a dead-end in their investigations:

Figures obtained by The Mail on Sunday show that detectives are ordering weekly searches of the DNA database for people with no immediate connection to any crime.

The searches are used when crime scene DNA samples produce no direct match on the system.

Investigators then trawl millions of other records looking for a partial match, which might indicate that the suspect is related to an innocent person on the system.

When we are told that removing innocent DNA profiles is too time consuming, one has to wonder how much time is being wasted in the vain hope of turning up matches in familial DNA?

More to the point, what happens - as the godfather of DNA profiling Sir Alec Jeffreys said - if “there is some glitch in the database that made a false match to my DNA profile and that brings me into the frame of a criminal investigation which has very serious repercussions.” 

Which is probably why Lee Wyatt from Dereham (right), who was arrested and charged with assault but cleared of any wrongdoing in his local court, has taken to walking around the town with a sandwich board to try and get his DNA back from Norfolk Constabulary.

We wish Lee the best of luck but we're not holding our breath...

By Dylan Sharpe

"DNA’s Dirty Little Secret": A forensic tool renowned for exonerating the innocent may actually be putting them in prison

Washington Monthly has used the notable "cold hit" case of John Puckett as a starting point for a remarkably significant, researched, extended piece on the use of DNA in court cases. An extract to show the quality:

Typically, law enforcement and prosecutors rely on FBI estimates for the rarity of a given DNA profile—a figure can be as remote as one in many trillions when investigators have all thirteen markers to work with. In Puckett’s case, where there were only five and a half markers available, the San Francisco crime lab put the figure at one in 1.1 million—still remote enough to erase any reasonable doubt of his guilt. The problem is that, according to most scientists, this statistic is only relevant when DNA material is used to link a crime directly to a suspect identified through eyewitness testimony or other evidence. In cases where a suspect is found by searching through large databases, the chances of accidentally hitting on the wrong person are orders of magnitude higher.

The reasons for this aren’t difficult to grasp: consider what happens when you take a DNA profile that has a rarity of one in a million and run it through a database that contains a million people; chances are you’ll get a coincidental match. Given this fact, the two leading scientific bodies that have studied the issue—the National Research Council and the FBI’s DNA advisory board—have recommended that law enforcement and prosecutors calculate the probability of a coincidental match differently in cold-hit cases. In particular, they recommend multiplying the FBI’s rarity statistic by the number of profiles in the database, to arrive at a figure known as the Database Match Probability. When this formula is applied to Puckett’s case (where a profile with a rarity of one in 1.1 million was run through a database of 338,000 offenders) the chances of a coincidental match climb to one in three.

Such coincidental matches are more than a theoretical possibility, as Chicago police can attest. In 2004, detectives investigating a string of robberies on the city’s North Side found some skin cells that the culprit had left behind at one crime scene, which contained six DNA markers. When they ran this profile against Illinois’s offender database, they found it matched a woman named Diane Myers. There was just one problem: when the burglaries in question were committed, Myers was already in jail, serving time on drug charges.

Indeed, the little information that has come to light about the actual rate of coincidental matches in offender databases suggests the chances of hitting on the wrong person may be even higher than the Database Match Probability suggests. In 2005... an Arizona state employee named Kathryn Troyer had run a series of tests on the state’s DNA database, which at the time included 65,000 profiles, and found multiple people with nine or more identical markers. If you believe the FBI’s rarity statistics, this was all but impossible—the chances of any two people in the general population sharing that many markers was supposed to be about one in 750 million, while the Database Match Probability for a nine-marker match in a system the size of Arizona’s is roughly one in 11,000. 

(Emphasis added.)

It's technical stuff admittedly, but that's just what convicts people for things they may not have done. If you're interested in this subject, the article is really a "must read".

The piece is also covered by the security consultant blogging as Mass Private I, who highlights the attempts of law enforcement to suppress information about flaws in statistics rather than share it as they should - which is significant, and terrible, as juries thinking the numbers mean something very different to the truth can wind up convicting the defendant.

This finds support in another useful piece about the Washington Monthly essay over at Rants of a Public Defender; after pointing out the significant shortcomings of legal defence teams in relation to DNA evidence, she rightly concludes,

They don't want us poking around too much and investigating the truth of their scientific claims.  They don't want to do the hard work to get at the right results; they just want the quick, dirty, and easy answers, evidently without concern for whether those answers are the right ones.  Once again, when science and law enforcement come together, scientific integrity inevitably takes the back seat...

We have got to fight against the criminal justice system's reluctance to get at the best evidence.  We have got to break the hold that DNA evidence has over us.  Otherwise, we'll never get to the truth of it.

A selection of related posts - the DNA myth, wrongful arrest due to DNA, the "return my DNA" campaign, DNA madness, less than 1% of crimes solved with DNA, removal of samples from innocent people is random, DNA / PNC, DNA testing and employability, arrests just to get us on the database, and an extended and updated piece from me on Con Home.

By Alex Deane

DNA from babies given to the US military

We're constantly reassured that DNA samples taken by the state are secure and safe - nothing to see here, move on, don't cause a fuss.

Well, would you cause a fuss if you were the parent of one of the 800 newborn babies in Texas whose blood samples were sent to the U.S. military?

Supposedly, it wasn't for military use, oh no - it was for potential use in a database for law enforcement purposes.

Well, that's OK then.

And, in the winner of the weekly "well isn't that rather the point" award, when asked why the State's government had kept the programme a secret, Carrie Williams, a health department spokeswoman, said

"We don't publicize every agency initiative or contract, and obviously this is a sensitive topic."

By Alex Deane

DNA database agency breaks the hearts of "sisters"

In the context of the legal world, I've written about the problems with DNA evidence before. Over at the Mail, a sad story about donor-conceived children - about false hopes, technological errors and a DNA database.

Two women recently became the first British children of an anonymous sperm donor to meet face-to-face - or so they thought.

K, who now lives in Perth, Western Australia, and E, from Cambridge here in the UK, had been among the first to register with UK Donor Link, a Government-funded database set up in 2004 - and they were brought together as the "poster children" of a reunification programme run by DNA analysis.

The problem was that the scientists were wrong:

In a terrible and distressing mistake, UKDL brought two entirely unrelated women together and told them they were sisters.

The Mail says that, unsurprisingly,

E and K, who are both 37, are deeply distressed by the development.

E did not want to discuss the revelation but K is so appalled at what she considers the unprofessional and unethical behaviour of UKDL that she is considering suing the organisation.

To summarise - supposedly basic DNA question using existing (not pioneering) technology; high-profile situation, with the provider incentivised to get it right given the publicity - and they still got it wrong.

As the Mail puts it, it's a mistake that "casts new doubt on DNA profiling" per se. And this story breaks alongside the news that researchers intend to build an online DNA database.

Oh, good.

By Alex Deane

A presumption of future possible guiltyishness

Today the Home Affairs Select Committee heard evidence on the retention of innocent DNA samples from Sir Alec Jeffreys - the man who developed techniques for DNA fingerprinting and DNA profiling which are now used all over the world.

While Big Brother Watch could sadly not be there, the tireless Lobbydog - a prolific blogger of Westminster gossip - has provided a brief transcript of the key exchanges that I felt were worth sharing on our blog.

As reported by Lobbydog:

“If my DNA were to be put on the database I would object profoundly against that,” said Sir Alec Jeffreys at a hearing of the Home Affairs Committee.

“What advantage is it to me, as an entirely blameless citizen? The best outcome is that my DNA would sit there cluttering up a fridge and that my DNA profile would sit there cluttering up the database.

“The worst that could happen is that there is some glitch in the database that made a false match to my DNA profile and that brings me into the frame of a criminal investigation which has very serious repercussions.”

Crucially, Sir Alec finished by saying that if he’d known his DNA analysis would be used by the Government in the way it has, he’d have been “astonished, perplexed and deeply worried”.

“I’ve always understood that one of the great foundations of English law was a presumption of innocence, but obviously now there is a presumption of future possible guiltyishness,” he said.

He makes several other excellent points against why innocent DNA should be removed from the database (including the increased likelihood of false matches between family members – who share similar DNA profiles) - the full report really is a must read.

By Dylan Sharpe

The DNA myth continues

Two points of interest on DNA retention emerged from the House of Commons yesterday. 

The first, alerted to us by the masterful blogger Dizzy, was the answer to the following parliamentary question by John Robertson, Labour MP for Glasgow North West:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department in how many convictions for criminal offences evidence from the National DNA database played a material part in (a) 2005, (b) 2006, (c) 2007, (d) 2008 and (e) 2009.

The response from the Home Office is as follows:

	Total DNA-related detections	Total recorded crime
2005-06	40,309	5,555,172
2006-07	41,148	5,427,558
2007-08	33,034	4,951,173
2008-09	32,209	4,702,468

As Dizzy rightly points out, this means that in the past few years, DNA evidence has played a part in just over half of one percent of crimes solved in the UK. While it would be very difficult to achieve, Big Brother Watch would love to know how many of those half a percent were from the DNA profiles of those never convicted of any crime - it is unlikely to be very many at all.

Which makes the second point of interest all the more relevant. As reported by Public Service, yesterday during evidence given to a committee considering the Crime and Security Bill, President of the Association of Chief Police Officers, Sir Hugh Orde, said that:

"The retention of DNA is of critical value to serious crime investigation.

"From a professional police perspective, just because someone is not convicted of an offence, there are still very good professional reasons for why we need that information when dealing with serious crime."

Sadly, Hugh, the figures just don't stack up. Just like our Home Secretary, he's going to have to do much better if they are to continue ignoring the ruling of the ECHR and retaining the DNA of innocent people. 

By Dylan Sharpe

- - UPDATE - -

A commenter on this post has pointed us to this document from GeneWatch, which is a fantastic summary of the arguments against the retention of innocent DNA.

Wrongful arrest prompts change of policy on DNA

The Hull Daily Mail have a fascinating story this morning about the case of a 15 year-old who has prompted a change in policy by his local police force after he was arrested, spent a night in a cell, and had his DNA taken, before being released without charge.

As the report explains:

In what is believed to be an unprecedented move locally, officers have agreed to destroy a sample of DNA taken from 15-year-old Joshua Stevens after his arrest.

An apology (from Humberside Police's Assistant Chief Constable Alan Lever) was read out in a statement issued to a full meeting of Hull City Council, where councillors were due to debate a motion criticising the police over the incident.

Joshua was arrested at his family home in Kyffen Avenue, east Hull, in connection with an alleged attack on a 14-year-old girl and held in a cell overnight before being released without charge.

His parents, who were in Lancashire at the time about to go on holiday from Manchester Airport, subsequently claimed a senior officer investigating their complaint admitted the force had "messed up".

The entire episode does, of course, require further examination and we are pleased to see that Humberside Police have launched an investigation - as well as making such a public apology. But the question for us is: why has this particular case prompted Humberside Police to change their policy on DNA deletion?

When the Conservatives released data over Christmas on how UK police forces responded to requests for innocent DNA to be taken off their databases, in Humberside the figures showed that none of the six requests had been complied with. Although this was a small number comparatively, it is clear that it is something Humberside Police weren't keen to do. So what changed?

Is it the boy's age? Or the possible public outcry over the case? Either way, it goes to show that the police are in a mess on the policy of retaining innocent DNA. The circumstances simply don't matter - if someone is innocent, they should not have their biometric data catalogued.

By Dylan Sharpe 

Return My DNA

The Tories are running a "Return my DNA" campaign.  As we have often argued here and elsewhere, they want the DNA of innocent people off the database.

I used to work for the Tories and some people will say that I'm just shilling for the Party. Oh well. I think that this is of interest to readers of our site and I want to share and endorse it (as I endorsed Diane Abbott when she was acting on the same issue). You can sign up to the petition - without joining the Tory party or anything like that - here.

If they form government after the next election, Big Brother Watch intends to hold them to this commitment and to see the profiles of innocent people start coming off the database very, very quickly - triggered by a statutory instrument, probably, or - if need by - by legislation.

By Alex Deane