"It is estimated that the current rate of profile replication is about 13.3%."
So they don't even know when DNA samples match?
What was the point of this database again?
Home Office figures show that the cost of running the national DNA database has more than doubled since 2002-03. Meg Hillier MP said that in 2002-03 the cost of DNA database services was £774,300, but that service and IT development delivery costs for 2008-09 are projected as £1.77m. In 2006-07, that figure reached £2.04m, …
So let's get this straight, a system that is intended to uniquely identify individuals is erroneous to the extent that 1 in every 8 profiles has failed to be matched with a pre-existing one? Not even biochemists drawing straight lines through scatter plots would try to claim significance with a 1 in 8 chance of being wrong :P
At a cost of £2mil p.a. or thereabouts. I'm quite surprised by this, as I didn't know it was possible for the government to do anything IT related for less than 8 or 9 digits. Maybe when they start to implement security for our data the costs will skyrocket to the sort of astronomical overspend we're more used to.
So if you commit a crime, can you not reasonably ask to have your DNA evidence checked against all the other samples in their database, just in case it doesn't match? Bet not !
This Surveillance Society Sucks !
P.S. I'm not a criminal and my DNA is not on the PNC unless they took it without my permission while last in hospital/doctors.
How long before entry fee & rental is charged for being on the DNA database?
This may sound stupid (so some management consultant will already have proposed it, with a system of fines/penalties for late/refused payments), but did you know that if you are pardoned for a crime and compensated then you can be billed for the time you spent in prison?
Problems:
1. it's chromosome not chromosone
2. what species are you? I /only/ have 23 chromosomes...
3. your table would allow nameless and addressless samples. Not very useful for knocking on the door at 4am...
4. I've no idea exactly how it's done, but DNA matching is not broken down by chromosome and nor is it a case of simple string matching
5. I doubt I'd use MySQL for this...
can we have our £2mil back please...
I wonder why the costs have soared? Surely, over time, all you need is more hard disk space, so what's pushing the costs up? The running costs should remain more or less constant except for that.
More functionality being developed?
Someone's being ripped off somewhere, and that is us..the taxpayer again.
A lot of people on this DNA database shouldn't be on there. Just because a PC thinks you look like someone else they are after the can arrest you.
When they arrest you have no choice but to be put on this amazing usless database.
When it been proven that "I wasn't me gov" to be true by them nicking correct rouge about 40 mints after your self.
Now note that this amazing database dosn't even know your DNA yet, it take few weeks before this it processed and put upon it unless it is urgenty needed. So DNA database didn't solve the case for me, but I am on it now. But they will not remove you details from this amazing pointless database.
Nice...
If you have been eating something, say a burger or you have just nibbled on your nearest and dearest's love flaps, how do they make that distinction in the DNA test. I am beginging to think this DNA thing is just a load of made up guff.
So as a test, they should round up 1000 people, who are then recorded using a variety of cameras which stream to an encrypted storage area.
They run about an area, simulating real life, muching on the odd burger or love flap, getting into fights, sucking on their clothing, picking up objects, shaking hands and popping their fingers in their gobs etc.
Then each gives a DNA sample.
The DNA sample is then taken along normal routes to the lab, meanwhile the lorry gets ambushed, the driver dragged out, and flashed a photo of the thing they love the most, the DNA samples are mixed up (labels moved etc), not all but about 50%. He is then popped back into his cab and trundles off to the lab.
Items are then gathered up from the experiment area and shipped off to another lab, who knows if that truck gets hijacked or not.
Then quite simply the labs have to share data to match up the items to the people who have touched them.
All the politicians and judges who think that DNA evidence is incontrovertable get lined up. The results get returned, and the camera footage decrypted, for each item that is wrongly matched to a person, a lump of lead is projectiled into the line at about head hit
So, how sure are people that DNA evidence is accurate, how long would that line be.
Like the National ID Card scheme, the DNA Database is here to stay until each sitting MP receives a couple of thousand letters from their own constituents. Those letters should say:
Unless you cancel the Nat Id Card Scheme and keep the un-convicted people off the police DNA Database you will be fired at the next general election.
The entire concept of the DNA database is horrific. It should not even be tolerated for the worst criminal offenders on the planet to have their DNS profiles kept so.
They want to put EVERY man, woman and child on the DNA database.. which means there is a presumption that every man, woman and child is going to commit a crime.
People who think that the DNA database will deter criminals at all are mistaken. They will just get more careful about leaving behind DNA evidence. Methods will develop to drop false DNA evidence at crime scenes which will be considered to automatically exonerate the guilty, "because the DNA evidence" said someone else did it, and didn't link the guilty party to the crime scene.
George Orwell's classic "1984" illustrates the direction society is moving, and that is a terrifying thing indeed.
Stop tolerating it, and start protesting! WAKE UP!
Testing against duplicates doesn't give an error. It might even mark up the duplicates in some self-correcting way. This would only be serious if you were looking for, say, identical twins.
Incidentally, if the 13.3% figure were the number of independent samples, since there must be at least two independent samples to get a match, the database contains 7.5 sure innocents for each 1 potential match. And, at a criminal population ~1%, they have a match rate efficiency an order of magnitude better than background.
When the BBC got a lot of flak for the price of the TV licence they resorted to a slightly desperate campaign telling you how much it worked out to on a daily basis.
It's time for the Home Office to do the same; now M&S have started using David Jason to do their voiceovers, I'm sure Dervla Kerwin is available:
'Do you know it costs less than 2 pence per day to store the data of a child on the government's database? Peace and security for just 2p? What else can you get for that?'