DNA DATABASE DEBATE

In the wake of the convictions of Stephen Wright, Mark Dixie and Levi Bellfield it was perhaps inevitable - if not predictable - that the thorny issue of a national DNA database would crop up, not just on the back of Det Supt Stuart Cundy's (personal) insistence that: "It is my opinion that a national DNA register - with all its appropriate safeguards - could have identified Sally Anne's murderer within 24 hours. Instead it took nearly nine months before Mark Dixie was identified, and almost two-and-a-half years for justice to be done." It is an assertion that is at once emotive (pandering to the earnest wish of us all that the the perpetrators of such vile crimes be brought to justice as speedily as possible), persuasive (on the face of it, 24 hours versus 9 months is an absolute no-brainer) and brave (especially for an individual who may well not be possessed of a great deal of expertise in the design and management of data systems).

Now I wouldn't want to be misunderstood here. No-one, least of all me, disputes that DNA analysis is a hugely important investigative tool for law enforcement agencies (although we should hold in our minds that it is a crime-solving rather than a crime prevention resource). But I cannot help feeling that Det Supt Cundy's assertion is at best moot and may even be both misleading and inaccurate (not least when, for example, it is measured against the 100 or so occasions on which the criminal activities of Levi Bellfield were reported to the police). Here the most important point to be aware of is that database systems are a technological resource, subject to certain innate physical properties and intractable rules. And one of the most fundamental of these, as Ross Anderson has sought to make abundantly clear for a very long time now, is that “You can have security, or functionality, or scale—you can even have any two of these. But you can’t have all three." Therefore, as sure as eggs is eggs, scaling up the DNA database to a national/universal level would have the inevitable effect of compromising either functionality or (more 'preferable' from the Government's point of view?) security.

On top of this we have to factor in not only the fact that the existing DNA database is populated with a fair degree of error already (from memory, something like half a million of the 4.5 or so million samples retained are estimated to have been mis-recorded on entry) but also that, like fingerprints, DNA analysis is not infallible. The point here is that, if the database were to be scaled up, these in-built errors would be magnified, perhaps even to the extent of undermining the value of the resource. In sum it doesn't necessarily follow that a whole-of-population database would, of itself, guarantee speedier investigative results. (Manifestly I have rather less hesitancy about this than that felt by Iain Dale in this post.)

Now, to be scrupulously fair, as Philip Johnston says in this article in the Daily Telegraph "Tony McNulty, the Home Office minister, was commendably quick to reject the calls for a universal DNA database," something which we need not necessarily have anticipated given the witlessness of some of his previous comments about ID cards and the NIR. Against that background, it is perhaps even more surprising that he has demonstrated an uncharacteristic degree of common sense in a number of his comments. He is spot on in maintaining that a national DNA database would not be a "silver bullet". He is spot on in identifying that it "would raise significant practical and ethical issues". He is spot on in saying that (as I imply above) "How to maintain the security of a database with 4.5m people on it is one thing, doing that for 60m people is another." In other words the Home Office wholly reject the idea of a national DNA database.

So far so good - and, honestly, like Philip Johnston, I commend and congratulate him for having put the Home Office's policy in this area into the public domain so concisely and so quickly. But, whilst I have no difficulty in giving him plaudits when they are due, I can't help feeling that he's managed to create a huge intellectual inconsistency for himself and the Government. You see, if we take these policy constraints on a national DNA database at face value, they in turn beg a hugely important question: what is the difference, qualitatively and quantitively between a national DNA database and the NIR or the NPfIT, &c?

The answer (a la Paul Daniels) is "Not a lot!" In fact, under the umbrella of the "Transformational Government" agenda (the proposition whereby the minutiae of every scrap of information held about an individual should be shared seamlessly across the whole of government), these databases are even more intrusive because, as a generality, they do not rely upon onward analysis for required data to be extracted from them. It would therefore be wholly legitimate to assume that, in the interests of consistency, the same policy constraints that the Government has identified in respect of a national DNA database (presumably this is what Tony McNulty's comments were intended to convey rather than a personal opinion) should be applied equally to their grandiose and misguided plans for ID cards, NPfIT, ContactPoint, &c. So, viewed logically, the Government's attitude about a national DNA database damns to hell and back their adherence to other national databases they have in the pipeline. To quote Tony McNulty's own words, the stark reality is that none of these would be a "silver bullet" to address the problems at which they are aimed, all of them "raise significant practical and ethical issues", and all of them fall foul of what could be called Anderson's Law, namely, "How to maintain the security of a database with 4.5m people on it is one thing, doing that for 60m people is another".

I know it's too much to hope for but the prospect of a little bit of joined-up government thinking here (i.e. Ministers being capable of recognising the equivalence between a national DNA database and other databases (both existing and proposed) within the Government's purview) wouldn't go amiss. Well, dreams are free. But I fear it ain't going to happen soon.