Where the foxes caper unmolested, the government packs your school lunch and the Unlawfully Discarded Bubble Gum Wrapper Registry has your DNA on file;
Police are seeking powers to take DNA samples from suspects on the streets and for non-imprisonable offences such as speeding and dropping litter.
The demand for a huge expansion of powers to take DNA comes as a government watchdog announced the first public inquiry into the national DNA database.
There is growing concern among MPs and civil liberties groups about the number of children under 10 and young black men on the database — the biggest in the world. But a number of police forces in England and Wales are backing proposals that would add millions more samples to it.
The Association of Chief Police Officers gave a warning, however, that allowing police to take samples for non-recordable offences — crimes for which offenders cannot be imprisoned — might be perceived as indicative of “the increasing criminalisation of the generally law-abiding public”.
Perceived?
… might be ?
It’s so much easier to criminalize law-abiding people than it is prosecute actual criminals.
Bonus: it has the appearance of a ‘get tough’ policy.
If it’s’Tony Blair’s Britain’,who was that guy meeting with Bush?
Unless you mean it in the way that we were still stuck in’Chretien’s Canada’even after Martin replaced him(shiver).
Call it his legacy.
Evidently, from the 134 comments on this Times-on-Line piece, there are people who actually seem to agree with such disturbing proposals emanating from the British Labour Government…or its officers, no less. Not only that, there are also some Americans who appear to see the same society developing down there. That these proposals come with the cloak of improved security is patent nonsense. As society degenerates to criminal behavious dominant (are we that far away from this?), such DNA databases will only be used for the most heinous crimes because, as is the case for so-called minor crime such as ‘B & E’s (break and enter) right now the police in many jurisdictions simply will not turn up if there is no clear human injury. No detained criminal….no DNA. Let those who seek to promote this Orwellian future go ahead and line up if you feel your security demands it: but I sure hope that there are more out there who value more the remnants of the freedoms we cherish.
My son-in-law(who happens to be a Limey) has an old buddy from his Army days and wife visiting. Been here 2 weeks and are already looking to stay. He is a finishing carpenter.(wonder what his chances are,seeing he has been offered 4 jobs already!) Anyways,Mark said John spent the first 3 days marvelling at the lack of cameras on street corners. Gotta email him this! May he can claim political prosecution,seeing as he never commited any crime!
Ya know, thars jess somethin’ about seein’ the words “litterbug,” “government” and “DNA” in a single orderly thought that makes all yer perceptions go all buggy.
Unless yer not a criminal, of course.
Next on the agenda : thought crimes.
Everyone now, line up for your cranial implant.
Nanny State occasionally buys a new suit and gets a makeover to impress new clientele, but she’s still the same old bag with the wagging finger who’s always into your business. Right, Tone?
Whether we like it or not, we in our “civilized societies” are at war. We have both “home grown” terrorists and “imported” terrorists amongst us. How do we know who’s who until after they strike and without surveillance cameras or DNA our chances of catching them is very difficult. Damned if we do and damned if we dont, six of one and a half a dozen of the other! It’s become very difficult to say what adequate security is and what excess security is. Should we or Great Britian experience a 9-11 and we didn’t have “excess” security, how would we feel? Perhaps “excess security” would lessen our chances of our own 9-11 happening? I don’t know, but I’d sure like to feel a tad safer, what with all these damn terrorists walking freely amongst us.
Truly, our lives have changed forever after 9-11 and like it or not, we ALL have to be much more vigilant. If it means living in a “police state” to be more secure, I guess I’ll have to take it, what else can we do, burry our heads in the sand and say no problems exist? Tough call.
Coyote – Congratulations! You have just perfectly articulated the knee-jerk socialism of the serf. You want to be “safe”? Then don’t slough off the responsibility to “the system”. Nanny can’t keep children safe from real monsters. Vigorous social disapproval of the depraved ideologies these people espouse, rigorous enforcement of existing laws, and strict punishments will mitigate the problems swiftly enough.
I hate to just copy what someone else wrote, but “philanthropist” hits it bang on. The rationale behind these asinine laws in Britain is the same as David Miller’s “ban all handguns” proposals here. As philanthropist said, it makes them look like they mean business but in fact are giving the REAL crims a free ride.
Benjamin Franklin – “They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.”
Oh well, I guess when you once ruled the world and now have virtually nothing left, you gotta find someone to oppress. Sadly, for Brits, they are all their government has left.
Correction:
This is now Gord Brown’s Britain.
The Britain that has entered Huxley and Russel’s engineered anthill society…the nation he openly talks about taking into the new “global governing community”.
A traitorous proponent of the global soviet if there ever was one.
What’s next Gord? Government genetic programs to clone the perfect subservient servant of the new micro managed state?
How long until the Liberals here come out in favour of gum registration?
Self inflicted loss of freedom.
The Brits by and large love their mommy to look after them…… Labour party loves being the mommy and she has her hands in every body’s business.
And the lefty twerps call conservatives scary!
Justthinkin, I’d bet the tradesman has a hell of a time getting into Canada. Immigration right now seems stuck on third worlders, who neither speak the language, nor have any useful skills.
I met a young couple from England, both highly educated, with job offers from Canadian companies. It’s been over two years since they applied here, and still have not been approved. They even bought a house here, and rent it out until the day comes when, and if, they’re finally approved.
To me, they seem ideal candidates for Canadian citizenship, but apparently, not in the eyes of canadian Immigration.
andycanuck – hilarious! Good one.
The insidious encroaching fascism of the left is mind boggling. The capacity for rational people to morph into brainless sheeple is mind boggling. Where does it end?
Never surrender an inch.
I was a teenager when P.E.T. the Commie declared martial law in canada. The RCMP in my small town in B.C. decided that they now had to enforce this, and would, search us, break us up and threaten to arrest us teens, if we were in groups of 3 or more. Declaring. “we can do this as you are now under martial law.”
Sure, want a database with the DNA of speeders and litterbugs, but damned if you want to put a database together with the DNA of pedophiles or rapists. This world is so full of morons!
Truly, the British Empire is dead. Victoria must be hitting 10,000 rpm in her grave.
Maybe some well meaning prat can hook her corpse up to a generator and run some more cameras.
[… a steadily increasing number of serious crimes, including murders and rapes, are being solved and criminals brought to book with its help.]
Great. But why apply it for just a gum wrapper ??
Similar logic as the great Canadian way of reward failure and punish success ?
[The database has a preponderance of young men, with a third of black males currently on it.]
Cannot have a discrimiatory DNA data base — rig it so the “others” are on it also for life-threatning littering.
The mutitude of secutity cameras in the UK were instrumental in quickly capturing the London Bombers. Good work. Who can deny that ??
The anarchists and the human-righters can — and do.
Problem is Ron, they captured the bombers -after- the bomb went off. Ubiquitous surveillance does have its uses, increased public safety isn’t one of them. Catching criminals is how you sell the network, not what the network is actually for.
The downside of the surveillance society is clearly evident with this gem of cops using cameras to bust litter bugs and get them on the DNA database.
Frankly I think somebody just wants a full-on DNA list of everyone in Britain and this is how they are slipping the wedge in.
Like the gun registry, I see no positive public good in a DNA registry. Sure the National Health can use it to identify tissue donors, but watch out for the voluntary donation part to get a little wobbly.
Give up your second kidney for The Greater Good Mr. Phantom, you don’t need them both do you? And I see you have a spare eye there as well! How about a couple square feet of skin and a nice bit of bone marrow while we’re at it? What do you say, Citizen?
You wouldn’t want us to think you were being…selfish, would you?
Jay and Tenebris, right on!
An example of gross over regulation, adding up to nothing worthwhile for responsible Canadians, is much of what transpires in our public school boards: e.g., the more behaviour codes they have, the more the behaviour deteriorates, and the more administration turns a blind eye. “Problem? What problem?” (It’s actually the teachers who try to enforce the codes effectively who get in trouble.)
Check out the Julian Falconer Inquiry into the Jordan Manners shooting death at a Toronto high school. First of all, Mr. Falconer has impeccable, anti-racist, left-wing credentials. Second of all, his mandate–at what atrocious cost?–has been extended into September. Thirdly, I expect the inquiry will come up with platitudes and bromides which, though probably adding significantly to the glut of paperwork in which teachers are already up to their eyeballs, will have no concrete effect at all. “Sound and fury signifying nothing [worthwhile].”
coyote’s comments mirror the sentiments of far too many Canadians, who just want to be “safe”. This person thinks we’re “safe”, with all our bureaucratic regulation and retribution? Big Brother and Nanny are alive, well, and close to ruling Canadians. (E.g., Think the Charter, HRC kangaroo courts, and undemocratic, judge-made law.)
I highly recommend that everyone here google Kurt Vonnegut’s brilliant, vicious satire on the nanny state in his short story, “Harrison Bergeron”. It’ll make you laugh til you cry. It starts, “The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way . . . ”
Read this, coyote, and then decide if government regulation, which takes over the thinking faculties of the population, is really such a good idea. Canadians need to wake up and smarten up.
Lefties are adamant that the end justifies the means. So anything that can be done to promote public safety is ok with them. Until it comes time to put the bad guys in jail.
OK here’s a couple of scary scenarios:
High placed government insider needs a new heart or kidney, and since your DNA says you are a good match, so has the appropriate agency arrange a convenient head injury and when you’re brain dead he magically rises to the top of the transplant list.
Or worse, some technically savvy but crime ridden nation (think Russia) hacks the database and goes shopping for organs. Just pick your liver and a kidnap squad scoops you up.
Gee, I’m not paranoid 🙂
“If it means living in a “police state” to be more secure, I guess I’ll have to take it…”
coyote – give us a break. We don’t need DNA from the Amish nor all 5th grade teachers archived with suspected terrorists. That’s where this is going. In Britain the survellience cameras are focused on garbage can violations, speeding cars and litterbugs as well a terrorist target rich infrastructures. The former is pure nanny state intrusion, the later commonsense.
“How do we know who’s who until after they strike”……we do know, it won’t be a baseball player from the New York Yankees, an Italian pizza shop owner from the Bronxs, a retired librarian from Toronto, or a rodeo cowboy from Texas, or anyone of the millions of North Americans not associated with the One Common Thread, Islam. Add young male, add ties to the ME and the suspects get more specific.
It’s ludicrous that we all must be equally suspect so that the small handful of logical suspects don’t have hurt feelings.
Just let people keep a barrel of a loaded gun on the suspects, I must add. That means, in the holster under one’s armpit. A gun becoming an umbrella – this is the concept I love, thanks Dave Tomlinson for the definition.
Why does everything always boil down into a simplistic “the left is evil, the right is good” dichotomy for so many of you? Why is it assumed that the world-wide video surveillance explosion, so prominent in Britain, is necessarily a “lefty” invention? Would it surprise you to hear that “lefty” groups like the ACLU have been protesting AGAINST such surveillance since before 9/11? Would it surprise you to hear that Nicolas Sarkozy, among other “righties,” have also been eager to expand such surveillance powers in their own jurisdictions?
[Why does everything always boil down into a simplistic “the left is evil, the right is good” dichotomy for so many of you?] Smoke
Because that is the case in the left-right reference frame of today.
IMO socialism, Ed Schreyer style, was sorta reasonable compared to Dion, Blair or Merkle.
Mr. Smoke, would it surprise you to learn that the government of Britain is Labour? AKA more than slightly to the left of the NDP at their craziest.
Or that Sarkozy is a “righty” only by comparison to the pink underwear Commies he defeated in this recent election? He sounds like Dion when he talks.
Socialism IS evil, Mr. Smoke. It deprives people of their freedom and their property, sometimes even their lives.
Questions, comments?
Some leftards are going to be real disappointed, most simply smug, when all come to the realization that Ayn Rand was right. It isn’t about socialism, communism, statism, or any other “ism” – its about power, absolutely.
We appear to be getting closer to the point where criminality can and will exist on its own as an acceptable and practical “ism” (“criminism”?) Not quite libertarianism, but for many, maybe even most, a declared social belief that allows one to therefore ignore all of the constraints (read: laws) of the other “ism”, and take on a defensive, even deterrent, posture against the Power of Law… We are moving, rather swiftly it appears, to where freedom = criminality.
Skip, you’re on to something here. And, as I’ve said many times, one has to look no further than our public schools, where behaviour codes are regularly disregarded, with minor consequences to none at all. In fact, the powers that be seem to fall all over themselves in order to invoke the “mitigating circumstances” rubric to let the worst offenders off the hook.
The worst offenders? Any parents or teachers who actually expect the school to do something about uncivilized to criminal–threatening classmates with a weapon–behaviour.
So, your interesting thesis, “We are moving, rather swiftly it appears, to where freedom = criminality” resonates with me.
“Equality every which way”, as Kurt Vonnegut wrote at the beginning of his short story “Harrison Bergeron”. I highly recommend that SDA types read this hilarious and very dark attack on the whole equality scam.
There is some mental quirk common to the nanny-statists that makes them insist a potential future crime is a greater insult to society than one which has occurred, that passing a law to ban all handguns is better than passing judgement on the perpetrator of a drive-by shooting. Only the future can be altered, so the past is therefore of no value to a social engineer, and need not be studied nor valued. Justice, they will insist, is a mere arbitrary concept, but what is really, really important is stopping the tragedy from ever happening again.
But not by giving the individual murderer a short drop on a shorter rope; that is just revenge. Better basketball courts will do it.
That they would if allowed expand arbitrary DNA collection to encompass all possible levels of law-breaking shows two things: serious violent crime is the elephant in the corner they are trying to paper over by equating it to non-serious misdemeanors, (thus requiring non-serious punishments) and any opportunity to expand their controlling powers is not to be passed up.
Skip just explained the ‘do-gooder’ mentality perfectly !!
Since Trudeau, Canada has taken the ‘reward failure — punish success’ road to societal break-down.
What does it do to a grade 6 student when he/she realizes the system will protect the Bullies and bad-apples ??
Mr. Smoke the definition of socialism (left)is
the belief that some one else has the right to
take your property and labour(entitlement)without
your consent(theft).
Countries that continue to practice socialism in
various degrees are characterized by: higher unemployment and taxation,restrictive regulation,
lowered creativity and innovation and a reduction
in individual freedom.
It is responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths in the last century.
Know evil when you see it.