[jambutty]

Originally Posted by Gayle

Obviously Jambutty hasn't been online this afternoon or I'm pretty sure we would have had his views on this subject by now.

I’ve been busy battling a load of cretins on another forum. You don't want to know which. But thanks for the mention Gayle.

No! No and thrice NO!

On no account should every single person in the country be DNA sampled without just cause. That is convicted of a crime. It wouldn’t do a great deal for solving a crime. After all many criminals do not leave a DNA sample at the scene.

Imagine the situation. You return your hire car/van/lorry and the person who hires it next is involved in some criminal activity using the vehicle. Your DNA is in that car but you were alone in bed at the time the crime was committed. Circumstantially you could be the one that the police are looking for because the real crook has arranged himself a nice alibi.

One of the arguments against hanging is that an innocent person may get hanged and it goes on that it is better that ten criminals go free rather than one innocent person being hanged. The same applies to DNA sampling.

I understand that the proposal would also include visitors to this country. Now that should speed up disembarkation at airports, seaports etc. But that aside the thought of the government having a database of everyone’s DNA has Orwellian overtones. I won’t even go down the computer security path. Then there is always the dishonest official with legitimate access to the database who fancies earning a bit on the side.

The “if you have nothing to hide” argument doesn’t wash with me at all. The majority of the people in this country have nothing criminal to hide but they do have private lives, with the operative word being private.