Robin Wilton's esoterica

Today will see the second session in the House of Lords to debate the detail of the Identity Cards Bill. In previous posts I mentioned the aspects of the Bill which the Lords voted against last week. It will be interesting to see how the debate progresses today. Two other Identity stories hit the UK press over the weekend: first, Lord Falconer (Tony Blair's Lord Chancellor) told listeners to Radio 4's "Any Questions" that he thought ID Cards ought to be compulsory. He said that the benefits of an ID Card system could only be achieved through complusion --- though he didn't say whether he meant benefits to the State or to the citizen. As far as citizens are concerned, he went on, the primary benefits of having to carry an ID Card would be prevention of identity theft, and removal of the need to 'fill in a long form every time you need to deal with the state' [my paraphrase]. Personally, on the basis of the number of times on which I am required to interact with the state each year, I would view even the Government's unconfirmed estimates of £93 a high price to pay to avoid some form-filling. In fact, the most irksome form I have to complete most years is the US Visa Waiver form. However, I'm getting better at that, and in any case paying for a biometric passport and ID Card will not prevent my having to do so. The second story relates to the uncovering of a government database which holds the DNA records of about 24,000 UK nationals aged betwen 10 and 18. Grant Shapps, a Conservative MP campaigning to have the DNA record of a wrongly-arrested teenager removed from the database, found that individuals' DNA profiles were stored despite that fact that the people in question had never been cautioned, charged or convicted of an offence. To my mind, this raises extremely serious questions of informed consent. Home Office Minister, Andy Burnham, pointed out the distinction between this 'investigative tool' and a 'criminal record', and said that 'no-one lost out' through being on the database. He maintained that 'there were "proper safeguards in place" as to how DNA information could be used', according to the BBC's coverage. Unfortunately, one might legitimately doubt the level of reassurance provided by that statement. For one thing, as MP Grant Shapps implied, this database has been created without any parliamentary proposal having been tabled or voted on --- so what level of real political accountability is there over its use? For another, the management of the Sex Offenders' Register and so-called 'List 99' appears to have resulted in some 88 sex offenders not being banned from working in schools, despite having either a caution or a conviction for sex offences. I fear that, if the database exists, what the Government hopes are 'proper safeguards' will prove to be insufficient. There's another thing about DNA records, of course. They don't only identify you: they also provide strong indications of kinship. So however many entries there are in the database, the data in there can actually be used to identify a multiple of that number. Again, if the entry is in there despite the fact that the original individual concerned has not been charged, cautioned or convicted, this broadens the issue of informed consent.