-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: February 5, 2007 9:31:39 PM PST
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: "Big Brother" Becoming Even Bigger in UK
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/
main.jhtml;jsessionid=J3Y0ENJDTJZ0FQFIQMFSFF4AVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/
2007/02/04/ncrime04.xml
Ministers plan
'Big Brother'
police powers
By Patrick Hennessy and Ben Leapman,
Sunday Telegraph (UK)
February 4, 2007
A swathe of controversial "Big Brother" style crime-fighting
techniques are to be introduced by the Government under the cover
of the 2012 London Olympics, a leaked memo has revealed.
Police can already track individuals through their electronic
travel passes
The document, drawn up by officials at the Home Office and sent to
10 Downing Street, paves the way for a much wider use of the
police's DNA database to identify suspects through their relatives.
Police are also to be empowered to scan postal packages to find
drugs and to monitor an individual's progress in even greater
detail than they can today, by using advances in CCTV technology as
well as electronic travel passes such as the Oyster cards in use in
London.
The Conservatives and civil liberties campaigners are leading
protests against the proposals, with Shami Chakrabarti, director of
Liberty, accusing John Reid, the Home Secretary, of presiding over
a "make liberty history" campaign.
The memo, entitled No 10 Policy Working Group on Security, Crime
and Justice, Technological Advances, asks: "To what extent should
the expectation of liberty be eroded by legitimate intrusions in
the interests of security of the wider public?"
It goes on to explore how to win over public opinion and concludes:
"Increasing [public] support could be possible through the piloting
of certain approaches in high-profile ways such as the London
Olympics."
The games are expected to see millions of extra visitors to the
capital in what will present the police with the biggest peacetime
security threat on British soil.
The leaked document paves the way for a big leap in forensics,
particularly with the "volume of information now available on the
national DNA database", on which details of more than three million
Britons are stored.
It suggests that police will make much greater use of a technique
known as "familial DNA" where a suspect whose details are not on
the database can be traced through a family member whose details
are already recorded. The memo states: "Records could be trawled
more routinely to identify familial connections to crime scenes,
providing a starting point to investigations through a family
member that is on the database to a suspect that is not, for example."
It admits: "Such use is clearly controversial and requires careful
controls."
Familial DNA relies on the fact that close blood relatives share
much of the same DNA coding; for example, a parent and child, or
two siblings, have DNA that is 50 per cent identical.
Scientists can match DNA found at a crime scene with a named sample
on the database which is similar but not identical, indicating that
the two individuals are related.
The technique was used last year to snare a serial sex attacker
known as the "shoe rapist" because he kept his victims' shoes as
trophies.
The crimes, in the early 1980s, went unsolved for more than 20
years; but when police stopped June Lloyd for alleged drink-
driving, tests showed that her DNA was similar to samples taken
from the rape scenes.
The evidence led police to her brother, James Lloyd, who admitted
the offences and is now serving a 15-year -sentence.
However, Sir Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Commission for
Racial Equality, is already investigating the database after The
Sunday Telegraph revealed that up to three in four young black men
have their DNA stored, far more than their white counterparts.
Because of the imbalance, black criminals are more likely to have a
relative on the database, so are more likely to be caught through
familial DNA.
Ms Chakrabarti said: "Fundamental debates about freedom and
security belong in public and Parliament, and should not be left to
the praetorian guard at Number 10.
"It's particularly worrying to hear that the London Olympics -
supposed to be a celebration of our multicultural democracy - might
be manipulated for political ends into part of the Home Secretary's
'make liberty history' campaign.
"The document describes liberty as a mere 'expectation', but in
Britain it should be a way of life."
The Home Office refused to comment.
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