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Overlooked: Surveillance and personal privacy in modern Britain 71
• Private companies, for an annual fee, retain the samples from which the data contained in the
NDNAD are derived. These samples contain vast amounts of genetic information, including
health-related information. There is nothing to prevent these companies using samples to
develop mini databases of DNA records.
• The Database is also connected to the Police National Computer. This could exacerbate privacy
implications because connections can be drawn between sets of personal data. Similarly PNC
records are now retained indefinitely as a result of the link to the Database, whereas before they
would have been weeded out after a short period of time. Furthermore, information contained on
the PNC is visible to a wider range of non-policing bodies. In short, the effect of the NDNAD is
not limited to that database but has a wider impact on other police records.
• It is possible in the future that connections will be made between the National Identity Register
and the Database. A recent Home Office document on the NIR explains that “it will have links
with other Government systems to share identity data” and even suggests that the biometric
data element of the NIR will, in fact, be stored on “existing biometric systems” 151 . If the
bioinformation in the NDNAD were to form part of the NIR, this would represent a significant
extension of the stated law-enforcement purpose of the Database. Linking the NIR with other
biometric databases is clearly already part of Government thinking. The former Prime Minister
Tony Blair made this clear when sending an email to the 27, 000 signatories to an anti ID card
petition on the Number 10 website. In it he said “I believe that the National Identity Register will
help police bring those guilty of serious crimes to justice. They will be able, for example, to
compare the fingerprints found at the scene of some 900,000 unsolved crimes against the
information held on the register.”
Voluntary DNA samples
DNA is occasionally provided voluntarily. This might occur if a victim of crime provides their DNA for
elimination purposes during the course of a criminal investigation. Samples might also be volunteered
to the police in response to requests for people in a geographical location to rule themselves out of
a crime investigation. At present over 12,000 volunteer samples are contained in the Database. The
samples that are retained may be used in the future in the same way as samples taken from convicted
criminals. A person who has volunteered for their DNA to be put in the Database has no right to have
this bioinformation removed. This can prove to be problematic both in principle and practice. If a
person’s consent is needed to take a DNA sample then it might be expected that they are able
withdraw that consent and consequently to require their sample to be removed. This might raise
practical concerns if people are aware that any bioinformation they voluntarily provide could be
retained for future use, they might be less inclined to co-operate. In the long run it might be that a
failure automatically to destroy any sample provided to the police might hinder investigations.
Uses of DNA samples
Some of the uses of DNA potentially raise ethical issues. The police are currently in favour of the
recovery of physical information on an individual (from crime scene DNA where there is no match to
151
Strategic Action Plan for the National Identity Scheme: Safeguarding your Identity, Home Office,
December 2006, pages 7 and 11.