I left this comment in response to some naive comments here (but they deleted it for some reason):
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/06/dna_deletion/comments/
“My utterly unique fingerprint will be on a database that police can use to exclude me from suspicio”
… and all the members of your family?
… and get you a £60 fine for that fag end you dropped?
… deport you when a Nazi group gets in power and decides it does’t like your racial background?
… and, of course, the old false positive. One in a hundred thousand means there are (60m/100k) 600 people that might have the same match (not counting shared genes with the family). The more non-“perps” in the DB, the greater the likelihood.
and don’t forget they quite often have to “multiply” the DNA to get a usable sample, very easy to “multiply” contamination too.
Plus, personally, I’m just sick to death of the useless gits wasting tons of my money on crap like this and ID cards. SORT OUT THE FUCKING ECONOMY and OBEY INTERNATIONAL LAW – IT’S WRITTEN THAT WAY FOR A REASON, or do we have to another genocide like world war II before they finally understand that no-one cares if they can be trusted, it’s more that can unknown the people in the future can be trusted? Not that we trust them anyway.
Not hard, eh?