This case surely shows everyone the danger of extensive DNA databases and how they can and will be used in the future. Lorraine Elliott, a city lawyer, was fired from a £150,000 a year post after a routine check revealed her DNA on the national database.
She was arrested in September this year suspected of forging a signature on an application form so that she could fraudulently obtain a nursery school place. Her DNA was taken and will now appear on the database for 6 years. This means that on any police check the data will appear, despite her being innocent as she was never charged or found guilty of an offence.
A keen horse rider, she is now struggling to keep a roof over her head and that of her 3 children by working as a stable hand.
But her employers obviously thought that there can be no smoke without fire, drew their own conclusions and have sacked her. The irony is that she was about to start on a project involving the new national identity card scheme.
This effectively creates a new class of criminal, the ‘guilty innocents’. We used to have a system where you were either guilty or you were innocent. Now you can be left in limbo for 6 years. Remember also that the government’s original plans, but for the intervention of the EU, was for indefinite holding of DNA! Food for thought.
Had she not been going for a job that requires police background clearances she may well never have realised the repercussions of these new rules. Most people will just dismiss this as an isolated case to be ignored, but it could easily happen to anyone by just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just because it may happen infrequently doesn’t make it right.
The holding of DNA on a whim must be prevented and the dissemination of DNA data about innocent people must never be allowed to occur. EU legislation has at least kept the time limit for holding such data to 6 years, but that is far too long for any innocent person. As she is a lawyer I would expect her to chase this all the way to and through the European courts.
------ Other articles of interest ------
Some good news for the beleaguered motorist
Threat of privately operated speed cameras
Jack Straw takes some flak
RBS sheds 3,500 jobs in the UK
Tags: dna, dna database, eu law, lorraine elliott, police, Politics, the law
[...] Update: The Economic Voice has more. [...]
It is ironic, as a previous poster has pointed out, but that does not make it right. She gets arested in connection with an application for a place at a nursery school. They take her DNA – because an allegation has been made that there is an irregularity with a school application. That, in itself, is quite amazing. You often read references to the Stasi when the database state / surveillance society is being discussed. I have never heard of the Stasi arresting people and cataloging them because someone else had reported that they were fiddling a school application. Maybe we should have a new database especially for logging anyone who has tried to get their child into a school other than the ones the authorities think they should have applied to. Let’s not just put on those who have been found guilty – let’s record allegations as well. All schools should be able to search this database whenever anyone makes an application to admit their child. Details of all the children of the people put onto the database should be recorded – in case the offenders (and suspected offenders) might make future fraudulent applications for their other children. The department which registers births should be linked to this new database so that all new births to school admissions fraudsters (and suspected fraudsters) are added to the offender’s profiles. Remember – nothing to hide / nothing to fear.
I’d like to see a database of all those who make accusations against others cross referenced to the outcome – convicted, acquitted, charges dropped, no charge brought.
Lorraine Elliott, has a long history of arrests with the police and this is not a leading example of the dna database being used maliciously