DNA Database Doomed: It Works Too Well

This is something I've been saying (without proof, admittedly) for a while: the UK's insane DNA database is doomed not because it doesn't work well, but because it works *too* well in a sense - in that it lets you frame anybody with perfect efficiency:

Scientists in Israel have demonstrated that it is possible to fabricate DNA evidence, undermining the credibility of what has been considered the gold standard of proof in criminal cases.

The scientists fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva. They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person.

“You can just engineer a crime scene,” said Dan Frumkin, lead author of the paper, which has been published online by the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics. “Any biology undergraduate could perform this.”

This is actually an argument against expanding the database: what you want are just the real criminals, not all those who might possibly one day be one. The bigger the database, the more likely you will get a match with fake DNA.

Needless to say, our great and glorious government will ignore completely this inconvenient truth, and go on stuffing its database with DNA - the reason being this isn't about crime, but about control.

Still, looking on the bright side, it will be trivially easy to spread Gordon Brown's DNA at any crime scene in the future - all we need is a discarded coffee cup....

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter and identi.ca.