Including visitors! That would stop me from vacationing in the UK.
The entire UK population and every visitor to Britain should be put on the national DNA database, a top judge said today.(via)
Lord Justice Sedley, one of England's most experienced appeal court judges, described the country's current system as "indefensible".
"We have a situation where if you happen to have been in the hands of the police, then your DNA is on permanent record. If you haven't, it isn't ... that's broadly the picture," Sir Stephen Sedley told the BBC.
"It also means that a great many people who are walking the streets, and whose DNA would show them guilty of crimes, go free."
He said that expanding the existing database to cover the whole population had "serious but manageable implications".
[...]
The Home Office minister Tony McNulty told BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning: "I think we are broadly sympathetic to the thrust of what he [the judge] has said.
"I have said that myself in the past, that there is a real logic and cohesion to the point that says, 'Well, put everybody on'.
"But I think he probably does underestimate the practicalities, logistics and huge civil liberties and ethics issue around that.
"There is no government plans to go to a compulsory database now or in the foreseeable future."
