Europe Checks Britain

by Chris Bodenner
The European court of human rights just issued a landmark ruling that threatens to delete from the British DNA database samples from more than 857,000 innocent citizens (including children) who have been charged but never convicted of a crime. The Guardian:

In one of their most strongly worded judgments in recent years, the unanimous ruling from the 17 judges, including a British judge, Nicolas Bratza, condemned the "blanket and indiscriminate" nature of the powers given to the police in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to retain the DNA samples and fingerprints of suspects who have been released or cleared. The judges were highly critical of the fact that the DNA samples could be retained without time limit and regardless of the seriousness of the offence, or the age of the suspect. ... The Home Office acknowledged yesterday that its plans to extend the retention of DNA to low level, so-called non-recordable offences, including littering and minor traffic offences were now dead in the water.