THE UK has led the world in forensic DNA profiling for law enforcement 鈥� but now the (ECHR) has ruled that the has gone too far. In a landmark judgement on 4 December, the court ruled that the UK鈥檚 Home Office must remove over 800,000 of about 4.5 million profiles in the database, and destroy the DNA samples.
The samples belong to people who were suspected of a crime, but who were either acquitted or never tried. 鈥淕iven the nature and the amount of personal information contained in cellular samples, their retention per se had to be regarded as interfering with the right to respect for the private lives of the individuals concerned,鈥� the .
The case was brought by two men from Sheffield, one of whom was accused of harassing his partner, the other of an attempted robbery when he was aged 11. The former reconciled with his partner and charges were never pressed; the latter was acquitted.
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Britain is unusual in allowing samples from such individuals to be compared with DNA profiles picked up from crime scenes. The Home Office, which runs the DNA database, has until March 2009 to tell the ECHR how it will comply.