The United Kingdom is not coming to rest these days. One thought it could not get any worse after the agreement earlier this week between the British Government, six Internet provider and the British Music Industry which more or less forced the providers to send warning letters to their customers if they were suspected of sharing files illegally on the Internet.
On Friday another blunder came to light, not related to filesharing but to privacy and ethics which somehow connects it to warning letters case.
The British Government has apparently passed millions of DNA profiles to private companies without the consent of the involved. Since 1999 the Government has accepted 25 requests for access to the database which contains 4.2 million DNA profiles of British citizens.
Officials quickly let everyone know that the data was stripped of information that could connect it to the person behind.
Paul Debenham, the director of innovation and development at LGC, said: “It is like being given a list of number plates but having no idea about the make of the car.”
A fairly interesting quote. I’m not familiar with the British Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (Welsh: Asiantaeth Trwyddedu Gyrwyr a Cherbydau) but they probably keep records of drivers and their license plates in their database.
A spokesman for the National Policing Improvement Agency, which oversees the database, said: “These are completely anonymous profiles which are not identifiable in any way. After approval, they were made available for authorised research purposes demonstrating, clear, potential operational benefit to the police in terms of detecting and solving crime.”
Where have we heard this before?
Tags: Britain, dna, dna database, dna profiles, united kingdom
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