Otro ejemplo de como el espacio genético está siendo tomado...

INNOCENT - BUT BATTLING A DNA RECORD
by Julian Joyce
BBC News

Two British men who have not been convicted of any crime are challenging the police's legal right keep samples of their DNA and fingerprints at the European Court of Human Rights.

The men, both from Sheffield, are just two of the many thousands of people arrested since 2004 who have not been charged. The genetic signatures of those people have become part of Britain's growing and permanent police database.

The government says a large database will help police solve crimes - DNA evidence was crucial in securing the conviction and life prison terms of killers Steve Wright and Mark Dixie last week.

But critics say retaining the details of innocent people is both unfair and prone to abuse.

One of those is 14-year-old Katherine Lay from Maldon in Essex.

She used to have huge respect for the police, especially because her late father served as an Essex police officer for more than 20 years.

But that respect evaporated after she was arrested and released without charge, because the police refused to destroy her DNA sample.

'Rational debate'

But the Liberal Democrats have criticised the current system as "fundamentally blurring the line between guilt and innocence" - and other critics suggest it was never properly debated.

Gareth Crossman, of civil liberties group Liberty, said he hoped that if the men won their case in Strasbourg it would "mark the beginning of a rational debate on whether permanently retaining samples from innocent people can be justified".

Dr Helen Wallace, of the pressure group GeneWatch, is firmly convinced the law should be changed again, so only criminals' samples are on file.

"The danger with keeping the samples of innocent people is that it might one day be misused by government, or fall into the wrong hands," she said.

One scenario now being painted by critics is that of clever criminals throwing police off the scent - or even framing innocent people - by deliberately contaminating crime scenes with bogus DNA.

"Vulnerable people could be put at risk, and there is also a real concern that once you start putting the good guys on a database, then the bad guys can misuse that that to their advantage," said Dr Wallace.

Innocent people who try to get their DNA profiles removed from the database often face a fruitless struggle.

Advice from the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) states that "exception cases will by definition be rare".

Story from BBC NEWS