Today is the anniversary of the scientific breakthrough by Alec Jeffreys on DNA fingerprinting that led to the creation of the DNA database. And on Monday, the Royal Society hosted a discussion with Alec and Shami Chakrabarti (Director of Liberty) to discuss how we got here and where we might be heading. This is part of a welcome initiative by the Royal Society to bring together science and society.
Alec pointed out that DNA fingerprinting does not always tell us what we expect: for example, a percentage of Sri Lankan men tend to score as women. He also pointed out that low copy number analysis may be fine for investigating, there are problems with using it for prosecutions. Familial searching – where searches are conducted for someone related to someone else – may give rise to ethical and social issues.
But the main topic of conversation for the evening was the number of individual DNA records now held in the UK, which exceeds that of all other European countries put together: 73% of all Europeans on a DNA database are in the UK, with some 4.4 million profiles now held. This compares with around 500,000 in Germany and in France.
Numbers have risen since arrestees – not just those convicted – have been added to the database. Alec pointed out that there are now 800,000 people on the database who have never been convicted of a criminal offence. And Shami highlighted how the expansion had happened by stealth.
The database now holds data for example on all those who have been sectioned under the mental health act, and for many witnesses and children too, including a large proportion of all black children. Alec and Shami agreed that the current coverage was not proportionate or necessary so may well be in contravention of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Matilda from Black Mental Health UK pointed out that sometimes people don’t even know they are on it, having been swabbed without being told what for. Diane Abbott MP described how in Hackney, amongst some youth groups, being on the database had almost become a rite of passage. Shami pointed to the massive commercial interests in these technologies, that encouraged government to constant expand. And Alec said there was no such thing as an infallible or free-of-error database; while it’s also perfectly possible for there to be correct matches that are accidental. And all were agreed that being on the database is not neutral, and can cause real distress, as it is not universal.
What is lacking is any mechanism for getting early-stage recognition of the potential social and ethical problems of any innovation, and any reasonable public discussion; with the media agenda always driven by whatever happened to be in the news yesterday.
I normally buy bread from local specialists (East Dulwich Deli being a favourite – great local-made breads, if a bit of a trek) or Waitrose/Ocado (some of it tolerable, for the freezer).
So I’m out of bread, and on my way back from somewhere or other I buy something from Sainsbury’s. Oh dear. The packaging claims it’s ‘Taste the difference’ Slow Fermented Rye, Sunflower and Honey. But lunch today proves it’s tasteless brown cardboard.
I’m sure Tesco – or any of the other industrial retailers – is no better.
There is something fundamentally wrong with the the Chorleywood Bread Process (CBP), the ‘no-time method’ used to make 80% of the UK’s bread these days. It is a peculiar feature of the industrialisation of our food since 1960, and it led to a restructuring of the entire industry in this country. It’s clearly super cheap for the producers. But the resulting product holds no fascination for me. CBP bread may have volume, and the bread may have ‘keeping qualities’, but it is tasteless, texture-free pap. As Diane Dunae has pointed out elsewhere, there’s more texture in a bathroom sponge while “CBP bread doesn’t taste of anything much at all, not even yeast.” I would really rather go hungry.
So much for the advances of technology and civilization. We have clearly – in the UK – gone backwards when it comes to the taste and texture of anything (vast generalisation, but not undeserved).
I’ve been seriously thinking of getting into my own bread-making, owing to the downhill slide in alternatives, and this encounter is the impetuous I need: I cannot eat this garbage any longer, even if only occasionally. If I’m out of proper bread I need to be making my own; or I need to be making my own in any case.
So I’ve acquired a copy of Elizabeth David’s English Bread and Yeast Cookery (published in 1977 – she was decrying CBP even then) and shall be making the most of my new, bread-ready oven. Let me know if you’d like to join me, share recipes or whatever.
The Government’s sudden change of course on unlawful P2P filesharing has attracted considerable criticism from a wide range of organisations in recent days. A letter in today’s Times, signed by Open Rights Group, BT, Orange UK, talktalk, Consumer Focus and Which? summarises the position being taken by many ISPs and consumer rights organisations.
Any decision to move to harsh and punitive measures such as disconnection must be genuinely underpinned by rigorous and objective assessment by Ofcom. Consumers must be presumed to be innocent unless proven guilty. We must avoid an extrajudicial “kangaroo court” process where evidence is not tested properly and accused broadband users are denied the right to defend themselves against false accusations. Without these protections innocent customers will suffer. Any penalty must be proportionate. Disconnecting users from the internet would place serious limits on their freedom of expression. Usually, constraints to freedom of expression are imposed only as the result of custodial sentences, or incitement to racial hatred, or libel.
I was amazed that I’d missed Pets, originally broadcast on Channel 4 in the early noughties, and I only found the programmes through seeing a multimedia piece by Hexstatic at Big Chill last month.
So I’ve been furiously catching up. Many episodes are available on YouTube (unless you’re in Shanghai), such as this episode On Hold, about being held in a queue on the phone.
In a similar vein, the Consumerist carries a story today about Pret customer Paul McCrudden and the invoice he sent the company for time wasted queuing. Pret sent him a cheque in recompense. Result.
FIT, the police’s so-called Forward Intelligence Team, specialises in monitoring members of the public engaged in a variety of activities: demonstrators, activists… Traditionally they have used large cameras and video equipment to record the faces of all activists, images which as far as I know end up in some warehouse for future reference, just in case they are undesirables.
Photographer Marc Vallee took this shot of the latest piece of FIT equipment at this weekend’s Climate Camp on Blackheath (London), which I have dubbed CitizenWatch 2.0. These mini-CCTV devices are lapel-mounted, and perhaps change the nature of the interaction between police and policed. While the devices look innocuous enough, they are of course recording only the actions of the policed, not the police.
I’ve been engaged in a number of urban planning issues recently. But I will only generally be notified of planning applications relating to my own section of my own street and the one behind it. So it’s difficult to keep track of all the planning applications that could be of concern.
If my local art deco cinema building is to become an evangelical church, or if acres of back gardens are to have 70-odd flats built on them, nobody from the council will tell me: I’ll only find out when it’s too late to do anything.
To make matters worse, the boundaries of five boroughs meet not far from here, but community facilities and people’s lives are no respecters of local administrative boundaries. To keep track of what’s going on in just a small radius of my home, local government expects me to monitor activity in five different planning departments.
That’s why Planning Alerts is so valuable. PA will notify me by email whenever a planning application is filed within my area(s) of interest. I just input a postcode and define a radius, and, as the saying goes, Bob’s your uncle. The user interface is excellent: it’s simple, but provides key information, such as showing me my defined radius on a map before I confirm my selection.
Planning Alerts is currently in Beta, covering around 300 local authorities, with new ones being added. It’s the kind of service that helps citizens participate in local democratic processes, and should be coming from government, but isn’t. Instead, it’s been built by Richard Pope, Mikel Maron, Sam Smith, Duncan Parkes, Tom Hughes and Andy Armstrong. The site is hosted by the fine people at mySociety.org.
How does Planning Alerts work? Unfortunately, the Royal Mail has a stranglehold on the postcodes database. Read more on Harry Metcalfe’s blog. So a new service has been established at ernestmarples.com; a sort of postcode liberation API, which anyone can use. Where’s the data coming from? Harry and Richard are not saying. Is it legal? Maybe not. Yet. But many people are hoping it will become so.
