The UK DNA database which holds over 4.5 million records, of innocent, and guilty, adults and children, has been found to contain numerous errors.
Following a Freedom of Information Act request it was discovered that there were numerous errors on the system:
It was found that
- Between January and November 2007 1,450 demographic discrepancies were discovered. These included spelling errors, date taken amendments, force code amendments, an crime codes.
- In August 2007 the UK government admitted that there was over 550,000 records with the wrongly recorded or incorrectly spelt names
- In May 2007 the government stated that over a 10 year period (1995 to 2005) that 26,200 DNA records were not loaded, which result in 183 undetected crimes.
- The DNA Database Unit had also admitted in a report in May 2007 that between 1995 and 2005 it failed to load 26 200 records to the DNA database because of errors, which resulted in 183 undetected crimes.
John Hemming, the Liberal Democrat MP for Birmingham Yardley stated: “It is important that people recognise Government databases are not necessarily 100 per cent accurate (…) It is quite clear you can’t trust the Government with your personal information. They need to massively tighten up the way they deal with these issues.” . John Heming previously voted against ID cards the Labour’s anti-terror law, and for an investigation into Iraq.
Innocents fear DNA database errors (26.11.2007)
Outrage at 500,000 DNA database mistakes (27.08.2007)
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