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It is one thing to search him at the station... It is completely another to arrest him for no real reason and THEN search his flat which is a massive invasion of privacy and messes up the place and frightens his g/f.. Not to mention his nabors seeing police searching his flat is damaging his character.

Then to add insult to injury he now has his DNA stored forever in the national database.. If I was him I wouldn't try to fly to America again, he would get arrested at the gate and put in Guantanamo bay.

Unfortunately, you do not have to be arrested for a serious crime, in order for your "DNA fingerprint" data to be retained forever - any arrestable offence is used as the excuse for this.

There used to be non-arrestable offences and arrestable ones, but the distinction between the two has now disappeared with the extra powers granted to Police Constables by section 110 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 - *everything*, no matter how minor, is now an arrestable offence !

The Kafkaesque police and judicial bureaucracy insists on every arrest, no matter for how minor an alleged offence, requires head and shoulders mugshot photos, 10 digits fingerprints and both palm prints (if physically possible), a DNA swab tissue sample (which is retained forever, and which could be used at some time in the future for other Genetic fingerprinting techniques, not just DNA fingerprinting). There is some doubt as to whether every DNA sample is actually analysed and rendered into a digital "DNA fingerprint", as this costs time and money.

All of this personal digital data can be, and usually is *retained forever*, no matter if the Police do not bother to press charges, nor if you are found Not Guilty by a Court, nor even if you voluntarily submitted, say a DNA sample for elimination purposes, after being pressured to help catch some local serous criminal such as a murderer or rapist.

There has *not* been a proper, informed public debate or consultation, on this aspect of the police state. Most members of the public naively still assume, that if they are arrested and are innocent, that they have nothing to fear from the bureaucratic database state.

I'd be interested to know where in law it states that DNA samples can be kept indefinitely irrespective of whether you're innocent. I suppose I'd like to see what the *wording* is for this (and therefore how it was passed by MPs).

Also, is there any precedent for someone arrested under terrorism legislation (and treated in the same way as Mery), released without charge and successfully suing the police?

@ Robert

Criminal Justice & Police Act 2001: Changes to Sections 63a and 64 of Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) 1984 Relating to the Retention of Fingerprints and Samples
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/docs/hoc252001.html

The legal precedent of the Michael Marper appeal case, which was brought with the help of Liberty Human Rights, but which was lost when the House of Lords ruled that the retention of samples and fingerprints by South Yorkshire Police was indeed compatible with the Human Rights Act.

http://www.out-law.com/page-4740

"The appeal also considered the case of 41-year-old Michael Marper, also from Sheffield, who had been charged with harassment by his partner, only to have the charges dropped once the couple reconciled. Again, Marper's solicitor had requested that the DNA samples taken by the police be destroyed, and again the police had refused.

On both occasions the High Court ruled that the retention by the police of fingerprints and DNA samples of individuals who had been the subject of a criminal investigation but who had not subsequently been convicted of any offence was not incompatible with the Human Rights Act, which requires respect for private life. "

Human Tissue Act 2004
Schedule 4. part 2, Use for an Excepted Purpose
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2004/40030--j.htm#sch4pt2

" (d) the prevention or detection of crime;
(e) the conduct of a prosecution;
(f) purposes of national security;"

Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005
Part 3: Police Powers etc.
110 Powers of arrest
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2005/50015--k.htm#110

If a Police Constable "has reasonable grounds for believing", (a term which is defined by the arresting officer himself) then you can be arrested without a warrant, and there is nothing you can do to appeal the decison, until *after* you have been arrested, photographed, fingerprinted, DNA sampled and entered on any number off secret police intelligence databases, even if you are totally innocent.

"Also, is there any precedent for someone arrested under terrorism legislation (and treated in the same way as Mery), released without charge and successfully suing the police?"

Don't know. What if David Mery is now refused entry to say, the USA as a result of this incident being fed into the secret and error prone intelligence sharing of no-fly blacklists etc. ?
Could he sue the Metropolitan Police for libel ?

I have a solution to DNA database storage that would make it effective and mean that at no point in the future could anyone use such a database to analysis people though DNA induced traits (such as when applying for Government jobs).

In computer science we have this thing called a one way hash; what that means is you throw any amount of data into a function and it throws out a "hash" of that data.

For example:
"Hello my name is joe" becomes "sd292jasd939j"

Now; the hash can not be reversed into the original information, it is mathematically impossible. The same input will *always* give the same output. This means that you could "one way hash" up every DNA sample and when you find a sample at the crime scene you throw that though the hashing function and it will give you a hash; you then look for that in the database and get a name.

---

I don't have a problem with the police keeping photos or finger prints of me in this large database (really); what I *do* have a problem with is DNA, because unlike the other two DNA could, one day, be used for other things that have nothing to do with law enforcement (or worse are used to try and 'predict' who breaks the law).

Well they now seem to arrest people, based on what they write on a piece of paper. Since when does having instructions in how to aim a mortar, on one's person, occur 15 years imprisonment. I can dnload tonnes of info off the net, does this make me a terrorist.

This is "sic"

The Met and Surrey Police are biggest bunch of liars I have come across. Taken 7 years and 3 investigations to get any decision. Total cover up artists and not to be trusted one iota.

You might be interested in the audio interview on rampART radio in which David Mery talks about his experience with the cops and chats about the errosion of our civil liberties...

You can download the MP3 from the rampART website or subscribe to the podcast.

http://rampartradio.co.nr

@ rampART radio - the links from your website to the interview with David Mery do not seem to work (a few more spaces between words would make it easier to read as well).

The Indymedia MP3 file (20Mb) seems to be available from:

http://radio.indymedia.org/news/2005/09/6963.php

The question that always concerns me is: what does the public at large think about these sort of incidents? How do they feel about the balance between rights and security? Is the view of the right-wing media, that the HRA is a 'chancers charter' and human rights are overrated, shared by the majority?

In other words, are those of us here really in a minority compared to others who feel they have come to a 'settled' conclusion over human rights or, alternatively, don't actually care at all about the issue so long as there isn't a revolution in the offing and the economy's doing OK?

any one feel like contacting their MP see:

faxyourmp.com

happy communing!

All the best,

Garath.

Everyone knows that Sir Ian Blair has trouble with telling the truth. This is a good article from the Sunday Times about him;
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1796022,00.html