Thats all nice and stuff but that means that you have everyones DNA on file from birth (what about all the people who are already born?).
The costs of gathering this information and storing it correctly, safely and securely are tremendous. Not to mention privacy implications of such a project.

And do you really think that if people have a problem with giving the government a digital copy of their fingerprints or irisprints for the ID card this is gonna get through?

Another solution if you want to go the way of mandetory registration is use the irisprint as it holds no commercially valuable information where DNA and fingerprint potentially do.

Yet another path is just implants a little chip under the skin just as we do with dogs and cats with a unique id number. Or maybe something less invasive give kids a little "ankle bracelet" with a unique number on it which they use in some institutions.

Or guess what - the all old way of writing his / her name and address in a label in their clothes also does miracles and doesn't cost "us" anything and would solve 90 - 98% of these sorts of cases

DNA isn't that magic bullet! There are cheaper and less privacy sensative ways of solving this particular problem.

Just on a final note this shouldn't be the governments responsibility in the first place but the parents! If you can afford 50 quid shoes you can probably afford the marker to write something on the sole of it or pay another 50 quid to get him chipped at the local vet

(Edited by Chambler 04/02/2005 16:09)

Why not just have passports that actually detail all distinguishing marks on a person's body with the details logged on some central computer? Just like the ones we now have to have with horses... supposedly so noone can steal them

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by angelwolfsbane
Why not just have passports that actually detail all distinguishing marks on a person's body with the details logged on some central computer?

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Would the child have thought to pick up its passport before it left home 'tho

I'm sure I read somewhere that they're gonna start introducing passports like that. Bio-something or another. Details like finger prints and eye scans ('tho I might be making that bit up, lol) will be saved on a chip on the passport.

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by Chambler
Or guess what - the all old way of writing his / her name and address in a label in their clothes also does miracles and doesn't cost "us" anything and would solve 90 - 98% of these sorts of cases

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Whenever we go somewhere like Alton Towers I always make sure my two have copies of my mobile phone number on them and if they get lost to go to someone wearing a uniform. Luckily we've never had to see if this method works.


(Edited by Teresa 04/02/2005 16:56)

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by Teresa

Would the child have thought to pick up its passport before it left home 'tho

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Probably not... but then do you think a thief will knock on the door and ask for the horse's passport before he steals the animal?

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by Teresa
Whenever we go somewhere like Alton Towers I always make sure my two have copies of my mobile phone number on them and if they get lost to go to someone wearing a uniform. Luckily we've never had to see if this method works.

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Well, just goes to show that planning & preparation prevent pee poor performance

Wouldn't new Labour love this. We need to have your DNA, for the sake of the children! It's not about a police state, it's about the children, you heartless airy-fairy do-gooders!

I don't think the occasional unidentifiable child, who'll soon be identified by other means, justifies a wholesale abandonment of basic civil liberties. And since it'd inevitably get awarded to the famously competent EDS, the poor bligter would soon be winging his way to his rightful place with outer Tibetan goatherds.

1/ Am I the only person who thinks quoting the cost of the kid's trainers is .. well .. slightly irrelevant?

2/ I doubt very much this will turn up to be as simple as "where does this kid live?". As the article says, parents would normally notice a missing child within a couple of hours, max. Yet no one has come forward to report the child as missing.

3/ So no, storing DNA probably wouldn't solve that much. And for the small amount of good it would have done, you have a massive cost financially to us the tax payers, the bureaucracy of getting and storing the data (which would need to include all immigrants and those here on temporary visas), and a central database that had data on you containing information that could easily be used to make it appear that someone innocent committed a crime... Personally, I have no desire whatsoever for anyone at all to have my DNA on record. And unless I commit a crime I see no reason why anyone should.

4/ Biometric. That's the data they intend to add to passports. Partly as part of the National ID debacle. Mostly because the US are soon to insist that anyone visiting the USA must have these details on their passport in a pathetic attempt to make US citizens feel safer, rather than actually do something practical to ensure their safety (like handover securing Iraq to the UN, stop propping up an Israeli government that has no desire for peace, and generally assuming they have the god given right to bomb anyone they like). And when the US government barks, we jump.