So they don't even know when DNA samples match?

What was the point of this database again?

At a cost of £2mil p.a. or thereabouts. I'm quite surprised by this, as I didn't know it was possible for the government to do anything IT related for less than 8 or 9 digits. Maybe when they start to implement security for our data the costs will skyrocket to the sort of astronomical overspend we're more used to.

By replication i think you'll find she means people have had their sample taken mroe than once so they have multiples of the 'same' DNA just taken at different dates.... it prob fits with their policy of never deleting a sample... even the innocents!

At a mere £2mil this database will save far more in halted/deterred crime. However I would have thought that any database worthy of the name would prevent duplicate records. Is there a good reason for permitting duplications?

Try buying yourself a myth, any myth, for that money. It's so amazing, it can hardly be true.

You pretty much always get what you pay for.

Problems:

1. it's chromosome not chromosone

2. what species are you? I /only/ have 23 chromosomes...

3. your table would allow nameless and addressless samples. Not very useful for knocking on the door at 4am...

4. I've no idea exactly how it's done, but DNA matching is not broken down by chromosome and nor is it a case of simple string matching

5. I doubt I'd use MySQL for this...

can we have our £2mil back please...

I wonder why the costs have soared? Surely, over time, all you need is more hard disk space, so what's pushing the costs up? The running costs should remain more or less constant except for that.

More functionality being developed?

Someone's being ripped off somewhere, and that is us..the taxpayer again.

Try watching Terry Gilliam's "Brazil", where those arrested are billed for the costs of arrest and detention etc. Coming soon, I suspect, to a police station near you.

If you have been eating something, say a burger or you have just nibbled on your nearest and dearest's love flaps, how do they make that distinction in the DNA test. I am beginging to think this DNA thing is just a load of made up guff.

So as a test, they should round up 1000 people, who are then recorded using a variety of cameras which stream to an encrypted storage area.

They run about an area, simulating real life, muching on the odd burger or love flap, getting into fights, sucking on their clothing, picking up objects, shaking hands and popping their fingers in their gobs etc.

Then each gives a DNA sample.

The DNA sample is then taken along normal routes to the lab, meanwhile the lorry gets ambushed, the driver dragged out, and flashed a photo of the thing they love the most, the DNA samples are mixed up (labels moved etc), not all but about 50%. He is then popped back into his cab and trundles off to the lab.

Items are then gathered up from the experiment area and shipped off to another lab, who knows if that truck gets hijacked or not.

Then quite simply the labs have to share data to match up the items to the people who have touched them.

All the politicians and judges who think that DNA evidence is incontrovertable get lined up. The results get returned, and the camera footage decrypted, for each item that is wrongly matched to a person, a lump of lead is projectiled into the line at about head hit

So, how sure are people that DNA evidence is accurate, how long would that line be.

Just in case I turn to a life of crime I've already got thousands of hair + dandruff samples from my local hairdressers to throw around the crime scene.

That should keep them busy.

When the BBC got a lot of flak for the price of the TV licence they resorted to a slightly desperate campaign telling you how much it worked out to on a daily basis.

It's time for the Home Office to do the same; now M&S have started using David Jason to do their voiceovers, I'm sure Dervla Kerwin is available:

'Do you know it costs less than 2 pence per day to store the data of a child on the government's database? Peace and security for just 2p? What else can you get for that?'