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back to article Home Office coughs to Dutch DNA screw-up

The Home Office has admitted it could have identified 22 criminals from DNA left at Dutch crime scenes if it had checked them against the UK's national DNA database. In January 2007 Dutch police sent the Crown Prosecution Service a disc containing 2,159 DNA profiles collected from crime scenes. The idea was to check these …

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  1. Hollerith

    more data sharing! More, more.

    "Hillier said the government would continue to increase cross-border data sharing in line with the Prüm Council Decision. This will give police access to DNA, fingerprint and vehicle registration information across Europe."

    Which they will then promptly lose.

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  2. Jimmy Floyd

    What the Lib Dems said

    Gordon Brown added: "All your DNA are belong to us."

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    yet again

    This is f***ng rediculous, another lost data disc.

    How can so many discs get lost? I put this down to civil servants who couldn't careless.

    I've worked in the civil service an the attitude stinks. No body ever gets fired, so who cares if they don't do their job properly.

    We need to start prosecuting individuals when they lose sensitive personal data.

    Not such a revolutionary idea: over the years the government has introduced laws holding people rather than companies personally legally liable for a number of things, one example is in the area of CE marking. The company may issue the CE mark to it's product, but if it doesn't conform to the rules governing the emission and reception of RF radiation then the person that's authorised the signining of the CE conformance statement is held personally liable and can be prosecuted.

    Then, and only then, will people start taking the handling of data seriously.

    Perhaps they start need to treat the data the same way as the MoD, mark it as secret, book it in, sign for it, hold it securely and keep a record of everyone to whom it is distributed.

    it's a pain for sure, but it will stop this sh*t from happening.

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    IT Angle

    Anyone ever heard of SECURE DATA TRANSFER

    Once again I am aghast at the incompetence of our government to deal with electronic data securely. Our company has repeatedly given them the option of using our secure data transfer product SDX allowing them to shift any form of electronic data securely from one PC to another, with none repudiation and military strength encryption as standard. Think of SFTP and put it on steroids When will they ever listen? SDX has been on the market now for over 5 years.

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  5. Graham Marsden
    Stop

    And still...

    ... they expect us to trust them will all of our DNA...???

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  6. Dave
    Black Helicopters

    I would say that this is another cock-up

    But then Jacky might accuse me of writing "Extreme pr0n"

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  7. kain preacher

    Why

    Would the Dutch trust that this info would be safe ???

    Wonders why the US government even asked for data on UK citizens, all they had to do is ride the bus long enough and they would of gotten every thing the needed. The plus side is no one would of ever known.

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  8. Watashi

    Dopes!

    Out there, right now, is an evil genius creating a Dutch super-criminal by combining the DNA codes on this disk. I hope Brown's house is the first to be targeted by his super bad guy "laser"! Mwa-ha-ha-ha!

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    Makes you wonder

    if our (incompetent) government officials disappeared, would anyone notice/care/bother to do anything about it/rejoice?

    ...oh did I say that out loud?...

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  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "The most serious being attempted robbery"

    ATTEMPTED? Without wishing to downplay it, we don't seem to have missed out on much.

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