As many as three quarters of all black men in the UK aged 18 to 35 have had their genetic information placed on the country’s massive DNA database, a group charged with reviewing officials’ use of genetic technology said yesterday.
The Human Genetics Commission — an independent government advisory board made up of scientists, lawyers and other experts — said young black males were “very highly over-represented” on the DNA register and could be unfairly stigmatized by being placed on the database in such large numbers.
“My breath was slightly taken away by that figure,” commission chairman Jonathan Montgomery said in a telephone interview. “We know young black men are much more likely to be arrested than others, and putting them on the DNA database magnifies the impact.”
“If the arrest pattern is discriminatory, this makes it even worse,” he said.
The UK has one of the biggest DNA databases in the world, with profiles of more than 5 million people, or 8 percent of the population.
Seven percent of those on the register are black, according to government figures — even though only about 2 percent of the population of England and Wales is black.
Montgomery said his commission’s figures came from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, a government body that has estimated that about a third of all black men — and 75 percent of all young black men — are on the national register.
Last month, security minister Alan West acknowledged that the over-representation of blacks and other minorities on the database was worrying, but said that “our initial look at this makes us feel that this is to do with the fact that in the criminal justice system as a whole there is over-representation of black people.”
“It is not because of a problem with the DNA database itself,” he told lawmakers.
Montgomery’s commission said police should stop taking DNA samples from every person who is arrested, arguing that decisions on whether DNA samples are taken should be based in part on the seriousness of the offense and the circumstances of the arrest.
British officials had planned to keep genetic information of innocent people indefinitely, but the European Court of Human Rights ruled unanimously last year that keeping such information on innocent people forever violated their right to privacy, forcing the British government to modify its practices.
New guidelines announced earlier this month call for the DNA profiles of most innocent people to be purged from the system after six years, although people suspected of terrorist offenses would be excluded from this rule.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion