Here we go. Further to my post on forensic phenotyping (Jan 6), here’s something from my book Future Files (2007).

If you are charged with a criminal offence in the UK, a sample of your DNA is taken and added to a national DNA database where it stays indefinitely, even if you are subsequently acquitted. So far the UK database contains the profiles of 3,130,429 people, or 5.23 per cent of the entire UK population. In contrast, the US DNA database contains just 0.99 per cent of its population, while most other national databases contain the names of fewer than 100,000 people. In theory, this DNA fingerprinting is a very good idea, not least because the technology allows police to create a DNA fingerprint using a single human cell (taken from a print on a broken window, for example). In the future, police officers will carry handheld devices that can instantly upload these samples and test them against the database. These samples will then be used to create 3-D photofits of suspects, giving police officers accurate information on likely height, skin colour, hair colour and even personality type.

Privacy campaigners are obviously concerned about this but the database and associated technology will be so useful that I’d expect the database to be enlarged as part of a national biometric identity-card scheme. Eventually, every single person in the country will therefore be listed ‘for their own security’, at which point adding some kind of GPS or other location-tagging component would seem an entirely logical idea. The problem with this, of course, is that once a government starts to view all its citizens as potential suspects, there will be subtle changes to how everything from policing to law making operates. There is also the issue of data accuracy and data security.