Together with the Human Rights Act, this place tends to get a bad press. I see news today, however, that they have upheld what I've always regarded as our basic right to be considered innocent until (and unless) proven otherwise.
Two men who had had been detained by the Police, but later faced no action had asked the Police to delete their fingerprint and DNA records. The Police refused, and our own dear House Of Lawyers also thought this was fine.
Thankfully, the ECR still has some idea of what freedom and privacy means.
Jaqui Smith, our poor excuse for a Home Secretary, is disappointed. How dare she be disappointed that innocent men are entitled to be treated as innocent?
Clear battle lines are being drawn here I think, and not just in politics. There's one camp which I'm in who think the authorities are our servants and should leave us alone unless they have proper proof we've been up to no good. Then there's the Jaqui Smith camp who think that it's OK to gather as much data as possible on everyone and trawl through it regularly to see if there are any dodgy looking results, this saves the tiem and expense of doing proper investigations.
Many people argue that we'd all be better off if everyone's DNA and fingerprints were on record, and our own dear government makes little secret of their desire to do this. What they fail to realise (or don't care about) is the potential for abuse and error that this would create.
